Citation

Johnson BD, Dunlap E, Maher L. Subst. Use Misuse 1998; 33(7): 1511-1546.

Affiliation

National Development and Research Institutes, New York, New York 10048, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

9657414

PMCID

PMC2746683

Abstract

A very sizable proportion of juvenile delinquents and adult criminals come from backgrounds and family kin systems having deviant parents or kin. This paper provides a focus upon the child-rearing practices directly observed by trained ethnographer during a case study of one highly criminal, drug-using household/kin network. The concrete expectations (and actual practices--called conduct norms--with which the household adults respond to (or "nurture") children and juveniles are delineated. While children are taught to "pay attention" to what adults do, adults typically model various deviant activities and rarely engage in conventional behaviors. Drug-using, and especially crack-using, men and women are expected not to raise (or financially support) children born to them; other kin expect to raise children of such unions. Children are not expected, nor able, to develop strong affective bonds with any household adults, and receive little or no psychological parenting. Adults do not take strong measures to protect children/juveniles from harm, and often adults are a major source of harm. In many ways the conduct norms in such crack-using households are well designed to "nurture" those persons who will be antisocial as children, delinquents as juveniles, and become criminals, drug misusers, and prostitutes in adulthood--and who have very few chances to become conventional adults.

Language: en