Assessing the Impact of Parental Drug Use, Family Structure, and Environmental Conditions on Adolescents’ Self-Reported Drug Use, Serious Delinquency, and Deviant Behaviors

Abstract

Empirical studies have demonstrated that youths reared in homes with parental drug use have a high risk of exhibiting maladaptive social behaviors encompassing delinquency, deviance, and criminality. Family transitions, such as changes in the configuration of one’s family structure (i.e. single parent households due to divorce or separation) have shown to have a negative impact on the behavioral development of adolescents. Despite the axiomatic role of the home environment in engendering aberrant behaviors, key findings have also linked criminogenic forces at the neighborhood level to the outcomes of adolescents’ drug use, serious delinquency, and deviance. The current study explored the impact of parental drug use, family structure, and environmental conditions on youths’ self-reported drug use, serious delinquency, and deviance. The results of the study demonstrated that the outcome behaviors are impacted by both neighborhood and home conditions. However, the type of predictor variable mattered for the type of outcome behavior reported.