A reform school workroom, circa 1854. In the past, delinquent youths were sent to reform schools for punishment, not rehabilitation, with
little attempt made to understand the source of the delinquent behavior. (Library of Congress)
what is required for optimally raising their children.
Consequently, they are more likely to be emotionally
unavailable and to use inconsistent, harsh, and some-
times abusive disciplinary strategies. Because of their
limited resources, parents in these situations tend to
provide inadequate monitoring of their children,
thus allowing them ample opportunities for an active
life of delinquent behavior. These are all factors that
are frequently found in the backgrounds of EOP de-
linquent youth.
Experts have turned to emotion regulation pro-
cesses to explain why early parenting factors are asso-
ciated with EOP delinquent behavior. They have
observed that, starting in the first year of life, children
depend exclusively on caregivers to help them regu-
late their emotions and to stay organized in the face
of arousing situations. In optimal caregiving contexts,
children are free to explore their environments and
to experience a wide range of emotions because they
are confident that their caregivers will be available in
times of distress. When parents experience high le-
vels of life stress, mental health problems such as de-
pression, and low amounts of social support, they
have fewer resources to devote to their parenting.
Without adequate parental support, children in such
environments are likely to develop maladaptive cop-
ing skills for dealing with disorganizing emotions
(such as anger and sadness) and are likely to behave
aggressively and impulsively instead. This is especial-
ly true of maltreated children because their caregivers
are frequently the source of their distress and are like-
ly to be emotionally unavailable and unsupportive.
Research shows that once a pattern of aggressive,
defiant, and impulsive behavior has been established,
it is highly resistant to change. This is true in large
part because the environments that help give rise to
this pattern are themselves highly stable. Because of
countless repetitions over time, maladaptive patterns
of emotion regulation become deeply ingrained by
the elementary school years to the extent that they be-
come core components of a child’s personality struc-
ture. Moreover, certain ‘‘vicious cycle’’ processes
begin to take over. For example, children who show
high levels of aggression and other antisocial behav-
ior are more likely to be rejected by their peers and
to receive negative attention from teachers, which in
turn leads to more aggression. As these children
progress through school, they are frequently sus-118 DELINQUENCY