Broken homes and crime: Differential effects of parental separation, parental decease, and being born to a single parent on the criminal involvement in offspring

This dissertation has contributed to the literature by looking at the effect of growing up in a single-parent family during childhood and adolescence on adolescents’ involvement in delinquency. More specifically, it investigated whether different types of single-parent families have different effects, and whether these effects depend on parental involvement in crime. These relationships were investigated by means of a systematic review based on empirical literature and three empirical studies based on Dutch population register data provided by Statistics Netherlands. This dissertation has shown that 1) there is a positive relation between experiencing the start of a single-parent family as a child or adolescent and the engagement in crime during adolescence, 2) there is a higher likelihood for offspring born to a single parent to engage in crime, followed by offspring with separated parents and offspring experiencing parental death, 3) there is a higher likelihood for offspring to engage in crime when the single-parent family starts at a younger age compared to a later age or when children grow up with only a biological mother, both for sons and daughters, compared to only a biological father, 4) there is a short-term increase of adolescent delinquency after a parental separation and an anticipatory reduction in adolescent delinquency before a parental death, and 5) in certain family situations, generally a parental separation that leads to living with the parent who does not engage in criminal behavior appears to reduce the risk of offspring engaging in crime. Overall, this dissertation underscores the importance of researching the effects of single-parent families on the offspring, because growing up in a single-parent family influences the future of the offspring with regard to their delinquent behavior. To be able to obtain a complete image about the effects of growing up in a single-parent family and adolescent delinquency, it is very important to continue to p