The Criminogenic Family

The family has the responsibility of teaching the child, by precept and example, the multitude of attitudes, values, and behavior patterns essential for his early socialization. In a family disorganized by unresolved and recurring internal conflicts the accomplishment of these responsibilities is extremely difficult if not impossible. As the child from a conflict family grows older he may react to the tensions of his family situation by turning too eagerly to a peer group, seeking the satisfactions he fails to experience in his family unit: identity, acceptance, a feeling of belonging, love and affection, even the security of being a member of a consistently structured group with well-defined roles. This inadequately socialized child is ill prepared to distin guish and reject antisocial or delinquent influences and may readily accept all the values, standards, and codes of conduct of the new group, including those that are antisocial and delin quent.