Roots of Delinquency: Infancy, Adolescence and Crime.

Abstract

Working with data from a longitudinal sudy of children born in England, Scotland, and Wales in 1946, Michael Wadsworth finds that most forms of official delinquency are associated with early disruption in parent-child relationships, family size, and birth order. These and other conclusions presented are exceptional because they are based on the analysis of data collected over a thirty-year period for a relatively large birth cohort. Initial data were collected for over 5,000 children eight weeks after their birth. Additional information was collected at least every other year for thirty years as part of a National Survey of Health and Development. Although some of the data used cover only the first fifteen years of the children's lives, the crime and delinquency information was compiled from each individual's eighth birthday through the twenty-first