Failing to provide for kids leads to aggression and delinquency, according to new study

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/uab-ftp042115.php

Public Release: 21-Apr-2015
University at Buffalo

A new study by two researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Social Work has shown that parents who chronically neglect their children contribute to the likelihood that they will develop aggressive and delinquent tendencies later in adolescence, and the one factor that links neglect with those behaviors appears to be poor social skills.

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"When you have a neglected child whose basic needs are not being met, they're not getting the socialization that enables them to grow to be a happy adolescent and adult," says Patricia Logan-Greene, whose study with Annette Semanchin Jones will appear in a forthcoming issue of Child Abuse & Neglect.

Logan-Greene says failing to provide for children may result in poor hygiene or a tendency toward illness, making some of them unappealing to their peers.

"These children are often rejected and lack the kind of social stimulation that would lead them to have positive, strong, social ties," she says.

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The researchers also found that boys are more likely to respond to chronic neglect with aggressive or delinquent behavior than girls. Although the research did not address what's responsible for that difference, historically boys have been more prone to engage in aggressive behavior than girls, but over the past 20 years that margin of difference has been decreasing. Women are the fastest growing population in both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems, according to Logan-Greene.