Alongside this story in the Telegraph was a box of "Family Facts and Figures". One of them was:
70 per cent of young criminals have lone parents
another was
22 per cent of children live with a lone mother.
This would appear to be further evidence that lone parenting makes it more likely that children will become delinquent. It does, of course, have to treated with care since it is possible that children of lone parents are more likely to suffer from some other problem that causes them to be more likely to be criminal. In other words, it is conceivable that the evidence is misleading. On the other hand, there is plenty of well-researched analysis that leads one to believe that this bare statistic powerfully reflects an important truth.
I am very interested in the origin of this 70 per cent figure. Previously the British government, unlike the American, has been reluctant to make any analysis of the family background of convicted criminals. It has been as if it did not want to know. So where does this figure come from? Is it in the Freud report?
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Behaviour & Crime • Parenting
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I work with single parent families in Peckham. One of the conditions I see is that family breakdown seems to leave young women vulnerable to make poor judgements. Could you let me know of any agencies producing social research based info for young people about the risks they run for themselves (the women)and their children? When we talk to them, however strong a relationship we have built, we are a lone voice and due to lack of parenting they can't take the advice of older adults mostly with catastrophic results. We feel like a lone voice. We want to get some of the stats in your book to them in leaflet form. Sorry to post this but the email facility on the blog isn't working for me.
Helen Balfour
Posted by: Helen Balfour at January 10, 2008 11:45 AM
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Do you not think this argument might be erroneous ?
Might it be the case that the environment that these children live in may cause both criminality and relationship-fecklessness ?
It would be interesting to see this broken down by Social Class.
Posted by: Paul at March 8, 2007 07:44 AM