Deliquent Child

There has been increasing concern, both by the police and the general public on the increasing seriousness of adolescent crime and conduct problems. Although greater emphasis has been placed on educating the young to prevent them from going astray, the reasons resulting in adolescents becoming delinquent are still not very clear. The objective of this study is to find out if adolescent delinquency is related to inadequate parental bonding and to further find out if the sociodemographic background of an adolescent (i.e., family size, family income, home intactness, the adolescent’s living arrangements, gender, age, marital relationship and occupation of parents) has an impact on adolescent delinquency.
Statistics have shown a rise in juvenile delinquency by almost 50 per cent in the past decade in Singapore. The juvenile delinquency rate rose from 367 to 538 per 100,000 between 1986 and 1996. Most of the juveniles arrested in 1996 were arrested for petty crimes, such as theft, with about 38 per cent arrested for shoplifting and 18 per cent for simple theft. More serious crimes, such as rioting, robbery and extortion accounted for
15 per cent. As adolescents are the future leaders of tomorrow, we are highly concerned with the rising adolescent conduct problems and crime rates in Singapore and hope that with a greater understanding of this subject, we will be able to highlight the importance of parental care and concern in the development of children.
Many studies have been done on the possible effects of parental bonding on adolescent