Journal
JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY
Volume 68, Issue 3, Pages 625-637Publisher
BLACKWELL PUBLISHERS
DOI: 10.1111/1467-6494.00110
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Lykken's proposal that people should be required to apply for a license before they can become parents is based on his belief that the increase in crime over the past 40 years is due largely to the increase in the number of children reared in fatherless homes. I argue that the absence of a father is a correlate of criminal behavior in the offspring but not its cause. Other correlations that are usually interpreted as the effects of good or bad child-rearing practices are similarly ambiguous and subject to other explanations. I conclude that the increase in crime over the past 40 years cannot be blamed on the absence of fathers or inept child rearing, and offer two alternative hypotheses.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available