The purpose of this study is to test an ecological model hypothesizing that family context influences family functioning, which in turn influences adolescent delinquency. Results from 286 middle school students living in Chonju city and their parents showed that the family\'s ecological context influences adolescent delinquency directly and indirectly.
The lack of social support, family\'s life distress and bad couple relationship were related family dysfunction, especially parent-child attachment and parental control. And the family\'s life distress, social support and disadvantaged neighborhood environment has significant effects on delinquency directly. Among family functioning factors, only the parent-child involvement was associated with delinquency. The parent-child attachment and parental control seemed to have indirect effects on delinquency in this study.
The results of this study shows that family therapy focused solely on the processes within families will generally be inadequate to address the complex problems that delinquency presents. These findings suggest the necessity for comprehensive assessment and allows to better target our therapy. However, somewhat different findings from previous ones propose the need for continued research to validate empirically the precise links among family context, family functioning, and delinquency.