U.S. study on delinquency in girls

http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/...ency-in-girls/

Robert Franklin

U.S. study on delinquency in girls
2009-01-17 at 6:57 pm

Here's an odd little study courtesy of the U.S. Department of Justice. It
purports to study what environmental factors tend to promote delinquency in
girls and which tend to protect against it.

Now, it is no longer subject to debate that the presence of an involved
father in the life of a girl provides a myriad of benefits including reduced
delinquency and delayed sexual activity. So you might be surprised to learn
that that fact is nowhere mentioned or referred to in this study. Or you
might not be surprised, depending on how much experience you've had with the
dogged marginalization of fathers in American society.

The study does, however, find that the presence of a "caring adult" has some
beneficial effects, but the relationship of that adult to the girl is barely
mentioned. Father? Mother? Teacher? Neighbor? We can only guess. But
the study suggests that the greater the likelihood of such and adult in a
girl's life, the less likely she'll engage in delinquent behavior. So it's
possible to conclude, if you work at it, that these researchers would admit
that having an involved father around is a good thing in a girl's life.

The study also finds that making good grades in school has a "protective"
effect, i.e. it tends to protect the girl from delinquency. Of course
that's probably a classic case of confusing cause with effect. But more
important, the authors seem blissfully unaware that the presence of an
involved father in a child's life tends to improve the child's school
performance. So could it be that the school success that the authors like
so much was really caused by greater father involvement? We don't know and
this study isn't about to tell.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/220124.pdf

The above link will take you to the study. Be aware though, that it's in
PDF format and is over 11MB in size...