Parental socialization and adolescent offending

The overarching aim of this thesis is to extend the existing knowledge on how different aspects of parenting are associated with adolescent problem-related behaviors, such as offending. This relationship is illustrated in the four studies included in this thesis and has been conducted each with its own specific objective. The first study examine gender differences in several dimensions of family-related variables in the explanation of adolescent offending. The findings in the study show that there are clear gendered differences in both levels of the family variables and in the associations between the different family var-iables and offending. The results in this study are not only indicative of real and important differences in the dynamics in patterns of family attachment among boys and girls, they also point to the importance of conducting more nuanced and detailed studies of the different elements of family attach-ments in order to be able to capture the gendered differences that exist. The second study employ a longitudinal design and explore both time-variant and long-term associations of parenting, deviant peer affiliations and substance use among a sample of adolescents aged 12-17, and their par-ents. The main findings in this study show that parents knowing where their children are, what they are doing, and whom they are with, is beneficial in providing protection against involvement with deviant peers, which in turn appear to be important to the development of substance use. These results apply to both time-variant and long-term associations. The results also indi-cate that adolescents vary in susceptibility to social influences by age, and that parenting in early adolescence shape the landscape for involvement with deviant peers and substance use in later adolescence. In addition to more common between-group comparisons, analyses of with-in-person changes was also conducted in the third paper, with the aim to study different aspects of parental monitoring and young people’s moral values in the ...