非行靑少年의 父母喪失에 關한 考察

PARENTAL LOSS IN JUVENILE DELINQUENTS

In recent years, juvenile delinquency represents one of the most serious social problems in this country. The pressing need to study the prevention as well as the nature and cause of delinquent behavior has yielded some studies on the family dynamics and some theoretical review, but scanty systematic works on parental loss. In the present study, the author attempted to study their parental loss by death and seperation, other serious parental problems and the parental surrogate after loss. For the above purpose, the author distributed questionaires to 380 male delinquents in a “T ” juvenile reformatory near Taegu area during September, 1977. As control groups, he selected at random the same number of psychiatric patients and students respectively matched by age and sex. The results could be summarized as follows； The mean age of delinquents was 17.5 years, 18 being the most common. The educational level and the economic status of the delinquent group was much lower than those of the control groups. The incidence of the parental loss by death and separation, and other serious parental problems was prominently higher (65%) in delinquents； being twice as high as the patient group and five times that of the student group. Among parental loss and other parental problems, paternal defect was more frequent than maternal defect. Considering the over-lapping of parental loss and other problems seen in the same delinquents in about (25%) of the group, the seriousness of parental problems seems to be quite impressive. As to the rate of early parental loss by death, only 12% of all delinquents lost one or both parents before reaching the age of 5. However, the rate of maternal loss in this period was relatively higher in this group, compared with that of control groups. In an analysis of after care by parental surrogates in the parental loss group, the study group tended to be reared by non-blood relatives, while in both control groups they were rather closely cared for by immediate relatives. Lastly, there was no significant difference in the types of delinquent behavior between delinquents from broken homes and non-broken homes.