The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
a few SBT studies find no gender differences in the impact of social bonds deterring offending (Figueira-McDonough, Barton, & Sarri, 1981; Ford, 2009; Loukas, Ripperger-Suhler, & Horton, 2009), far more studies report gendered SBT relationships, likely because they conducted higher-level statistical modeling. Starting with the 1970s, one study found that although attachment to conventional people greatly decreased the gender differences in reported delinquency rates, these social ties did not completely eliminate or explain boys’ higher offending rates (G. J. Jensen & Eve, 1976). Another 1970s study found that although conventional ties predicted both girls’ and boys’ offending, this relationship was stronger for boys (Hindelang, 1973).
SBT studies published in the 1980s found heroin addiction weakened women’s ties to conventional people and jobs and propelled them into lives made up of criminal people and activities (Rosenbaum 1981); a dysfunctional family of origin places girls at increased risk of proceeding from youthful status offending to adult criminal offending (Rosenbaum 1989); and some parental behaviors impact daughters’ more than sons’ delinquency likelihood, and other parental behaviors predict sons’ more than daughters’ delinquency (Cernkovich & Giordano, 1987). Turning to 1990s SBT research, Bottcher’s (1995) substantial study of the siblings of incarcerated boys reported that social structure of gender is a major form of social control, specifically through activities and definitions of the youths. Bottcher (1995) and others found boys likely have more delinquent peers than girls due to their greater freedom to associate with delinquent peers; this result was confirmed by two studies in the 2000s (Church, Wharton, & Taylor, 2009; Rankin & Quane, 2002). Other 1990s studies found girls’ lower offending levels (relative to boys’ levels) were not due to weaker parental controls and supervision (Heimer & De Coster, 1999) and that the number of sisters youths have exerts no impact on their delinquency rate, whereas having more brothers increases boys’ and decreases girls’ likelihood of becoming delinquent (Lauritsen, 1993). Torstensson (1990) only included girls in her study and found social bonds to school had a significant but small role in deterring their delinquency.
As for SBT studies published since 2000, a longitudinal study of youths found that while stressful events increased both girls’ and boys’ depression as well as their offending, girls were more likely than boys to respond to stressful events by being upset or distressed, and boys were more likely than girls to respond by breaking the law (De Coster & Heimer, 2001). A study of Asian American youth subgroups’ drug and alcohol use found some support for social control variables but showed that peer influence was a better predictor (Nagasawa, Qian, & Wong, 2000). After controlling for age, social control, and peer influence variables, there were no gender differences regarding drug and alcohol use among Japanese-, Chinese-, Korean-, Asian-, Indian-, and Pacific Islander American youths. However, even after controlling for these variables, among Filipino Americans, girls were more likely than boys to use drugs and alcohol, and among Southeast Asian Americans, boys were more likely than girls to use drugs and alcohol (Nagasawa et al., 2000). A longitudinal study of youths found boys were more violent than girls even after controlling for social control and bonding variables (Huang, Kosterman, Catalano, Hawkins, & Abbott, 2001).
One study of young people found that while both positive attachment bonds (e.g., to family and friends) and involvement bonds (e.g., studying, clubs, chores, etc.) resulted in less delinquency for both girls and boys, attachment bonds had a greater impact on girls (than boys) and involvement bonds had a greater impact on boys (than girls) (Huebner & Betts, 2002). Another study found that parental attachment was only related to deterring boys’, not girls’, serious delinquency, and activity involvement beyond sports was a protective factor against serious delinquency for boys but not girls (J. A. Booth, Farrell, & Varano, 2008). This same study found that sports involvement alone decreased girls’ serious delinquency but not boys’ (J. A. Booth et al., 2008). Chapple, McQuillan, and Berdahl’s (2005) study found that while girls as a group tend to have higher social bonds than boys, these bonds do not impact in a gendered manner for self-reported delinquency or theft; however, peer attachment was related to boys’, but not girls’, violent offending. Payne’s (2009) study assessed various bonds across the crimes “delinquency” and “drug use,” finding no gender differences in bonding variables’ impacts on drug use or delinquency, except that commitment and belief bonds had a stronger protective effect for boys than girls on delinquency. This finding may be because there are fewer gender differences in drug use than in delinquency overall (Payne, 2009). An SBT study solely on girls found family bonding had no protective impact on their offending (Cernkovich et al., 2008).
Barnes, Hoffman, Welte, Farrell, and Dintcheff (2007) found that time spent with one’s family increased the likelihood that both girls and boys would obey the laws (thus no gender differences), yet time spent with peers resulted in greater delinquency for boys but not girls. A study on in-school delinquency and attachments found support for SBT with a few gender differences (Hart & Mueller, 2013). Two bonds, “beliefs in commonly held social norms” and “commitment to sports activities” impacted only boys’ school delinquency, but the “commitment to sports activities” was in the opposite direction than hypothesized: It increased boys’ school delinquency (Hart & Mueller, 2013). Most SBT studies are on youths, but one on adult probationers found social bonds and drug use facilitated women’s criminal behavior, whereas social bonds inhibited men’s criminal behavior (and drugs moderated it) (De Li & MacKenzie, 2003).
A General Theory of Crime (GTC): Self-Control
SCT was advanced by Gottfredson and Hirschi in A General Theory of Crime (1990). A general theory of crime (GTC) attempts to “bridge” classical and positivist traditions, where “low self-control is an individual-level attribute that causes crime at all ages, when combined with appropriate opportunities and attractive targets” (C. Taylor, 2001, p. 373). Moving the emphasis from social control to self-control, GTC purports that self-control interacts with criminal opportunity to explain criminal and delinquent behavior: Individuals with low self-control and access to opportunities to commit offenses are more prone to offend. GTC suggests that gender, race, age, and class differences in delinquency are due to how these characteristics are related to social control and self-control. GTC has been criticized, however, for (1) ignoring gender (Bottcher, 2001; S. L. Miller & Burack, 1993); (2) dismissing and misrepresenting gender-based abuse (Flavin, 2001; S. L. Miller & Burack, 1993); (3) ignoring feminist research on gender divisions within families (Flavin, 2001; S. L. Miller & Burack, 1993); (4) ignoring the role of power in crime (i.e., crime is the logical result when it is an available and desirable resource when resources are limited) (Bottcher, 2001); and (5) not clearly stipulating what constitutes both social and self-control and how they might relate and interact (“rather than setting them up as contradictory concepts”) (C. Taylor, 2001, p. 383).
K. J. Cook (2016, p. 338) notes that Gottfredson and Hirschi locate “ineffective child-rearing” as the main predictor of youths’ low self-control, implicating parents’ failures in monitoring, punishing, and being aware of their children’s problem behaviors. As feminists might expect, the poor parents are usually the mothers and single parents (who are also more likely to be mothers than fathers). “Like Sutherland and Cressy, and Cohen, again, they miss (or ignore) another important opportunity to advance our understanding of gender and crime” (K. J. Cook, 2016, p. 339).
Gender studies testing GTC, as expected, tend to find that that girls exhibit greater self-control than boys, and even after controlling for self-control and access to delinquent opportunities, boys are still more delinquent/criminal than girls are (De Li, 2004; LaGrange & Silverman, 1999; Nakhaie, Silverman, & LaGrange, 2000). Indeed, self-control was a better predictor of delinquency than social control, but the interaction of social control and self-control was the best predictor (De Li, 2004; Nakhaie et al., 2000). One study found self-control was related to girls’ major but not their minor delinquency, and it was unrelated to boys’ delinquency (Mason & Windle, 2002). Another study of adults found that while self-control was related to gender, and self-control was related to offending for both women and men, gender became nonsignificant in predicting offending when behaviorally based measures of self-control were in the model (Tittle, Ward, & Grasmick, 2003).
A study designed