The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
(e.g., more frequent private access to one’s partner), and the perception of rewards from committing the abuse (e.g., more control over a partner and satisfaction from committing the abuse) all increased the likelihood of committing this abuse (Sellers, 1999). Using a large national longitudinal data set, Shoenberger and Rocheleau (2017) found that although parents discipline daughters and sons differently, contrary to GTC, “the consequences of parental discipline on the development of self-control also varies for boys and girls” (p. 283). The only parenting variables that were gendered in their relationship to self-control were spanking and discipline for grades. They impacted sons’ more than daughters’ self-control and in the opposite direction provided by GTC: Both spanking and disciplining for grades decreased boys’ self-control. Muftić and Updegrove’s (2018) large international self-report delinquency study found, as expected, parenting directly impacts both property and violent offending, “and that while self-control weakens this relationship, it does not fully mediate it”; no gender differences were found, however (p. 3058). Similarly, a 2017 Puerto Rican study on status offenses found support for GTC (and SCT) with low attachments to parents, schools, peers, and church increasing the likelihood of status crimes, but that self-control variables partially mediated this relationship (Alvarez-Rivera, Price, & Ticknor, 2017).
Power-Control Theory (PCT): Gendered Practices of Parents and Parenting
Hagan and colleagues (Hagan, Gillis, & Simpson, 1985; Hagan, Simpson, & Gillis, 1987) built on SCT with the development of power-control theory (PCT), one of the first theories to explicitly include gender. PCT joins class theory with research on gender and family relationships, focusing on power relations in two loci: the home and workplace. PCT posits that gender power positions in the workplace impact gender power relations in the home, such that the control of youths is gender-determined, and then, so is delinquency (Hagan et al., 1987, p. 183). Thus, PCT asserts that the gender power makeup in the parents’ relationship influences their children’s delinquent behavior in gendered ways: In homes where there is less sexism in the parents’ roles (usually meaning the mother works outside the home), there should be fewer gender differences between sons’ and daughters’ delinquent behaviors. An assumption of this theory is that daughters from egalitarian homes are socialized, like their brothers, to engage in risk-taking behaviors, and because risk-taking behavior is associated with delinquency, girls from the more egalitarian homes will be more delinquent than their “sisters” from traditional, patriarchal homes. Consistent with PCT, Hagan and colleagues (1987) found a greater gender difference in delinquency rates in patriarchal homes, where the mother has a lower status than the father, than in egalitarian homes, where parents have equivalent status, or where the mother is the only parent. Hagan (1989) later categorized parental controls into relational (the quality of the parent–child bond) and instrumental (parents’ degree of surveillance and supervision).
Bottcher (2001) criticizes PCT for “the unsubstantiated assumption that parental power structures and control practices are key sites for the reproduction of gender as it relates to delinquency” (p. 896). Another clear limitation of PCT is the considerable number of families that are headed by a single parent or where the mother’s employment status is higher than the father’s or the father is unemployed (Uggen, 2000). Finally, PCT has been criticized for being tested largely on overall delinquency or crime rates, without addressing specific crimes where it may be more or less likely to be confirmed (Hirtenlehner, Blackwell, Leitgoeb, & Bacher, 2014), and for often leaving out such important structural factors as race (e.g., De Coster, 2012; D. Eitle, Niedrist, & Eitle, 2014; T. M. Eitle & Eitle, 2015) and class (De Coster, 2012; Gault-Sherman, 2013; Hirtenlehner et al., 2014). Leaving out race denies the significance of racial profiling and other forms of criminal legal system racism, and leaving out class denies the very real advantages of hiring lawyers, paying bail, and so on. Given the high correlation between race and class, including a class measure might be most important in property and sex work PCT applications, where people are sometimes engaging in these activities for survival.
Scholars’ assessments of PCT studies overall report less than resounding support, calling them “inconsistent” (Kruttschnitt, 1996), “modest” (Bottcher, 2001), “mixed” (T. M. Eitle & Eitle, 2015; Hirtenlehner et al., 2014), and “undecided” (Schulze & Bryan, 2017). Hirtenlehner and colleagues (2014) note that PCT research has found “has found more support generated for the ‘control’ than for the ‘power’” variables; whether a family is patriarchal or egalitarian “has found less support across tests of PCT” (p. 44). However, PCT has been confirmed in some research (e.g., Blackwell & Reed, 2003; D. Eitle et al., 2014; T. M. Eitle & Eitle, 2015; Hagan, Boehnke, & Merkens, 2004; McCarthy, Hagan, & Woodward, 1999; Wang, 2019), but one of these studies found that while girls from more egalitarian homes were more delinquent than girls from more patriarchal homes (as hypothesized), boys from more egalitarian homes were less delinquent than boys from more patriarchal homes (McCarthy et al., 1999). Another study found that while higher parental controls led to lower criminal aspirations for girls and boys, there was no significant gender difference in the effect of parental controls within either the less or more patriarchal families (Blackwell & Piquero, 2005, p. 13). Blackwell (2000) incorporated perceived threats of the informal sanctions of shame and embarrassment into the PCT model and found, as expected, that gender differences in the perceived threat of legal sanctions were greater for those raised in more patriarchal homes, with girls perceiving a higher threat from legal sanctions than boys did. Another study reported that PCT variables (e.g., mothers’ monitoring of youths) do not help explain gender differences in youths’ self-reported victimizations, but these variables do help explain gender differences in youths’ self-reported delinquency in the more patriarchal households, but the power-control variables mediate the relationship between gender and delinquency in the less patriarchal households (Blackwell, Sellers, & Schlaupitz, 2002).
Blackwell (2003) tested both SBT and PCT, finding (1) only in more patriarchal households do girls report higher levels of maternal control than boys, and in these homes, white youths reported lower levels of maternal control than did young people of Color; (2) there were no gender differences in either maternal or paternal controls in the less patriarchal homes; (3) there were no gender differences in youths reporting being emotionally attached to their parents; (4) regardless of the type of home (more or less patriarchal), girls were no more committed than boys to conventional norms; and (5) in more patriarchal homes, girls were more involved than boys in conventional activities (but there was no such gender difference in less patriarchal homes).
Another study found, however, that although both maternal and paternal support were effective in reducing delinquency, girls were more affected by maternal support and boys were more affected by paternal support (G. D. Hill & Atkinson, 1988). Similarly, one study found that youths’ conflicts with their fathers, although related to both girls’ and boys’ delinquency, had a greater impact on the boys’ delinquency, whereas youths’ conflicts with their mothers caused more delinquency only among girls (Liu, 2004). A related study reported that girls’ delinquency was more influenced than boys’ by family risk factors (e.g., marital discord, marital instability, and discipline), but the gender stereotypes did not always fit (Dornfeld & Kruttschnitt, 1992). A study with a more detailed measure of parents’ power structure did not find that parents’ relative equality affected the daughters’ or sons’ delinquency rates; rather, these rates were related to the family’s social class and the negative sanctions from the father (Morash & Chesney-Lind, 1991). Another replication found no class-gender variations, yet gender differences were related to race, with fewer gender differences among African American than white youths. The explanation offered for this difference was that “white families may be more ‘patriarchal’ than black families” (G. F. Jensen & Thompson, 1990, p. 1016). However, a more recent test of PCT using only youths from single-mother households found sons commit more delinquency than daughters in both white and Black families, even after controlling for maternal monitoring of the youths (Mack & Leiber, 2005). A large PCT study found parental bond consistently serves to temper the gender gap in crimes and across different classes of young people (Gault-Sherman, 2013).
A study that did not set out to test Hagan’s PCT reported findings that are consistent in a general way with this theory. Bottcher’s