The Invisible Woman. Joanne Belknap
or whether there are periods of antisocial behaviors, usually limited to adolescence (“adolescence limited”) (Moffitt, 1993). The life course approach, then, examines “pathways through the age-differentiated life span,” acknowledging different life stages, turning points, and transitions in individuals’ lives (Elder, 1985). Therefore, this LCT research is longitudinal in nature (collecting data about individuals’ lives over time). (Remember to refer to Table 3.2 for a summary and comparison of CVT, LCT, and PT). LCT, then, is a developmental perspective, focusing on individuals’ behavioral changes from birth until death, the “social development over the full life course; specifically, developmental processes from childhood and adolescence through adulthood” (Laub & Lauritsen, 1993, p. 236).
Over the course of most individuals’ lives, the formal and informal social controls vary, particularly the informal controls such as the family, school, and work, and these changes are largely age specific (Laub & Lauritsen, 1993). That is, most children do not have jobs, so we cannot examine that control for them, but their schools and parents typically have less control over them as they age, while they are usually increasingly influenced by their peers. In their work with the LCT model, Sampson and Laub (1990) identify two hypotheses: (1) Childhood antisocial behaviors predict problems in adult development, and (2) social bonds to work and family in adulthood explain changes in crime and development over the life span. They also identify two central concepts to the LCT: trajectories and transitions. Trajectories have to do with life’s “pathways” or development lines over the life span, including a person’s work life, marriage, parenthood, self-esteem, and criminal behavior. Transitions, on the other hand, are “specific life events that are embedded in trajectories and evolve over shorter time spans (e.g., first job or first marriage)” (p. 610). Sampson and Laub view one’s social bonds in adulthood as potentially modifying events on the trajectory to criminal behavior. That is, stable and supportive social bonds (through attachment to a spouse, job stability, and commitment to occupational goals) in adulthood may ameliorate childhood experiences that might otherwise set one on the path to crime.
The Focus on Boys and Young Men
LCT research conducted on boys and men has generally found considerable support. Although LCT would seem ideal to study offending and resiliency to offending in everyone’s lives, including the potential to better understand how this is gendered, traditionally, LCT research focused on boys (including as they became men) (De Li, 1999; Laub, Nagin, & Sampson, 1998; Loeber, 1996; Moffitt, 1990, 1993; Nagin, Farrington, & Moffitt, 1995; A. R. Piquero, Brame, Mazerolle, & Haapanen, 2002; A. R. Piquero, MacDonald, & Parker, 2002; Sampson & Laub, 1990, 1993; Shover & Thompson, 1992; Stattin & Magnusson, 1991; Tremblay et al., 1992). Moreover, like GST, LCT tests rarely include maltreatment and other trauma variables, which are seemingly obvious strains (GST) and life events (LCT) (e.g., A. R. Piquero & Mazerolle, 2000). In some sense, this is “excusable” given that the researchers are dealing with existing longitudinal data sets that began data collection in times when there was significantly less interest in females and gender and when the prevalence of child abuse, especially the sexual abuse of boys, was unknown. On the other hand, it is somewhat remarkable how infrequently these LCT (and GST) studies ignored or glossed over both leaving girls out and/or not accounting for childhood abuse and other traumas.
One of the rare earlier LCT studies that included girls (and boys) barely mentioned or reported on gender, and although it collected detailed information on sexual activity, it failed to account for whether it was consensual (Olds, Henderson, Cole, & Eckenrode, 1998). Similarly, a 2000 edited book, Life-Course Criminology: Contemporary and Classic Readings (A. R. Piquero & Mazerolle, 2000), includes many of the studies reviewed in this section. Unfortunately, throughout the entire book, gender, abuse, and trauma—seemingly important distinctions in early development, life experiences, and subsequent offending—are rarely mentioned. Farrington (1992) drew on three large longitudinal British data sets, at least one of which included girls (as well as boys). Unfortunately, Farrington barely addressed any findings about gender or girls/women. Another LCT study provided no empirical data but stressed the need for comparative studies across countries or even allowing for various structural locations within a country (including the United States) as important “next steps” for LCT (Laub & Lauritsen, 1993). Unfortunately, the authors do not mention gender and appear to be interested in race and class only as “structural location” variables.
Another seeming attempt to include gender in LCT is Loeber and Hay’s (1997) lengthy article promising information on gender differences, titled “Key Issues in the Development of Aggression and Violence From Childhood to Early Adulthood.” Remarkably, this article scarcely touches on social learning or the many ways that boys’ aggression is tolerated or even encouraged whereas girls’ aggression is punished. Nor do the authors address the gendered nature of childhood abuses and, therefore, how this influences development. Instead, we learn that “some degree of aggression is age-normative, at least in boys” (p. 373), and “it seems probable that girls during the preschool period outgrow aggression more speedily than boys” (p. 388). There is no indication why this is probable, and other studies suggest that girls do not “outgrow” aggression so much as their aggression is disproportionately punished compared with boys, and this is most profound for Black and Brown girls (Annamma et al., 2019; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010; Evans-Winters et al., 2018; J. Flores, 2016; Gion, McIntosh, & Smolkowski, 2018; Lopez, 2017; M. W. Morris, 2015; Shange, 2019). Finally, Loeber and Hay (1997) are comfortable identifying “gender differences” and “prediction” as the only key words for the article when their tables and figures are composed solely from data on boys. Therefore, although LCT may and now has been meaningfully applied to girls and women, this did not occur regularly until more recently, and there is still significant room for improvement.
Expanding LCT to Girls and Women, Gender Comparisons, and Intimate Relationship Effects
An exception to LCT researchers’ failing to adequately account for gender is A. A. Fagan’s (2003) LTC study that examined the short- and long-term effects of self-reported physical (nonsexual) violence perpetrated by family and nonfamily on youths’ subsequent offending. Both family-perpetrated, and particularly nonfamily-perpetrated, nonsexual violent victimizations increased the likelihood of these youths’ immediate and lasting offending behaviors. Moreover, those youths reporting both family- and nonfamily-perpetrated violent victimization were the most frequent offenders. The only gender difference was that boys reported more of both family and nonfamily (nonsexual) violent victimizations. M. C. Johnson and Menard’s (2012) LCT test focused on those who abstain from delinquent involvement and found the biggest predictor was gender: 11% of females and 2% of males were abstainers. Martino, Ellickson, Klein, & McCaffrey’s (2008) LCT study of physical aggression found that while “girls are more likely than boys to follow a trajectory of consistently low or no physically aggressive behavior,” boys (19%) and girls (15%) were similar in their rates of being in the persistently high aggression trajectory (p. 71). Importantly, the same individual, family, peer, and school factors predict both girls’ and boys’ aggression (p. 71). Unfortunately, this study did not include any abuse or trauma variables as strains.
As an age and developmental theory, LCT stresses the significance of the highest offending levels likely to be in adolescence and possibly into an individual’s 20s. But research on offending, including recidivism and desistance, increasingly suggests that girls/women start or “peak” in their offending later than boys/men (C. R. Block, Blokland, van der Werff, van Os, & Nieuwbeerta, 2010; S. S. Simpson, Yahner, & Dugan, 2008; Widom et al., 2018), and that the later onset for many women offenders is related to abusive and/or criminal male partners (e.g., Bailey, 2013; DeHart, Lynch, Belknap, Dass-Brailsford, & Green, 2014; Erez & Berko, 2010; Garcia-Hallett, 2019; Sampson, 2008) something that is never found for men.
The marriage effect has long been touted (and used in presentencing investigation reports, impacting sentencing outcomes) as a significant desistance factor for offending. In addition to marital status being an extralegal variable or perhaps cultural variable (addressed in Chapter 6), the marriage effect was historically tested solely