Serious delinquency among adolescents: Openness, social capital, and Durkheim's types of suicide

After extended participant observation with a group of delinquent boys, I came to speculate that the social closure of their peer group contributed to their delinquency. An ethnographic chapter frames the boys as existing in a state of altruism---they are tightly embedded in a single peer group that makes powerful normative demands. I hypothesized that if the boys had a more open social network, they would be less delinquent. Teens who are a social bridge across peer groups should be more free from manifest and latent peer demands. Bearman (1991) cites adolescents as an example of anomie based on the normative dissonance associated with few group memberships---teens are caught between competing moral worlds: adults and peers. I propose this form of anomie is most intense when a teen is a member of a single peer group; the altruistic peer group gives way to anomie when parents are added to the picture. Whether from altruism (normative conformity) or anomie (normative dissonance), delinquency should be high among teens who are members of a single peer group. I propose anomie can be resolved by increasing the number of peer groups to which a teen is tied. With freedom from the adolescent society, teens turn to their parents for moral guidance. Thus adolescents who are a social bridge should be less delinquent because they are more influenced by their parents. I tested these hypotheses in two statistical analyses using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The first found that African American boys who were a social bridge were less delinquent than members of a single group. Interaction terms revealed that bridges were less delinquent because of the increased effect of parental attachment. The second models counted the number of peer groups to which a teen is tied. Among white adolescents, the effect was curvilinear. Low delinquency was associated with ties to two or three groups, while more delinquency was found among teens tied to fewer or more groups. Again statistical interaction terms attributed the lower delinquency to an increased effect of parental attachment. Among black teens the effect was essentially linear with the lowest delinquency occurring among teens who were tied to four or more groups. Here, low delinquency could not be attributed to increased parental influence. I consider the network position of social bridge a form of social capital insofar as the benefits come purely from social structure; they occur independently of the composition of a network. Having an open peer network is social capital that activates parental investment.