Feminist Scholarship, Relational and Instrumental Control, and a Power-Control Theory of Gender and Delinquency

• Published in: The British journal of sociology Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 301 - 336
• Main Authors: Hagan, John, Simpson, John, Gillis, A. R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Routledge Journals for the London School of Economics and Political Science 01-09-1988; Blackwell; Routledge and Kegan Paul
• Subjects: Criminal Psychology; Criminal sociology. Police. Delinquency. Deviance. Suicide; Daughters; Family Power; Fathers; Female; Feminism; Gender roles; Gender studies; Humans; Instrumental control; Juvenile Delinquency; Male; Modeling; Mother-Child Relations; Mothers; Parent Child Relations; Power (Psychology); Risk preferences; Risk-Taking; Sex Differences; Sex Factors; Social Control, Informal; Sociology; Sociology of law and criminology; Sons; Women - psychology
• ISSN: 0007-1315; 1468-4446
• DOI: 10.2307/590481

This paper incorporates an emphasis placed on relational processes in contemporary feminist scholarship, and in so doing extends the development of a power-control theory of gender and delinquency. Feminist scholarship emphasizes that relational processes - involving shared intimacy, mutual understanding, caring and other kinds of interpersonal affect - are more characteristic of women than men. However, there is debate among feminist scholars, such as Gilligan and MacKinnon, as to the sources of this difference. An elaboration and test of power-control theory suggests that mothers in patriarchal families are assigned roles in controlling daughters, relationally and consequently instrumentally, more than sons, and that this leads daughters to prefer risk taking less than do sons. Therefore daughters in such families engage in less delinquency than do sons. In other words, these data indicate that there is a sexual stratification in the social control of adolescents that is connected to patriarchal family structure, and that this is important to the explanation of gender differences in delinquency. The analysis indicates that these gender differences are social structural in origin rather than biologically inherent.