Parents, Siblings, and Peers: Close Social Relationships and Adolescent Deviance

In this study, the relations between parents, older siblings, peers, adolescents’individual characteristics, and adolescents’deviant attitudes and behaviors were examined simultaneously, using a social learning perspective and data of 121 families from inner-city Philadelphia. Results of structural equation models showed that older deviant siblings had the strongest effect on adolescent deviance. Deviant peers also played a significant role. The effects for parents varied for deviant attitudes and behaviors. Positive family relationships, parental support, and discipline consistency were associated negatively with adolescents’ approval of deviance, but only parental discipline consistency and adult supervision of adolescents were related negatively to adolescents’deviant behaviors. Coefficient estimates did not differ by ethnicity/race, family structure, or the quality of the sibling relationship. However, adolescents who identified with their older sibling, were of the same gender, or had a deviant older brother tended to be affected most negatively by the deviant sibling.