General strain theory and parenting: Do parental support and parental control influence the way we cope with strain?

Abstract

This study examined the conditioning effect of parenting on the relation between strain and criminal coping among twelve to fifteen-year-old youth in the Netherlands. Existing studies on the conditioning effect of parenting on the relation between strain and criminal coping are still scarce, and a clear distinction between different types of criminal coping has not been made. Therefore, this study focused on parental support and parental control as influencers on predicting internal, external, and overall criminal coping as a result of strain. This study predicted that parental support and parental control would have positive moderating effects, and that these effects would be stronger for internal criminal coping than for external criminal coping. A binary logistic regression analysis was used to test these predictions. The results show no conditioning effects of parental support and parental control on the positive relation between strain and internal, external, and overall criminal coping.