Explaining the relationship between parental depressive symptoms and adolescent delinquent behavior: examining the mediating role of parental monitoring and testing differences between genders

Abstract

Introduction. Prior studies show a relationship between parental depressive symptoms and adolescent delinquent behavior. Depressive symptoms might decrease parental monitoring, and this could provide more opportunities for the adolescent to perform delinquent behavior. This current study focused on the role of parental depressive symptoms in predicting adolescent delinquent behavior, while taking parental monitoring and gender into account. Methods. This study was part of the longitudinal TRAILS study. The sample consisted of Dutch adolescents and their parents. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to analyze whether parental depressive symptoms influenced adolescent delinquent behavior, when taking parental monitoring and gender into account. Results. No significant relationship between parental depressive symptoms and adolescent delinquent behavior was found. There was a significant relationship with parental monitoring. Indicating that more depressive symptoms decreased parental monitoring and less monitoring increased adolescent delinquent behavior. Additionally, boys reported more delinquent behavior, compared to girls. Conclusions. These findings demonstrated the importance of the influence of parental monitoring on adolescent delinquent behavior, especially when parents suffer from depressive symptoms. The results demonstrated that boys reported more delinquent behavior. The results stressed the importance to further investigate the gender differences, concerning parental monitoring.