Hirschi's General Theory of Social Control

Overview

Research study and analysis of literature shows that parent's control is directly related to the child's ability to control himself especially in relation to criminal activities. Hisrchi's general theory is also based on similar findings and data and proposes that ineffective parental control can result in self control issues or low self control which can result in juvenile delinquency and involvement in adult crimes. This theory was found to be of great importance in relation to the field of criminology and is a subject of debate among the scholars for many years. Many authors and scholars were involved in agreeing and disagreeing with the claim but consistent research and empirical studies proved that the theory was correct and had important implication in adolescent criminology. Hirschi was considered as one of the leaders and expert in relation to the field of criminology and has been cited and referred to by many popular scholars time and again. Many theories were proposed that are long forgotten but this theory is still considered to be of great importance for many authors and criminologists. Hirschi's theory of self control was accepted by many scholars as it was not an accident but based on analysis of real life incident and facts that form the very basis of this theory. The main reason behind this theory was increasing number of crimes in United States in the year 1960. The main reason behind Hirschi's studying this area and proposing the theory was his personal experience of the country during 1960. He was brought up in rural area of Utah and moved to San Francisco for pursuing his education. He found the city to be out of control in terms of increased crimes and generation gap between the baby boomers (people born after the end of world war 2 and was entering teens and early adulthood) and the older generation (people known as the generation of world war 2) who were entering their 30s, 40s and 50s. Suddenly these two generations became prominent at that time which owed to differences in the attitude, opinions and ways of looking at world. The older generation looked at the baby boomers as out of control and lacking permissiveness. On the other hand the baby boomers craved for independence and freedom. This was the background in which Hirschi was forced and motivated to come up with this theory (Hirschi, 1969).

Many researchers disagreed with this proposition, and suggested that parental control has little effect on how children behave in their adolescence but repetitive research resulted in similar results that proved that how children behave is directly controlled by their parent's monitoring and control at that stage. This theory was limited in a sense that it suggested parental control as the major cause and reason behind low self control on the part of adolescent. Some researchers also suggest that a genetic disorder, attention deficit hypersensitivity disorder (ADHD) may also be related to low self control (Unnever ...