Abstract
How do outcomes of boys who had experienced family disruption before age 12 compare with those from intact families? This paper is based on a sample of 21,314 Swiss male recruits who completed a cross-sectional survey at age 20. As in the Cambridge study, disrupted families predicted offending. However, intact high conflict families predicted the same prevalence of offending as disrupted families. Boys not living with their mother, especially when they had lived in institutions before age 12 were most likely to become persistent offenders. Therefore the dichotomy of disrupted versus intact family hides many important subgroups, including those living with their mother (low risk) and those who had experienced institutional rearing (high risk).
Haas, Henriette