The Effects of Surrogate Caregivers on The Relationship Between Fatherless/Fatherloss African American Male Youths and Their Level of Delinquent Behavior

This study hypothesized that fathers and surrogates (male role models) contribute a unique set of factors that help guide African American male youths (N=496) during their normal developmental stages. This study hypothesized that surrogate caregivers would have an impact on the overall level of delinquent behavior of this population. A path analysis tested direct and mediated effects of exposure to violence on delinquent behavior, with anger/aggression level as a potential mediator for all three levels of caregiver presence or absence as a moderator. In the analysis of archival data from 496 African American male youths, the findings did not support these hypotheses consistently. Exposure to family violence as a mediator consistently predicted level of anger, and level of anger negatively predicted delinquent behavior for the fatherless sample. However, exposure did not have a direct positive effect on delinquent behavior in any of the three samples. Implications of these findings as well as other unpredicted findings with these three groups are explored.

Author dc:creator

• Carter-Haith, James A., Jr.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Duffy, Michael

• Surrogate Caregiver
• Fatherless
• fatherloss
• delinquent youth
• African American Male
• family violence
• MAYSI-2

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2008-12-151

OAI record oai:identifier

https://tdl-ir.tdl.org/server/oai/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=dim&identifier=oai%3Atdl-ir.tdl.org%3A1969.1%2FETD-TAMU-2008-12-151