Gender-Specific Theory of Delinquency
Several theories have strived to explain delinquency and crime within the society, most of which center around the individual and the personal make up or biology, yet others focus on the surrounding that the individual grows up in and the people they interact with. There are theories that are gender specific in that they tend to explain how the fact that an individual is of a given gender is a predisposition to get involved in some given crime or delinquency within the society, one of such theories which will also form the focus of the paper is the social learning theory.
The society often ascribe gender specific roles that the girls and the boys are implicitly expected to adhere to. The girls are often expected to take up some form of behavior, often subtle, though effective way of perpetuating the responsibilities and characters that are deemed feminine. The same applies to the male members of the society where they are required to portray some kind of behavior which will significantly distinguish them from the female gender. The different gender may not be directly lectured on how to behave but will interact with same gender that behave in such...
This is often not universally applied but is gender specific, with the members of the society modeling the girl or the boy into a behavior that they are supposed to adhere to. The children will then adopt to the generally accepted behavior of their gender (Smith M. & Berge Z., 2009:Pp440). This is the trend that applies to the delinquency that the children finally find themselves in.
Often, the society deems boys to be more cunning and stubborn especially at the teenage, they are seen to like forming groups of peers and generally engage in small time fist fights, facts that do not raise any alarm among the parents generally. This means that these are behaviors that are generally accepted among the boys. It helps explain the predominance of boys in the boy gangs where there are even violent trends of induction when a new member would like to join. It is also generally acceptable that girls will grow…
