The Influence of Position in Sibship on Juvenile Delinquency

Abstract

JUVENILE delinquency, like crime in general, is a complex social phenomenon, the outcome of a large number of contributory factors. This much has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt, as may be gathered from any up-to-date text-book of criminology.2 Ranging in an interlinked hierarchy from crude economic conditions such as poverty or bad housing to subtle disturbances of personality which defy scientific classification, these factors have been variously stressed by different authorities. Healy3 and Burt,4 probably the most eminent of contemporary students of juvenile crime, have emphasised the preponderant influence of mental factors, such as lack of intelligence and emotional and temperamental abnormality or maladjustment, particularly when functioning under adverse environmental conditions. The immediate necessity now is to explore more precisely the significance of each of the numerous factors under suspicion, by isolating it for examination by quantitative methods under controlled conditions. The present paper is an attempt in this direction. We have selected for investigation a factor to which attention was first drawn by Goring5 in his classical study of the social biology of the adult criminal. Goring found a large excess of firstand second-borln children among the prison populations investigated by him. As Hogben6 points out, the investigation of the influence of birth order is a promising line of inquiry for the elucidation of the differential effect of heredity and environment