Studies have shown that family dysfunction is a key component of a person suffering with long-term emotional distress and an inability to build healthy relationships with others. The amount and quality of parental monitoring is influenced by different factors such as divorce, serious financial distress, drug abuse and even mental illness. .
Unfortunately, poor parental monitoring is a strong predictor of anti-social behavior. Lack of authority and inconsistent discipline increase the risk of delinquency two and a half times over those who experienced better supervision. Interactions between parents and children and among siblings provide opportunities for children to acquire or inhibit anti-social behavior. Even when kids are predisposed toward delinquency because of personality traits such as low self-control and impulsive personality might improve their life when are exposed to positive and effective parenting. Good parenting lowers the risks of delinquency for children especially if the live an areas of high levels of crime. Children are able to resists the temptations of the streets when they receive discipline and support from their parents. On the contrary, those children raised with little discipline and poor monitoring are prone to delinquency when exposed to the negative elements of the environment. .
According to Siegel (2011), family is the primary unit where children learn the values and attitudes that will guide them throughout their lives but when this very important unit is disrupt or goes under drastic changes can have negative long-lasting effects in the children. Family break ups, family conflicts, family ineffectiveness and family deviance might lead the children to the never ending road of criminality. .
Research indicates that parents whose marriage is happy and secure produce confident and independent children. Children of broken homes with one or both parents absent could be prone to antisocial behavior because any disruption at home could have a negative impact on the children.