The insecurity that arises in the family is the most deeply rooted. Family stability remains the most important factor for a healthy and positive development of the child . It is the family that should make the children feel safe. However, when this safe place fails, the child grows up with serious deficiencies. There are cases in which low self-esteem simply emerges and cases in which the child is unable to insert himself correctly in society.
The familiar environment is in fact the basis of deviant behavior. Also according to the child’s temperament, the reactions to the dysfunctional family environment change. What security could a child who has been a victim of family violence have for example? Domestic violence is on the rise and the data is alarming.
There is talk of both physical and psychological violence, although the latter is still underestimated today, yet it is an abuse and has serious consequences not only on the children but also on the parents, who are not free from consequences when the child manifests anti-social conduct. There are no actual quantitative data with respect to psychological violence, because this phenomenon has not yet acquired the value it deserves, in fact in many cases this type of abuse (which can occur, for example, with constant threats or coercions) is not reported.
A child who is abused in childhood or adolescence is very likely to adopt deviant behaviors that will characterize his personality throughout life. It is also essential to remember that the parent must be a coherent model and set a good example in the first person, just to prevent children from growing up with the wrong models.
Violence and incitement do the same damage as lack of affection. In the worst cases, the great emotional shortcomings on the part of the parents, the disintegration of the family and the deprivation of a parental figure are all factors that can make the adolescent a potential criminal.
The characteristics of young offenders can be found in the following conditions:
– Temperament : are they more? restless, impulsive, destructive and aggressive;
-Psychological attitude : they appear hostile, resentful and often claim rights;
-Family condition : there is an inadequacy and inability of parents to give protection, little family cohesion, poor social values; a family that is therefore not suitable to act as an identification model.
The parental role must have a clear and incisive function in the education of the child : it is of fundamental importance that the parent has an interest in the well-being of the child and that he is able to transmit it.
The family is the primary social place . According to some studies, such a deficiency can become the main cause of inclination to crime. The propensity to delinquency is related to the nature that has developed in a deviated way because the processes of interaction with external society are undermined. The affection of the father and that of the mother have both functions and different consequences on the child: for example, the maternal figure strongly affects the first months of the child’s life. But education develops on two poles: not only on the emotional one, but also on the normative one. It is in the latter case that the paternal figure is central: the father also teaches civil values, the sense of limitation, containment. In a certain sense it represents justice.
If we want to give a reading as the psychotherapists Fulvio Scaparro and Gaetano Roi did , we can say that the offender chooses that type of personal affirmation since he finds no better shortcut to avoid getting in touch with his own deep insecurity. Thus he shuns the doubt that he is not up to the existential tasks.
For example, living with an alcoholic parent or drug addict creates a conflictual family environment due to aggression and sudden mood swings related to addiction, which affect the interior of the child, going to affect his psychological balance. The adult individual, if he has not acquired firm limits, cannot conquer a stable, independent and secure identity with respect to the anguish of devastation and the fear of being overwhelmed in relations with the world and with others. Then it would be a good thing that each family acquired greater educational competence and sensitivity and began to think that many dramatic situations are grafted by underestimated, minimized and above all poorly managed events, such as a divorce.
