A person would be considered to be acting deviantly in society if they are violating what the significant social norm in that particular culture is. What causes humans to act certain ways is a disputed topic among researchers for some time now. There are three types of researchers that have tried to answer this question. There is the psychological answer, biological answer, and the sociological answer. With all of the studies that have been performed, no one group has come up with an exact reason to why people behave deviantly. Although, sociologists" theories have not been disproved as often as the psychologists" and biologists" theories because their experiments are too hard to define and no one definition for deviance is agreed upon by all experimenters (Pfuhl, 40). My own curiosity to find out what the influences are behind deviant behavior is the purpose for this paper. .
The family is the link to socialization in one's environment. In the family, divorce, conflict within family, neglect, abuse, and deviant parents are the main vindicates for the offspring's actions. Researchers find that the lack of supervision, or support a child needs is a direct link to delinquency. This occurs more in single parent homes because they have a harder time fulfilling the need for those things. Poverty is also a reason in the family for conflict because it can lead to both family breakups and delinquency. Children need close, supportive, relationships with parents. What promotes deviance in the home is the inhibition to talk to parents. The child may feel that they need to get attention elsewhere, thus acting deviantly if their parents are not there for them. Parents can prevent this by being competent, non-punitive (to a point), non-aggressive or violent, and teach their child high self-confidence. Family conflict has more damaging effects on children than divorce. Where as parental death has less impact than divorce.
