Parenting Styles and Parental Conflicts as Predictors of Criminal Behaviour Among Emerging Youths in Nigeria

Criminal behaviour among emerging youths has become a growing social and security concern in Nigeria, manifesting in offences such as cybercrime, cultism, kidnapping, armed robbery, drug abuse, political violence and other forms of delinquency. While socioeconomic factors such as poverty and unemployment have received considerable attention, family-related factors, particularly parenting styles and parental conflict, remain comparatively underexplored despite their significant influence on behavioural development. This study therefore investigated whether and to what extent parenting styles and parental conflict predict criminal behaviour among emerging youths in Nigeria. The study was anchored on Bandura's social learning theory and Hirschi's social control theory. The integration of these theories provides a comprehensive framework for explaining how parenting practices and family relationships influence the development or prevention of criminal tendencies among emerging youths. The study adopted a qualitative, historical descriptive research design. Data was sourced from secondary sources such as books, journal articles, newspaper clippings, and conference papers and was analysed using inductive-deductive method to determine the predictive influence of parenting styles and parental conflict on criminal behaviour. The study addressed a notable gap in existing literature by examining the combined predictive effects of parenting styles and parental conflict on criminal behaviour among emerging youths in Nigeria. Previous studies have largely examined these variables independently or focused primarily on adolescents with limited empirical attention given to emerging adults and the interaction of both family variables in predicting criminal behaviour in Nigeria. The findings revealed that parenting styles and parental conflict jointly and significantly predicted criminal behaviour among emerging youths, with authoritative parenting showing a protective influence, while authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful parenting styles together with high levels of parental conflict were associated with greater likelihood of criminal behaviour. The study recommends that government agencies, educational institutions, religious organizations and community-based organizations implement evidence-based parenting education and family counselling programmes aimed at promoting authoritative parenting, strengthening parental supervision and reducing destructive parental conflict as effective strategies for preventing criminal behaviour among emerging youths in Nigeria.