ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that more research energy be expended on the effect which others—particularly adults—have on the creation of juvenile delinquency and on the concepts of themselves which young people develop as a result of adult defmitions. One of the reasons research progress in this area has been so slow is that we have been traveling up a dead-end road in our fruitless search for simple cause-and-effect relationships in our quest for factors, traits, and characteristics. One of the best recognized and most poorly coped with problems in research on social problems in general and delinquency in particular, concerns the unit of study. In the county containing Syracuse, New York, the delinquency rates in 1957 are almost identical with those in 1940. No such conceptual system can hope to encompass the totality of the hodgepodge that is labeled "delinquency." Popular "causes" of delinquency range from toilet-training to television to the existence of working mothers and the absence of reading skills.
