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Peacock, 2006:33; Williams & McShane, 2010:53). Rogers (1951:499) has also placed significant importance on the influence of the primary caregivers as significant others from which the core evaluative criteria are obtained which impacts on self-esteem development and maintenance. The explanation for this finding could however contain a number of elements from various perspectives. Being individuals who have transgressed the law on several occasions and therefore in many instances spent extended periods of time in correctional facilities on multiple occasions, the life experiences of repeat offenders can be said to have a negative effect on social bonds. The total institutional nature of correctional facilities, the negative social responses to repeat offenders associated with deviant labelling and the isolation experienced by a number of offenders whose families do not have the physical or financial means to visit them in the correctional centres could cause a breakdown in family bonds. This explanation is grounded in perspectives similar to those purported by Hirschi in his social control theory which states that a deterioration of social bonds can result in an increased propensity for criminal behaviour due to non-compliance of individuals to the conventional norms and values of society (Williams & McShane, 2010:155). This could lead to the repeat offenders negating the family and society as a source of conditions of worth thereby decreasing the effect any relationships of this nature will have on the self-evaluative process.
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Table 30 contains the descriptive information related to the family structures of the participants. The list of possible options pertaining to the people who may have contributed to the participants’ upbringing included: mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister and other. To decrease the variability in the data, the categories were grouped according to their similarities. Repeat offenders who were raised by both their mother and father were grouped as “both parents” and those raised by both their grandmother and grandfather were grouped as “both grandparents”. Furthermore, the
“extended family” and “siblings” groups consisted of repeat offenders raised by either their aunt or uncle or both and either their brother or sister or both respectively. The group classified as “other” was excluded due to only three participants selecting that option.
Table 30
People who Raised the Participants
Raised by N % Mean Self-Esteem Score SD
Both parents 33 45.21 62.18 15.67
Mother 55 75.34 60.36 15.88
Father 38 52.05 62.53 15.56
Both grandparents 14 19.18 69.14 15.15
Extended family 31 42.47 60.90 14.14
Siblings 23 31.51 61.04 16.18
Table 30 shows that a large majority of repeat offenders’ mothers (75.34%) contributed to raising them and that 52.05% had fathers present during their upbringing. Furthermore it can be said that 45.21% of the sample came from families that were structurally intact with both parents contributing to their upbringing. In addition to these factors, it was found that 42.47%
of the repeat offenders had extended family which included either an aunt or an uncle or both and 31.51% had siblings that contributed to their upbringing. The least amount of repeat offenders (19.18%) had both grandparents contributing to their upbringing; however this subgroup also had the highest mean self-esteem scores.
6.8.2 Hypothesis 8
Hypothesis 8 postulates that repeat offenders from structurally impaired homes will have significantly lower self-esteem scores than those who were raised by intact family units.
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Intact families are characterised by both parents being present and contributing to the raising of the child whereas impaired families would be indicative of single parent headed homes or a complete absence of the parents due to death or abandonment. Therefore even families that had male and female adults present such as extended family or grandparents were still categorised as impaired due to the absence of parents.
Table 31
Comparison of Mean Self-Esteem Scores between Repeat Offenders from Structurally Intact and Impaired Families using a t-test
Family structure Mean self-esteem score SD t-score p-value
Intact family 62.18 15.67 .402 .689
Impaired family 60.7 15.64
N=73
Hypothesis 8 could not be supported as there was no statistically significant difference found between the mean self-esteem scores for repeat offenders from structurally intact families and those from structurally impaired families.
The results for hypothesis 8 do not concur with the perspectives of Rogers, Erikson and Miller who comment on the possible detrimental effects of single parent headed homes and the importance of parents in the development of personality variables associated with a positive self-perception (Brown et al., 1998:321; Peacock, 2006:33; Williams & McShane, 2010:100). The similarity between the two self-esteem scores could therefore be explained in terms of the involvement of the rest of the immediate family and extended family in the cases of structurally impaired families. Rural African homes have been found to be characterised by the presence of extended families and membership in the household tends to vary due to the high amount of migrant labour of families affected by loss or separation (Posel et al., 2004:1; Schatz & Ogunmefun, 2007:1391). If one is to consider the information provided in Table 33 it can be noted that in a substantial amount of instances, siblings and extended family were found to contribute in raising the participants. Therefore, the presence of a surrogate family consisting of family members other than the biological mother and father may be able to provide a similar positive effect on the development of self-evaluative criteria and appropriate social behaviour as that provided by a structurally intact family.
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