children that I had also gone to school with had not been enrolled in criminal activities either. The collection of the five neighborhood children made up my friend group for most of my younger life. Being the youngest of five children from a blended family had ups and downs but I was a relatively happy child. Both of my parents were married previously and divorced. They decided when they started dating, they both did not want to get married again. My mom and dad had two children each, a boy and a girl from their previous marriages.
On a familiar family level, my siblings have always been in trouble with the law somehow whether it be a traffic stop or assault. I always remember my mom saying not to be like them. As the youngest, I looked up to them all no matter what they did wrong. It was like everyone constructs mistakes, so they should learn from them as I would. My two brothers had been caught up in some drugs and one of them ended up in prison. I used to not talk about it because I was ashamed, but I learned from his experiences and he always said I was better than that. My mother had always told me as long as I could remember that I needed to be better than them because she had raised me better than that, and I needed to basically avenge them. When, one of my siblings had done something wrong she would always say not to be like them and make the same mistakes.
I had never had any run ins with the law. There has never been a problem with me doing anything wrong as I have kept my arrow straight. The socioeconomic conditions of my life had basically backed my personality and values. We lived in an area not riddled with poverty and without juvenile delinquents. In my town we grew up with a life course view which means our relationships determined our life courses and there was no strain, cultural deviance or social disorganization. As a female, I socialized differently from my brothers. The way we are socialized affected my own personal development. Females tend to benefit from solid parental connection, we gain self-confidence through our relationships and we are less aggressive.
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Sigmund Freud had established a theory of psychodynamics. He believed that there were three parts that make up our personality: the id, the ego, and the superego. Psychodynamic theory speaks in terms of conscious and unconscious desires and beliefs mostly in terms of how juvenile occurrences contours personality. The id can be described as inherited traits that are present at birth which are spontaneous and respond immediately. The ego looks to satisfy the id and avoids agony and has no idea of right or wrong. The superego looks to obey authority and the rules. This theory of psychodynamics relates to my life in terms of personality.
I did not have any childhood trauma until later in my childhood. That did not just affect me but my whole family, therefore, I did not go through it alone. The strong family structure I have built my personality. The superego obeys the rules set by my parents and society because I knew better. Based on these rules, the id part of my personality gave me the quick instincts to know when something is wrong when making a decision.
Since my mother had instilled those lessons in me since I was little, I had always heard her in the back of my mind when making decisions. I had steered away from the troublemakers at school and tried to find friends that wanted me to do better and go somewhere in life. Therefore, I had lacked the ability to perform wrongful actions and not listen. I went through my school life without being in trouble at all. I lack the delinquent behaviors used to do so. The behavioral aspect of my life in regard to rewards and punishments determined how I was as a child.
Behavioral theory in my opinion stems off of the theory of psychodynamics due to the idea that personality is learned and shaped throughout life. Behaviorism is how we study a behavior consciously. My mother was a firm believer of rewards and punishments with me. From a very young age she always told me “no” before I could even have time to think about what I was going to do. As a child I learned what to do and how to do it by watching my family. Children are very innocent and like sponges. They soak up all the information that they see and hear. I had a handful of family members to look up to as role models. We were a very close-knit family and in the society that I had grown up in.
Social disorganization theory is not a wholesome theory to describe my childhood life. This theory describes a life of disobeying the normal and expected societal laws. Throughout my experiences I have followed the normal way of life and performed what was expected of me. We did not live in an area riddled with poverty, most of the children were well provided for, therefore, they did not feel the need to take what they wanted or did not have. Chapter nine describes how schooling can play a great role in students’ delinquency. Our schools from elementary to high school had always spoken in terms of all of us going to either college or the military.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development as explained in the textbook explains how humans process stages and learn ethical behavior. When humans learn to apply these stages to different situations they develop morals of being right and just. Lawrence Kohlberg had defined three levels for his theory of moral development. These levels include preconventional, conventional and postconventional. The two stages of the preconventional level are obedience and punishment orientation which focuses on how children conform to the rules and the second stage is instrumental orientation which is how an individual can fulfill their interests in a manner of loyalty in regard to another individual.
The conventional level is comprised of two stages: good boy, nice girl orientation which defines the child’s want for approval from others and try to avoid disapproval and law and order orientation which is when the child accepts rules to function in society. Stage five under the postconventional level explains how the world can be viewed as having diverse privileges, standards and thoughts. The last stage under postconventional is universal-ethical-principal orientation describes how there are abstract principles rather than solid principles. Each one of Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages apply in some way to my own personal life and experiences. As per the first stage preconventional, my mother since birth had told me what was wrong and how I could fix my behavior. She had always had a set of rules and procedures I had to follow as a child.
The early juvenile prevention in my life has shaped the ways of my personal life. Since a young girl my mother had always told me I was going to go to college and make a life for myself. She would show me the news and always instill how bad those people were and how there were morals and rules that needed to be followed to make “good” people in the world who help each other. My other five siblings did not go to college. My oldest sister had all intentions on going to college until she had gotten pregnant her senior year and became a single mother.
The youngest of my brothers had decided he would go to college but did not want to be like my other sister and change majors and studies every few months, so he still has not gone. As for the oldest two boys, they decided to start working immediately to help my mom when she was a single parent supporting them completely by herself. I do not believe that I would be this way if I did not have these life experiences. I am very thankful for the society that I grew up in, the people I was surrounded with and the opportunities that I have gotten. Without these opportunities in my life, I may not be where I am today, I could have taken a different path.
