Deviant Behavior & Social Control

Children are actually really good at deflecting stigma. Let’s start out this discussion on a light note. What is the funniest example you have of a child (your child, a niece or nephew, you as a child, or a friend’s child) engaging in stigma management (think making up a crazy story to avoid blame)? Which one of Sykes and Matza’s techniques of neutralization does this most closely resemble? And then to illustrate the situational nature of norms, how do you think others would react if you did the same thing?

ANSWER

Deviant Behavior and Social Control

Human beings are conditioned to hate blame. People create all types of stories to rationalize something terrible they might have done and try to make it look like they did not intend to do it. One of the craziest stories I have heard from a child is when my five-year-old niece broke a glass. Her mother had warned her about trying to reach the glass several times. Nobody was around when she broke the glass, and therefore she tried to hide the mess she had made. She, however, got hurt in the process. When her mother realized she was hurt and that one of the glasses was broken, she asked her, and she said that the cat broke the glass and cut her with it because it did not like her anymore. She was willing to demonstrate how the cat broke the glass and used a broken piece to cut her.

The theory of neutralization that she was trying to use was denial of responsibility (Maruna & Copes, 2017). She did not want to be blamed for breaking the glass and therefore decoded to pin the mistake on the innocent cat. She later confessed to breaking the glass and being hurt in the process of trying to cover up her tracks after her mother promised she would not scold her. If I had used the same technique to deny responsibility for the same mistake, my family would probably think I have gone crazy or am on drugs. They would probably try to administer first aid on me and tell me to go and rest. Grownups are expected to accept responsibility when they make certain mistakes, and avoidance can sometimes affect another underlying problem.

References

Maruna, S., & Copes, H. (2017). Techniques of neutralization: a theory of its time and ahead of its time. In Delinquency and Drift Revisited (pp. 43-58). Routledge.