welcome to this tutor to you sociology topic video on gender and crime looking at the impacts of sex role theory for those who study families and households the ideas of toll cut parsons and sex role theory will be quite familiar however while they are usually applied to family life they can also be used to explain the differences in rates and criminality between males and females as parsons applied his idea of socialization into gender roles to the area of crime and deviance for those unfamiliar with parsons ideas he suggested that within the family males and females are best suited to different roles within the family partly based upon their biological characteristics and partly due to how they're socialized males were socialized into the instrumental role providing financial support for the family and being responsible for discipline the expressive role was taken on by females and this involved looking after the emotional needs of the family caring for and nurturing children and providing emotional support for a husband and dealing with the domestic labor in the household the social expectations to perform these roles according to parsons can help to explain the differences in rates of offending for males and females there was a further function of the instrumental and expressive roles that parsons examined and that was the socialization of children into their future gender roles and according to parsons this had impacts on different rates of offending between males and females he argued that socialization had more of an impact on girls as they were socialized into the expressive role and that their mother was on hand to provide support for them as she was based in the domestic sphere for boys the absence of the father while at work and with having less input into their child socialization meant that males were less adequately socialized into their gender roles and the expectations of what it meant to be a man while they may have observed their fathers as providers they were unsure of how this was fulfilled as many of the duties associated with the instrumental role were conducted outside of the home furthermore the role of socialization can explain the differences in behaviors of males and females boys are socialized into more aggressive and competitive pursuits such as sports their physicality also leads to them being given more independence over their time and space with boys being given later curfews and being seen as safe to be out of their parents view girls on the other hand are more protected they are often socialized into interests inside of the home which some feminists would criticize as a form of social control over girls as a result girls have less opportunity to commit crime as they're watched by their parents more boys are given more freedom and this combined with less secure socialization from the fathers can lead to criminal behaviors particularly under the influence of peers for boys this peer reinforcement often comes to being involved in a subculture or a gang boys will be rewarded for displays of masculine behavior within subcultures by their peers and this can be a form of compensation for the lack of status they have in a female-dominated home through seeing deviant behaviors reinforced boys are then socialized into behaving aggressively or competitively or displaying other behaviors that are linked to criminality sexual theory is highly influential in his time and the ideas of gender socialization being linked to criminality have been taken up by other theorists whilst cohen was influenced by merton's concept of strain in his research he also examined boys from lone parent families based upon assumptions of inadequate socialization and while society may have changed in the years since parsons theory new rite theorists have adopted parsons ideas of incomplete socialization most notably charles murray on focusing on the underclass of elderly young men who were brought up by lone parents further research by tony sewell into black criminality has suggested that the higher rate of lone parenthood in black communities is part of the reason for increased gang membership by black males although many critical race theorists have been dismissive of sewell's ideas stating that they promote dangerous stereotypes of the black community with many black fathers groups coming out in support of sewell's critics sex role theory however is based upon outdated notions of gender roles and gender socialization written at the height of the modern era parsons theory cannot be applied in full to contemporary society with its greater diversity of family types and lifestyles parsons ideas of roles and socialization were based upon the nuclear family and while that still remains it's no longer as dominant as it was in person zero the rise in female criminality since parsons time also suggests that socialization into gender roles has changed with girls being more assertive and having more freedom over their time and space there are now more opportunities for female criminality and this echoes a point made by adler's liberation thesis the lower female criminality of parsons time can be argued to have been the product of excessive control over women in part due to the process of socialization and the ideas of both heidensen and carlin are relevant in addressing this that concludes this cheetah to you sociology topic video on gender and crime focusing on tolcott parsons sex role theory thanks for watching