GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT The study investigated the parental rearing style and family emotional climate as determinant of student juvenile delinquency in Oron Education Zone of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. The population of this study consisted of all the 4527 senior secondary two (SS2) students in all the 22 public secondary schools in Oron education zone during the 2014/2015 school year. The study adopted a non-experimental survey to assess family variables on juvenile delinquency among students. The Data collected from the respondents were coded and transferred into a spreadsheet and summarized. They were coded into the computer and analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 11.0 while all the hypotheses were tested at .05 alpha. The instrument for data collection was the questionnaire. The questionnaire was titled “Family Variable and Juvenile Delinquency Questionnaire (FVJDQ)” and had three sections. A total of 360 (three hundred and sixty) senior secondary two (SS2) students were selected for the study through simple random sampling technique. From the results of the data analysis, it was observed that family variable have significant influence on students’ juvenile delinquency. The researcher concluded that juvenile delinquencies were minimized in democratic rearing homes compared to autocratic and laissez faire homes. Also, positive family emotional climate helps to reduce delinquency acts among secondary school students. One of the recommendations was that sociologist of education and social scientists should educate the parents to choose positive family emotional climate on their children’s up-bringing through awareness creation. Key words: Parents rearing style, family emotional climate, juvenile delinquency, Oron Education Zone, Akwa Ibom State