Robert Merton’s Divorce and Strain Theory Research (Essay Sample)

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Divorce and Strain Theory
Robert Merton’s strain theory is one of the many constituted theories of modern criminology. Modern criminology theories have been used to support several social-economic deprivations. Several theorists have associated various elements of social disorganization with poverty such as single-family homes, divorce and separation, low-quality schools, unemployment, poor housing, lack of discipline and lack of other sorts of community and social controls. These theories associate different social environment features with the various social crimes. They also explain both individual and group concerning various crimes. Merton’s strain theory links crime to economic circumstance (Hall 1-3). Crimes often result from a combination of opportunity, situation, and values. A strainful condition or event give individuals make negative emotional feelings such as anger and frustration that eventually create pressure to achieve a corrective action. This desire for action is what typically results in criminal responses as people try to limit the inhibitions or even revenge. The poorer the individual coping resources and skills, the more likely individuals are to engaging in crimes. According to the theorists, better communication and negotiation skills and financial resources place individuals in a better position to resist engagement in crimes. Merton’s anomie strain theory is based on the weakening of cultural norms or the society normative order to mean the inability of institutionalized social norms to regulate its individuals’ behavior (Agnew 326-329). Merton argued that that individuals with anomie and blocked opportunities tended to adapt in response to the latter. Merton’s theory was set to explain different crime rates differing from the Chicago school criminologists. Such cases presented by various theorists were that such discrimination on social class could result in development of urban slum areas thus fostering criminal behavior through deviant cultural values. Merton’s social disorganization theory outlined that the conventional middle-class values rejection could increase criminal rates in urban slum communities.
Subjective strain arises from conditions and events not favorable by the victimized individuals. Stress cause people to often differ in their subjective evaluation of the objective stresses facing them. Divorce or family separations are one of the major areas significantly affected by people differing in subjectively evaluating such objective pressures. The subjective evaluation of an actual pressure depends on several factors among them the individual traits such as self-esteem, social support, and self-efficacy among others. A range of life circumstances leads to divorce.
The author argues that the value one places on prior marriage often influenced how different individuals evaluated divorce. People in poor marriage ties were observed to evaluate their separation in more favorable terms. However, of importance to note that one’s positive capability to evaluate an objective strain often changes with time. Time provide the individuals with more time and space to help them cope with the latter (Agnew 321).
According to Agnew (322), there is evidence of a perfect relationship between subjective and objective strain. However, the fact that one cannot measure the individual’s subjective evaluation of a divorce event may result in readers underestimating the support for the strain theory since objective pressures mostly present less subjective strain. On the contrary, researchers ought to directly employ subjective measures of strain in evaluating divorce cases. It is of equal importance to evaluate and understand objective strains to help better distinguish such events’ subjective evaluation from the external events from.
Previous research on General Strain Theory has provided useful data on the various strain types that are more likely to result in crime, however suggesting that severely limit its utility. Consequently, most of the key strain measures lack the particular degree of the types of goal blockage as described by Agnew (324) and measures to some of the negative treatment types such as abuse, and racial discrimination and prejudice experiences. The result is a very minimal idea of whether the latter strain types are relay related to delinquency. Most tests of General Strain Theory examine the effect of a single, cumulative strain measure in delinquency. In some different cases, employment of a measure of stressful life events is needed. The author also argues that under some cases, the cumulative strain test to be a composite of other several scales or items giving a measurement of a range of different strain types of strain...