The death of either parent, also, is often the cause of such unhappiness or privation in the home as to induce disobedience to law and bring the child before a court.
The lack of employment by the father or his too low wages, which reduces the family income dangerously and makes the mother attempt to be both breadwinner and care-taker of the home, and hence lessens family comfort and sends the children on the streets for amusement, is also a cause often appearing as a reason for delinquency.

The evils of housing congestion, too many families living in one building or in one neighborhood without chance for privacy, choice of companionship or household arrangements conservative of domestic virtue or happiness, these evils constitute a heavy indictment of society in the returns of Children's Courts.

The complex problems which the immigrant faces, with his children early learning the language of the country to which he has come, while it is to him a sealed book, are responsible for much juvenile delinquency.

Jacob Riis has told us, in compelling description, the story of the evolution of the "gang" and of the "tough" from the children of parents who, well-meaning and in their own ancestral land capable of parental control, here lose command of the family life because the children have to become the interpreters and representatives of the family in the new country to a degree that reverses the natural order of dependence and direction in the family life, and gives the children undue power of leadership in family affairs.

As Professor Cooley wisely says, "It is freedom to be disciplined in as rational a manner as you are tit for." We might give the converse of this truth in the statement that it is not freedom but dangerous tendency toward anarchy and disaster to be called upon for rational decisions in advance of our intelligence and will-power, and a tragedy to lose the habit-drill of parental control in the period of life when that is a necessary foundation for wisdom in independent choice.