The purpose of this study was to provide additional insight into the relationship between children’s family type and their externalising behaviour. Guided by findings from previous studies we examined this relationship in the Flemish context where a significant proportion of adolescents experience the divorce or separation of their parents.
Specific attention has been devoted to gender differences in the effects of family type, parent–child relationships and role models.
In terms of building generalizable explanation of these linkages, our study has the advantage of considering two measures of externalising behaviour, delinquency and alcohol use. The first indicator increases with age but is not age-conditional: delinquent behaviour is negative behaviour for all age groups.
This is different from alcohol use which is legal from the age of 16 in Belgium.