What is it that draws boys (or girls for that matter) to gangs? For some young people, it’s where they go to fill a void.
Acceptance
Most individuals want acceptance and will perform in ways to get it. Sometimes they will act in foolish ways to get it. In families, an individual’s acceptance or feeling of belonging should be natural--but not without limits. If limits do not exist for or from a family member, then caring for that family member does not exist. One indication of caring or acceptance is getting attention, without it, there is no recognition of worth in the view of the one not receiving it. This situation creates an over-riding hunger for approval and belonging!
Quoting Mother Theresa, “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” In fact, a serving of bread can fill a stomach, but it takes time and much love to fill a heart.
Let’s assume a boy, as an example, is in a home where the father is physically or emotionally missing. Let’s also assume this boy has a loving mother to isolate the issue. This boy will have an emotional void whether he realizes it or not. A boy wants to become a man, not just biologically, but emotionally and just as importantly, in the eyes of society. He needs a proper mentor to do this because a mentor will guide him, praising a child’s efforts which lead to positive social values and condemning acts that hurt the child or others.
As stated by Jordan Peterson in “12 Rules for Life”, “Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives –they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better.”
Why might father-starved youth have a low opinion of themselves; or why do they seek the easy way out in life? Being rejected by a parent, in an obvious or even an obscure way, will significantly impact a child’s personality, self-image, and self-esteem--and not in a positive way. It will forever determine how they relate and are accepted by others. This desire for acceptance and validation is one of the strongest motivating forces known to man. When parents don’t do this for their child, it creates a void that will get resolution, one way or another.
What does an involved father do for a child? In Fatherless Society David Blankenhorn states,
“Fatherhood is a social role that obligates men to their biological offspring. For two reasons, it is society's most important role for men. First, fatherhood, more than any other male activity, helps men to become good men: more likely to obey the law, to be good citizens, and to think about the needs of others. Put more abstractly; fatherhood bends maleness - in particular, male aggression - toward prosocial purposes. Second, fatherhood privileges children. In this respect, fatherhood is a social invention designed to supplement maternal investment in children with paternal investment in children.
Paternal investment enriches children in four ways. First, it provides them with a father's physical protection. Second, it provides them with a father's money and other material resources. Third, and probably most important, it provides them with what might be termed paternal cultural transmission: a father's distinctive capacity to contribute to the identity, character and competence of his children. Fourth, and most obviously, paternal investment provides children with the day-to-day nurturing - feeding them, playing with them, telling them a story - that they want and need from both of their parents. In virtually all human societies, children's well-being depends decisively upon a relatively high level of paternal investment.”
Further, from ‘ScienceDaily,’ “A father's love contributes as much -- and sometimes more -- to a child's development as does a mother's love. That is one of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood.”
And as I wrote in “The Power of Dadhood,”
It is in the home
So back to the question, “What is it that draws boys (or girls for that matter) to gangs?”
A study by Stanley S. Taylor, California State University in 2013 entitled “Why American Boys Join Street Gangs,” stated this;
“All of the psychosocial histories of gang members in this study were diverse, however there were several underlying consistent themes prevalent in each members life history (1) frustration and anxiety stemming from family problems such as fatherlessness, (2) sadness, frustration, and anxiety in home life (3) the feeling that they wanted an end to the frustration (4) expression of hostility through defiance of authority in the industry versus inferiority stage and physical violence in the identity versus role and confusion stage of psychosocial development and, (5) misconduct at school, mostly for fighting or bullying schoolmates, and (6) gang membership as a salient opportunity for peer recognition in their immediate neighborhood and community.”
When the conditions stated by Taylor exist, gangs can provide some of what is missing in a young man’s life. Gangs give a young man a chance at acknowledgment and status, but he has to prove himself before he can belong. He must adopt the values of that gang, and if he does, he will find the acceptance and respect that alluded him in the past. But how do the values of a gang differ from the values of a nurturing family?
Values
When seeking acceptance, lost youth will consent to the values of the individual or group accepting them. Belonging becomes more important than the values a civilized society expects of them such as goodness, fairness, honesty, and helpfulness. While common in successful families, these values are very often missing in gangs. The desire to belong and be a part of a group is strong enough to place any positive values you may have had (or never learned) in the rearview mirror. Here are a few examples of values and how they may be interpreted differently
Toughness-Toughness as a value in a family situation would be to not give in to peer pressure or to keep on trying when times are tough. But in a gang, toughness is how unafraid you project yourself or how dominant you can be, which often leads to violence.
Smartness – Smartness as a family value is common sense, academic achievements, or one’s ability to judge or make right decisions. In a gang, smartness is the ability to outsmart or ‘con’ another person. Cheating, taking advantage of the weakness of others, conning people and petty thievery are the hallmarks of a ‘smart’ gang member.
Enjoyment—Enjoyment in a family atmosphere would include activities like reading, watching movies, playing sports, etc. A gang’s idea of enjoyment too often includes gambling, sexual adventures, drugs, and alcohol.
Summary
A kid with a supportive family, constant encouragement, and self-worth can be resilient to adversity and negativity. He will feel comfortable in his own skin and have the strength to be himself and uphold the values taught to him that he holds to be true. He has the confidence of a worthwhile person as displayed to him most often and best by his family.
Without group support, he will often find himself alone and with little self-worth. Low self-worth begets devastatingly low ambition and an unwillingness to crawl out of the hole he finds themselves in. That hole is dug deep by an unsupportive environment--a missing father, a busy mother, and non-existent mentors. Tragically, the hole of non-acceptance is often filled with the support of a gang, but another hole, one of misguided values and social disorder, is burrowed even deeper.
Without a supportive family or role model, a kid cannot say ‘no’ when ‘no’ needs to be said, i.e., when expected to do something against their inner voice. When support comes from a gang, a kid cannot say ‘yes’ when outside opportunity exists. Trapped by a code forced upon him to remain as a member of a gang, it will take much convincing to trust external support to have a purposeful life. A message for society is that it is much more difficult to correct this situation than it is to prevent it. Preventing it requires a stable and loving family, something lacking in most gang-infested communities. What can we do to fix dysfunctional families? A real solution will reduce gang membership and the costs* to society immensely!
*Note: “…..gangs tend to propel youths into a life of crime, punctuated by arrests, convictions, and periods of incarceration. The costs to society are enormous. Each assault-related gunshot injury costs the public approximately $1 million. A single adolescent criminal career of about ten years can cost taxpayers between $1.7 and $2.3 million.” https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Content/Documents/Impact-of-Gangs-on-Communities.pdf
Acceptance
Most individuals want acceptance and will perform in ways to get it. Sometimes they will act in foolish ways to get it. In families, an individual’s acceptance or feeling of belonging should be natural--but not without limits. If limits do not exist for or from a family member, then caring for that family member does not exist. One indication of caring or acceptance is getting attention, without it, there is no recognition of worth in the view of the one not receiving it. This situation creates an over-riding hunger for approval and belonging!
Quoting Mother Theresa, “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” In fact, a serving of bread can fill a stomach, but it takes time and much love to fill a heart.
Let’s assume a boy, as an example, is in a home where the father is physically or emotionally missing. Let’s also assume this boy has a loving mother to isolate the issue. This boy will have an emotional void whether he realizes it or not. A boy wants to become a man, not just biologically, but emotionally and just as importantly, in the eyes of society. He needs a proper mentor to do this because a mentor will guide him, praising a child’s efforts which lead to positive social values and condemning acts that hurt the child or others.
As stated by Jordan Peterson in “12 Rules for Life”, “Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives –they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better.”
Why might father-starved youth have a low opinion of themselves; or why do they seek the easy way out in life? Being rejected by a parent, in an obvious or even an obscure way, will significantly impact a child’s personality, self-image, and self-esteem--and not in a positive way. It will forever determine how they relate and are accepted by others. This desire for acceptance and validation is one of the strongest motivating forces known to man. When parents don’t do this for their child, it creates a void that will get resolution, one way or another.
What does an involved father do for a child? In Fatherless Society David Blankenhorn states,
“Fatherhood is a social role that obligates men to their biological offspring. For two reasons, it is society's most important role for men. First, fatherhood, more than any other male activity, helps men to become good men: more likely to obey the law, to be good citizens, and to think about the needs of others. Put more abstractly; fatherhood bends maleness - in particular, male aggression - toward prosocial purposes. Second, fatherhood privileges children. In this respect, fatherhood is a social invention designed to supplement maternal investment in children with paternal investment in children.
Paternal investment enriches children in four ways. First, it provides them with a father's physical protection. Second, it provides them with a father's money and other material resources. Third, and probably most important, it provides them with what might be termed paternal cultural transmission: a father's distinctive capacity to contribute to the identity, character and competence of his children. Fourth, and most obviously, paternal investment provides children with the day-to-day nurturing - feeding them, playing with them, telling them a story - that they want and need from both of their parents. In virtually all human societies, children's well-being depends decisively upon a relatively high level of paternal investment.”
Further, from ‘ScienceDaily,’ “A father's love contributes as much -- and sometimes more -- to a child's development as does a mother's love. That is one of many findings in a new large-scale analysis of research about the power of parental rejection and acceptance in shaping our personalities as children and into adulthood.”
And as I wrote in “The Power of Dadhood,”
It is in the home
- where children should learn kindness, goodness, values, discipline, and manners.
- where children should find understanding, caring, and comfort.
- where successful lives should begin -- with open minds, encouragement, and love.
- where compassion should exist, where the safety nets of our children’s failures are made of rubber bands, ready to sling them back into the world — stronger, wiser, and with new momentum.
So back to the question, “What is it that draws boys (or girls for that matter) to gangs?”
A study by Stanley S. Taylor, California State University in 2013 entitled “Why American Boys Join Street Gangs,” stated this;
“All of the psychosocial histories of gang members in this study were diverse, however there were several underlying consistent themes prevalent in each members life history (1) frustration and anxiety stemming from family problems such as fatherlessness, (2) sadness, frustration, and anxiety in home life (3) the feeling that they wanted an end to the frustration (4) expression of hostility through defiance of authority in the industry versus inferiority stage and physical violence in the identity versus role and confusion stage of psychosocial development and, (5) misconduct at school, mostly for fighting or bullying schoolmates, and (6) gang membership as a salient opportunity for peer recognition in their immediate neighborhood and community.”
When the conditions stated by Taylor exist, gangs can provide some of what is missing in a young man’s life. Gangs give a young man a chance at acknowledgment and status, but he has to prove himself before he can belong. He must adopt the values of that gang, and if he does, he will find the acceptance and respect that alluded him in the past. But how do the values of a gang differ from the values of a nurturing family?
Values
When seeking acceptance, lost youth will consent to the values of the individual or group accepting them. Belonging becomes more important than the values a civilized society expects of them such as goodness, fairness, honesty, and helpfulness. While common in successful families, these values are very often missing in gangs. The desire to belong and be a part of a group is strong enough to place any positive values you may have had (or never learned) in the rearview mirror. Here are a few examples of values and how they may be interpreted differently
Toughness-Toughness as a value in a family situation would be to not give in to peer pressure or to keep on trying when times are tough. But in a gang, toughness is how unafraid you project yourself or how dominant you can be, which often leads to violence.
Smartness – Smartness as a family value is common sense, academic achievements, or one’s ability to judge or make right decisions. In a gang, smartness is the ability to outsmart or ‘con’ another person. Cheating, taking advantage of the weakness of others, conning people and petty thievery are the hallmarks of a ‘smart’ gang member.
Enjoyment—Enjoyment in a family atmosphere would include activities like reading, watching movies, playing sports, etc. A gang’s idea of enjoyment too often includes gambling, sexual adventures, drugs, and alcohol.
Summary
A kid with a supportive family, constant encouragement, and self-worth can be resilient to adversity and negativity. He will feel comfortable in his own skin and have the strength to be himself and uphold the values taught to him that he holds to be true. He has the confidence of a worthwhile person as displayed to him most often and best by his family.
Without group support, he will often find himself alone and with little self-worth. Low self-worth begets devastatingly low ambition and an unwillingness to crawl out of the hole he finds themselves in. That hole is dug deep by an unsupportive environment--a missing father, a busy mother, and non-existent mentors. Tragically, the hole of non-acceptance is often filled with the support of a gang, but another hole, one of misguided values and social disorder, is burrowed even deeper.
Without a supportive family or role model, a kid cannot say ‘no’ when ‘no’ needs to be said, i.e., when expected to do something against their inner voice. When support comes from a gang, a kid cannot say ‘yes’ when outside opportunity exists. Trapped by a code forced upon him to remain as a member of a gang, it will take much convincing to trust external support to have a purposeful life. A message for society is that it is much more difficult to correct this situation than it is to prevent it. Preventing it requires a stable and loving family, something lacking in most gang-infested communities. What can we do to fix dysfunctional families? A real solution will reduce gang membership and the costs* to society immensely!
*Note: “…..gangs tend to propel youths into a life of crime, punctuated by arrests, convictions, and periods of incarceration. The costs to society are enormous. Each assault-related gunshot injury costs the public approximately $1 million. A single adolescent criminal career of about ten years can cost taxpayers between $1.7 and $2.3 million.” https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/Content/Documents/Impact-of-Gangs-on-Communities.pdf
