Catholic Newspaper–What Inner-City Kids Need Are Fathers

 

The California Catholic Daily gets it right on kids, violence and gangs in its new article What they need are fathers (9/4/07). The paper quotes extensively from my co-authored column CA Anti-Gang Bills Miss Central Truth About Kids & Gangs (Pasadena Star-News & Affiliated Papers, 3/25/07), and cites this incredible finding:

“Deborah Estell, a San Francisco school health worker, polled 60 or so kindergartners at John Muir Elementary School, finding that 90% knew someone in jail, and more than 75% knew someone who had been shot or killed.”

It’s a small sample size, so this study may not be terribly reliable, but what incredible numbers–75% of kindergarteners know somebody who had been shot or killed–wow. I used to teach in South Central LA, and while the 75% figure seems a little high, I can believe a roughly comparable figure.

The California Catholic Daily article is below. Grisha, one of the commenters to the article, criticizes me, saying that gang members’ fathers are bad fathers anyway, so it would be counterproductive for them to be in their kids’ lives. There’s some truth to this, but it’s a limited truth. In my co-authored column referenced above I explained:

“A study just released by Boston College finds that when nonresident fathers are involved in their adolescent children’s lives, the incidence of violence, crime, substance abuse and truancy decrease markedly. Most of the families in the study, which was published in the journal Child Development, are low-income African-American and Hispanic families. The study’s lead author, professor Rebekah Levine Coley, explains:

“‘Nonresident fathers in low-income, minority families appear to be an important protective factor for adolescents…Greater involvement from fathers may help adolescents develop self-control and self-competence, and may decrease the opportunities adolescents have to engage in problem behaviors.’

“The study also found that when teens begin to slide towards delinquency, nonresident fathers increase their involvement in response. The researchers found such involvement to be effective–the impact of father involvement was the greatest on the kids who had previously been the most troubled.”

Grisha also pushes the feminist/Peggy Drexler line that lesbian parenting is better than heterosexual parenting, asking, “Please note that there are not a lot of gangs consisting of boys raised by lesbian couples. What does that tell us?”

What they need are fathers
But California thinks mental health programs are the answer for kids in the state’s “war zones”
California Catholic Daily, 9/4/07

Do children in high-crime areas in California, like children in Baghdad, suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? If so, why? And what should be done?

An Aug. 26 San Francisco Chronicle story notes that “as many as one-third of children living in our country’s violent urban neighborhoods have PTSD, according to recent research and the country’s top child trauma experts — nearly twice the rate reported for troops returning from war zones in Iraq.”

Deborah Estell, a San Francisco school health worker, polled 60 or so kindergartners at John Muir Elementary School, finding that 90% knew someone in jail, and more than 75% knew someone who had been shot or killed.

The need to deal with PTSD symptoms “is great,” she said. These symptoms, which include angry outbursts, sleep disturbances, anxiety, and preoccupation with shootings and death, make it impossible for many students to concentrate on learning.

According to the Chronicle’s follow-up reports, state and local school officials have converged on one approach to the problem: traumatic stress counseling in the schools, using $250 million raised through Proposition 63 for mental health programs.

However, few are addressing a prime factor in gang violence and the subsequent trauma: defective family structures, lacking a mother and father who are married to each other, and — especially for boys — households deprived of the guidance and authority of fathers.

According to Glenn Sacks, a former Los Angeles elementary and high school teacher writing in the Pasadena Star-News, gangs were responsible for 70% of the shootings last year in Los Angeles, while 73% of the young men in California’s massive juvenile prison system share similar experiences of broken families and fatherlessness.

Sacks cites a 20-year old gang member, incarcerated at the California Youth Authority in Stockton for trying to kill a gang rival, who said, “[My father] was never around when I needed him … [my mom] did OK until I was 10 – she could control me up to then. But then I went to the gangs, like my brothers … It might have mattered if he was around.”

Sacks argues that “the best way to keep teenagers out of gangs is to help them get the much-needed discipline, care and love that so many fathers are skilled at providing.” (more…)

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