Making boys into criminals

THE EDITOR: There is a school of thought that holds parents largely responsible for the criminal misdeeds of their children and blames them for the morass in which we now find ourselves. Though this may be true, it is not the full story.

To begin with, most violent criminals come from single-parent families, usually female-led. People assume this is because mothers have the propensity to coddle their children and are reluctant to discipline them when they go astray.

The opposite may be true. Single parents who are too young, poor, ignorant and overwhelmed are more likely to utilise tyranny and brutality in their child-rearing, which is the exact recipe for creating a vicious bandit down the line. The absence of a good father in the home or in a life places a vacuum where a male role model should be. Nature abhors a vacuum, so when a boy begins to look around for something or someone to show him what it is to be a man he’s going to find what’s available. And what’s available may, unfortunately, be neighbourhood thugs.

Thus, you have boys growing up believing that masculinity is measured in how rough, tough, aggressive and violent you can be. You prove yourself by not baulking at performing the most heinous of acts. Money too is an integral part of who you are. It matters not if you have to take it by force. As for women, they are simply conquests. The more of them a man can fool, the more of a man he is shown to be. And so, another fatherless generation is brought into the world.

Raising children is an expensive prospect. A single parent, especially a female who works at a low-paying, unskilled job is going to find it a struggle to provide everything her child or children need to give them the very best chance in life.

When a man is not there to step up to the plate and support the family he has created, then a boy believes it has become his responsibility to go out and “get it,” as they say. It is at this point he becomes a pawn in the hands of seasoned criminals.

Furthermore, if a boy is providing for a household, he assumes the mantle of the man of the house. And which mammy can then tell him what to do?

Some years ago Gypsy sang a calypso titled Little Black Boy, in which he lamented the wrongdoings of little black boys in the country. Calypsonian Funny responded in song that the problem with little black boys was really “big black men.” I think I agree with Funny.

JOANNE K JOSEPH
San Fernando