The article following the headline described youngsters, some as young as 11, taking automobiles, not only from individuals but also auto dealerships, the stolen vehicles often used to commit other felonious acts.
Instead of doing their homework, playing baseball, football, soccer, etc., these youths found their glory in criminal behavior.
Among the questions arising from this: What causes this behavior? Who or what is to blame?
Well, let’s think about this. First, who is to blame? I am putting my money on the perpetrators themselves. Being young is not an excuse for wrong behavior. While there are many areas where we find “extenuating” circumstances, stealing cars is wrong. There is no sliding scale of wrongness based on age when it involves knowing how to and implementing stealing automobiles. They made the choice to steal, to vandalize, etc., but what is the precipitating factor that would encourage young people to engage in what is clearly wrong?
I remember when, about 40 years ago, a local group out here in the wilds of Marcellus proposed that we use a local barn to set up a program of activities so that our youth had “somewhere to go, something to do, someone who would help them when they had problems.”
And there lies the crux of this matter. Somewhere to go, something to do …
Anyone who has taught will tell you that children thrive on structure and belonging. When a child feels that he or she belongs, that someone cares about them. When they can predict when they will eat their next meal, when bedtime occurs, when they feel safe … they thrive and they don’t look elsewhere for that structure and belonging, belonging that emphasizes mutual respect and care.
Where are children supposed to find structure and belonging? In their families. When families don’t provide structure and belonging, children will seek it out. Friends on the street who promise validation by stealing cars is not a great substitute for loving, caring parents, but it will do.
Do we blame the families, or what passes for families, for not providing what all families should provide? Yes.
You can blame this failure of families on many things, economic poverty being one, but many families live in less-than-sustainable circumstances and their children do well. Being able to breed does not mean that you can become a responsible parent, and an irresponsible parent breeds kids that steal cars, etc. as well as providing a broken role model for future generations.
Parenting is not instinctive. It is learned from your parents. “Things change” but the structure of a family, the protective influence of predictability, rules of right and wrong are the basic building blocks of a stable society even when “things change.” The family is the teacher and the community surrounding the family enforce that teaching and shared beliefs.
This is not only a problem of urban America, you can find it in the suburbs and in rural areas, too. When there are no regular meals, no regular hours for sleep, no one to cherish the innocence and needs of a child, no one to establish and enforce rules that tell a child what is right or wrong, then we see stealing cars, using drugs, gun violence, etc. become the where-with-all with which a child finds meaning for his or her life.
It is easy to say that the “system” is responsible. Society has provided layer upon layer of resources to help individuals and families in trouble, but the basic ‘system” that underlies it all is family. When family fails, the other “system” steps in, often too late, a weak and often ineffective substitute.
So? Hold the parents of children who commit crimes responsible? Absolutely. But the parent or parents … too often only one parent … are part of a societal change that sees individual rights, privacy, children as “private property” conflicting with the ancient model of a community. That model had little to do with economic poverty.
A child, myself, growing up in a large urban area, was parented by my mother and father and my aunts and uncles and our neighbors as well as the teachers at our school. Right and wrong were defined not only in rules but in the enforcement of them. Get out of line and all of the above would step in. That doesn’t happen anymore. We mind our own business as if right and wrong behavior was not our business, as if children and parenting didn’t matter, the latter two being the system’s responsibility.
We used to be the system. The poverty now is a social poverty, the coin of which is a devastating loneliness and the loss of community … a frightening anomie.
