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Author	Topic: A Discussion About Street Gangs
IceCream Registered: May '08	Date Posted: 5/26 7:21pm Subject: A Discussion About Street Gangs - Date Edited: 5/26 7:51pm (1 edits total) Edited By: IceCream
	Well this is for a general discussion regarding street gangs. Items to be debated: How should gangs and other such mobs be dealt with? What are the dynamics (imperative to understanding what to do with them) of gangs, and the psychology of gang members? Why do gangs exist in the first place (why do people create/join gangs; related to the second point)? A discussion about gang activities (crime), and perhaps different types of gangs And also perhaps there could be a discussion regarding how gangs are related to bullying, gossip, and mob mentality in general.
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IceCream Registered: May '08	Date Posted: 5/28 4:05pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs - Date Edited: 5/28 5:15pm (4 edits total) Edited By: IceCream
	Well I'll just say that I think members of gangs in U.S. and Canada - two of the "It" countries - live in a fantasy world created by poverty of psychological development, and have no idea how to confront their inner demons. Thus they join other such people, in a sick social experiment. The individuals of gangs alternately attempt to befriend and destroy their inner demons - or destroy their inner demons, and befriend their inner virtues. Of course their inner demons/inner virtues are placed via projection onto other people - a common practice amongst every single human being, not just members of "gangs". But more specifically gangs do it by making loyal "alliances", to their gang or neighborhood; and then destroying/harming members of different gangs, or ordinary people, etc. I'm not surprised no one has yet said this about gangs. The word "gangs" usually has associations with the words "ethnic", "poverty", "crime", and so on - not "fantasy". It's a world of labels (which can often become excuses). Think gang names. People often get nicknames when they become gang members - these nicknames can sometimes be uncuriously childish, reflecting the fact that the bearer of the nickname is undergoing a dumbing down of their psyche. Maybe labels can help, like words - but like words, they can have a limiting effect. Maybe I'm getting a bit abstract here, but I hope anyone who reads this can follow me. How many times do we hear gangs happen because of poverty? I sincerely thought the U.S. and Canada were some of the richest countries in the freaking world. All you ever hear is excuses about poverty (money is also a state of mind, not just pieces of paper). Of course a person's income can suck horrifically if your job doesn't pay you that much, and for plenty of other reasons, including you not having a job. "Unforeseen" stuff can happen that can make you lose lots of money. But people act as if it's something you can't change, that people are either born poor or rich. If you have the right state of mind about money, you can be as rich as you want, in my opinion. It's like people construct safety nets so that they have an excuse if they fail. It's not unheard of at all for people who didn't see that much money to begin with, to become filthy rich. Money is a state of mind, why can't people see that? It was an invention a couple thousand years back or so. It has only existed for a relatively short period of time (albeit almost the entire time human beings have existed). If you think you can't afford it then you can't. And you will remain to not be able to afford it until you change the way you think. Money is a complex system of illusion, which allows people to become poor in many ways, at the same time allowing yourself a billion ways in which to become rich. Also, how many times do you hear the word "keep it real" in rap/hip-hop "culture"? Everyone should know by now that's the last thing poverty mentality wants you to do. Nowadays many people relate the word "gritty" to the word "reality". Many people, for whatever reason, think that being negative is somehow connected to maturity, or "world-knowledge". Well there's a culture of negativity in today's society, and it's a fantasy world. Because our society has become so complex, there is almost an innate desire to regress back to childhood (simplicity perhaps) - to walk backwards, doing things that don't make sense. We want things to be simple, so we dumb them down. I mean how many people have felt that their brain is falling out of their head when they watch TV/movies nowadays? And the violence in films - well to me, that just represents a desire to reduce our problems to a primal level. Unfortunately the problems we have in society nowadays are complex, and can only be dealt with in two ways - by engaging them on a complex level, or: going back to simplicity. I think the adult members of the U.S./Canada nowadays (and I guess I should include the U.K. and Australia and western Europe and such) are having massive difficulties in reconciling the things they learned in childhood with the things they learned as adults. I think the society we have nowadays is very kid-unfriendly. Also, I think people who join gangs are ignoring the macrocosm in favor of the microcosm. Something about this brings quantum physics to mind, the unpredictability of it. There's an exaggeration of amplitude involved (a magnification) - there's an "extreme" element to gangs - extreme violence, extreme indifference, etc. Again I think this is representative of an inability to face one's personal feelings in an honest way. If you were to think of a cultural "opposite" to a gang member, you would have to choose an astronaut (in my opinion). It would be muchly appreciated if anyone would actually make a reply to any of this, so this becomes an actual discussion. One last thing - David Lynch's (director of surreal films) Inland Empire was a pretty relevant assessment of modern culture's predisposition towards negativity, IMO.
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DarthLassic007 Registered: Nov '02	Date Posted: 5/29 1:01am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	To be honest, I'm actually glad when they kill each other. Whether it be a street or organized crime gang. I don't even know why the police bother to investigate. -----signature----- Veni, Vidi, Vici. - Julius Caesar
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Sauntaero Registered: Jul '03	Date Posted: 5/29 6:03am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	This is an interesting and highly necessary discussion topic. Once my exams are done, I'll try to chip in. If I can add an aside: what about 'fight clubs?' Are they a form of gang violence? Where the heck in our society does that come from?! Fight clubs And on youtube... -----signature----- I just hope I'm around to see the day the New Republic catches up with you. Whether they give you a medal or just shoot you--either way, it'll be a terrific show. Silvius hic Bonus est, sed Brito est Silvius idem: nemo bonus Brito est. --Ausonius, Epigram
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Saintheart Title: Manager and Wandering Swordsman of the RPF Registered: Dec '00	Date Posted: 5/29 7:04am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	From my point of view the gang phenomenon -- and the fight club phenomenon -- comes from one source: the lack of a real, nurturing, positive father or father figure at least. There have been several books on the subject. "Iron John" and "At My Father's Wedding" I understand are US texts, but my reading came from a book called "Manhood" by a Steve Biddulph here in Australia. I would encourage any young man to read any of these books, and read them carefully. It is because in most of these cases -- indeed in many cases in Western nations -- male children are starved of fathers they can look up to as role models. This is because of the way family units have evolved in the industrialised world. But we can see the symptoms of it easily: the overwhelming expectation of men in the Western world is that they must: (a) Frown on showing emotion, and keep it within; (b) Consider other men potential threats; (c) Refrain from openly displaying love to their male offspring in particular; (d) Keep their friendships with other men superficial; (e) Spend most of their waking lives away from their children at something called "office work". If you go to communities where young men are part of networks of significantly older men -- and I'm talking about networks of supportive, good male role models, not a bunch of paedophiles -- you see a much lower ratio of adolescent men out of control. This is because they have an example to learn from which is there more than 10% of the time. A vast, vast number of men's relationships with their fathers are stilted, or outright destructive, because of these factors and others -- including the way in which the fathers themselves were raised. A positive, supportive, loving father to a son is the greatest bulwark against that son becoming a gang member, because for all our delusions on equal opportunity and single-parent families, a mother cannot teach her son to be a man. Only a man can do that - just as a father cannot teach his daughter how to be a woman; it takes a woman to do that. The street gang is the unconscious desire in young men for role models to look up to. Because they are young men, they don't know what models are positive and which ones aren't; instead they see a powerful form of brotherhood, which is the counterfeit of the positive father they are unconsciously craving. This is a very big subject and one I don't have time to go into in depth, but my suggestion is this: for every gang member, go back and see what sort of fathering he received. I say that as distinct from parenting or mothering because ultimately, boys need a good father. It is grounded into our psyche. It goes far beyond being Dad with a tie around his neck at the head of the dinner table. It goes far beyond just taking the family to church on Sundays. It goes a hell of a lot further than playing the occasional game of catch with your kid once in a blue moon. After all, ladies: you spent much of your lives in your mother's company at home. From her you learned how to nurture, how to form and maintain deep friendships and peer groups with other women, how to communicate with other women, how to express and speak about your emotions. You learned this because that example was constantly with you, and the women around you had similar such examples in their own lives. Your brothers, your husbands, your fathers, for the most part did not. The men you love have spent much of their lives comparing themselves against other men, fearing assault or emotional humiliation in the playground from other men or boys, in superficial relationships with other men, competing against their fathers if not their friends, and sometimes discovering that the oblivion of drugs or alcohol is the only acceptable method for a man to release emotions. This is the legacy of our relationships with our fathers for the most part, with of course wonderful exceptions. This is what fuels the street gang: a perverted longing for a positive father or father figure. -----signature----- Michelle: my Italian queen, my angel, my reason, my wife. Jessica: my little princess, my daughter, born 10 August 2007 Director -- Star Wars: Knighthood
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Master_SweetPea Registered: Nov '02	Date Posted: 5/29 7:16am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	Saintheart posted: From my point of view the gang phenomenon -- and the fight club phenomenon -- comes from one source: the lack of a real, nurturing, positive father or father figure at least.... I agree that's part of the problem. But that's only part. You have to look at the mixed signals from the media. "Violence is BAD!!, but please go see this new summer blockbuster!" etc. Now if you'll excuse me i need to go take care of my kids -----signature----- I don't like the donkeys and I don't like the Elephants http://www.lp.org "Some people never have anything except ideas Go Do it! Lucky Numbers 3, 11, 21, 31, 41, 43"
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king_alvarez Registered: May '07	Date Posted: 5/29 7:34am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	IceCream posted: Why do gangs exist in the first place (why do people create/join gangs; related to the second point)? When a person's basic needs (such as food, protection, acceptance) are not being adequately met, they inevitably turn to something that can provide those things. For many, they find no solutions from family, community, or government, so they turn to whatever else may be available, a local group of likeminded peers. Eventually this may turn into a gang. I see very little difference between this aspect of gangs, the early mafia, and government itself. In this regard, they all serve to provide the same thing, protection and survival. Sure, there are many additionaly reasons for why people may join gangs, but it seems to me that the foremost reason for why gangs are perpetuated is because of the survival and camaraderie that they offer. -----signature----- Because there are no story-book romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, "What do you really want?" Because life... is not a movie. Everyone lies. Good guys lose. And love... does not conquer all.
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GrandAdmiralPelleaon Registered: Oct '00	Date Posted: 5/29 9:05am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs - Date Edited: 5/29 9:06am (1 edits total) Edited By: GrandAdmiralPelleaon
	I suggest you all take a look at the documentary about gangs "Why we bang" (aka L.A. Gangs). You can find it on 66stage.com under google documentaries. Gangs are something you're more often than not born into. They evolved from self-defence groups mostly, if you care about the history of it. Also, to the person who said that they're glad when they kill eachother .. you do realize that even these people have mothers, fathers, grandparents etc. right? The child of my girlfriends brother (her nephew in other words) was killed in gang related violence, and don't think they didn't try their hardest to keep him away from that sort of bull, even going so far as to put him in the country with his grandmother. Didn't work, once he was back in his old neighbourhood .. -----signature----- Vita vinum est. Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
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IceCream Registered: May '08	Date Posted: 5/29 1:58pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs - Date Edited: 5/29 2:59pm (1 edits total) Edited By: IceCream
	EDIT: This came out somewhat garbled. I agree with many of the things that people have said here. DarthLassic, you might be taking a very practical stance on it, but of course we know gangs sometimes harm innocent people that aren't part of gangs. And recruit innocent people, which then become gang members. I'm thinking on a preventative level - what cultural holes do we have to fill in order to stop gangs from forming in the first place? Sauntaero, I don't know about fight clubs. It seems like it's not dissimilar to boxing (I never watched that video you gave the link to, btw)...but then again people have raised issues with boxing. Saintheart, I'm sure you're right on the point that: if one would examine male gang members' backgrounds, one would find a missing positive male role model, in perhaps all instances. Is this the core, or even the sole deciding factor? I'm not sure...I would argue that bad parenting/role-modeling in general is to blame (among other, maybe more important factors). But there's a gender/sex (in both senses of the word) issue to gangs, oh yes, IMO. It seems all human societies in almost all time periods have had gender issues. I'll bet that many of these male gang members had issues with finding a female role model to relate to. I would say this may even be more important than the male role model issue. But there are female gang members as well (I think!), and the things you said about the male psyche could also be said about the female one. I'm sure that many women in our society grew up feeling alienated quite a lot - and couldn't relate to their mothers. I say this as a woman myself. I won't go into detail as I feel I'm getting off topic, but let's just say the world I grew up in felt like an extremely unfriendly world to me, at times. I mean when I was young and watching movies and TV where women are seemingly objectified, I must have been thinking to myself subconsciously "this is what's going to happen to me when I grow up". Not a nice thought. Yes I believe that most of the perceived differences between male and female psychology happened due to societal influence rather than biological. But on to something more important: you mentioned repression of feelings. Well I think I touched on that in one of my posts. Society is not very feeling-friendly nowadays. I believe this is as true for females as it is for males (despite all the "women are allowed to show their emotions" stuff). For me, repression of emotions is not just about hiding them, it's also about SUBSTITUTING ONE EMOTION FOR ANOTHER, DIFFERENT EMOTION. The media has been telling us in not-so-subtle ways that anger (and violence) is an appropriate reaction to nearly every situation. I think many people have taken their sadness/fear and turned it into anger. I think anger in this case is masking sadness, not just from other people but from the person that feels it. Anger prevents you from feeling sadness, in a way. This could also all be a result from society telling us that we're not supposed to dwell on things/complain about them (except of course, we're allowed to have violent, overwrought reactions to them). Unfortunately minimizing problems and comparing them to other problems doesn't make them go away, and many people ARE in pain, and they don't know how to deal with their problems. This has nothing to do with being unnecessarily negative. I believe in order to make pain go away, you have to feel it, all of it, and then let it go. Master_SweetPea, it seems society can't make up its mind. Yes we're getting mixed messages because people just don't consciously understand violence (though many claim to). king_alvarez and GrandAdmiralPelleaon, again the poverty/born into issue. I just see this as an excuse (and I've explained why) though I could be wrong.
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Saintheart Title: Manager and Wandering Swordsman of the RPF Registered: Dec '00	Date Posted: 5/29 7:04pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	If one would examine male gang members' backgrounds, one would find a missing positive male role model, in perhaps all instances. Is this the core, or even the sole deciding factor? I'm not sure...I would argue that bad parenting/role-modeling in general is to blame (among other, maybe more important factors). I wish I'd expanded on what I said earlier, now: IMHHO it is the core, simply because a child does not develop naturally on its own; it derives much of the way in which it relates to the world by example from its parents. And I'm not talking here about the stereotypical "Dad drank a lot and used to hit us", although that's the far end of the scale. What I'm talking about is what passes for the much more common father/son relationship: a relationship that is stilted, standoffish, one where much respect is often demanded without the demonstrative love that should create it. Where you're dealing with archetypical family unit where Dad goes off to work for eight, nine hours a day, that relationship is quite common -- because the father simply is not around. I'm not for a second questioning the father's commitment or internalised love, but I am questioning the idea that you can get by raising a son on only an hour or so of family time per day. If we suggested that a mother could do so only seeing her children for a similar period there'd be an outcry, so why do we tolerate it in relation to fathers? But there's a gender/sex (in both senses of the word) issue to gangs, oh yes, IMO. It seems all human societies in almost all time periods have had gender issues. I'll bet that many of these male gang members had issues with finding a female role model to relate to. I would say this may even be more important than the male role model issue. But there are female gang members as well (I think!), and the things you said about the male psyche could also be said about the female one. I would say this: fathers also have a very important role in the raising of their daughters, too, since invariably it is from their father's behaviour that girls derive their ideas about how men are "supposed" to treat women in the wider world. This is one of the big reasons that the children of abused mothers often wind up getting into relationships with abusive men -- because at an unconscious level they are conditioned to believe that an abusive relationship is normality. Also, I grant you that these male gang members probably had issues with being able to relate to women, but that inability comes primarily from the example set by their fathers or their male role models in life. I'm sure that many women in our society grew up feeling alienated quite a lot - and couldn't relate to their mothers. I say this as a woman myself. I won't go into detail as I feel I'm getting off topic, but let's just say the world I grew up in felt like an extremely unfriendly world to me, at times. I mean when I was young and watching movies and TV where women are seemingly objectified, I must have been thinking to myself subconsciously "this is what's going to happen to me when I grow up". Not a nice thought. At no point did I say that all women had sweetness-and-light upbringings. Frankly, I think you ladies still get it in the neck from the advertising industry, notwithstanding decades of campaigning that a woman is more than a biologically impossible hourglass figure with skin made of porcelain. Yes I believe that most of the perceived differences between male and female psychology happened due to societal influence rather than biological. But on to something more important: you mentioned repression of feelings. Well I think I touched on that in one of my posts. Society is not very feeling-friendly nowadays. I believe this is as true for females as it is for males (despite all the "women are allowed to show their emotions" stuff). For me, repression of emotions is not just about hiding them, it's also about SUBSTITUTING ONE EMOTION FOR ANOTHER, DIFFERENT EMOTION. The media has been telling us in not-so-subtle ways that anger (and violence) is an appropriate reaction to nearly every situation. I think many people have taken their sadness/fear and turned it into anger. I think anger in this case is masking sadness, not just from other people but from the person that feels it. Anger prevents you from feeling sadness, in a way. This could also all be a result from society telling us that we're not supposed to dwell on things/complain about them (except of course, we're allowed to have violent, overwrought reactions to them). Unfortunately minimizing problems and comparing them to other problems doesn't make them go away, and many people ARE in pain, and they don't know how to deal with their problems. This has nothing to do with being unnecessarily negative. I believe in order to make pain go away, you have to feel it, all of it, and then let it go. Hm. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to ... where's that familiar from? I think you're talking about the grief cycle -- how to fully finish with grief you have to experience some five stages or so in order, from shock, to grief, to anger, to bargaining, to resignation. My recollection may well be out there. I might say society has a history of repressing emotions at one time or another. The Victorian era in England was one such example where you had an emotionally repressive society that took misplaced pride in being a reasoning civilisation. I personally think the effects of that still echo down into today, but that's another story. I suggest you all take a look at the documentary about gangs "Why we bang" (aka L.A. Gangs). You can find it on 66stage.com under google documentaries. Gangs are something you're more often than not born into. They evolved from self-defence groups mostly, if you care about the history of it. Also, to the person who said that they're glad when they kill eachother .. you do realize that even these people have mothers, fathers, grandparents etc. right? The child of my girlfriends brother (her nephew in other words) was killed in gang related violence, and don't think they didn't try their hardest to keep him away from that sort of bull, even going so far as to put him in the country with his grandmother. Didn't work, once he was back in his old neighbourhood .. With greatest respect, it's a little bit difficult to respond to a personal experience which has insufficient detail or context to frame it. My response is made without that context. Firstly, I reject the idea that a person who willingly and frequently commits violence against another human being in a way as a gang member does is able to give a logical or psychologically valid reason for why they commit that violence. So you have to regard answers from the floor in that context. And being born into it does still suggest you draw your examples from the men or male role models around you -- men who have similarly fractured role models about how to behave. They might have evolved as self-defence groups, but a big part of their continued existence is the emotional security that being part of the gang brings -- because they do not have the same security from the male role models in their lives. Secondly, it is a dreadful tragedy when a child dies. Nobody can make any argument about that. Thirdly: with absolutely the greatest respect, a grandmother can no more fully raise a male child than their mother can. Boys, especially adolescent or teenage boys, need a fully present and active father figure even more than they do when they're small children. And even further, I would say: I would posit that one does not really become a man until you've cleared your teens and are most of the way through your twenties. There is as much growing and development between 21 and 25 as there is between 15 and 18, and a man needs his father around even more. -----signature----- Michelle: my Italian queen, my angel, my reason, my wife. Jessica: my little princess, my daughter, born 10 August 2007 Director -- Star Wars: Knighthood
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Darth_Smileyface Registered: Apr '04	Date Posted: 5/31 8:14pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	Saintheart, Your posts are as eloquent, intelligent and moving as any I have ever seen on these boards. Needless to say I agree with you entirely. I believe that most of the social ills we see today are a result of the broken realtionships between father and child, but especially father and son. In a society that is unquestionably patriarchal (somewhat less so now than say 100 years ago thanks to some enlightenment) the relationship a man has (or doesn't have) with his spouse and children is apt to shape their perception entirely. I also agree that there is a terrible double-standard in what we expect from men as parents. I am a single father of two young girls. Whenever this is revealed to someone they cannot fathom that I would take such an active role in my children's upbringing. They assume that the girls' mother must have died and thus that's how I gained custody. They assume that a man wouldn't want to be the primary caregiver if given an option. This is a perception we men have perpetuated as a result of our absence (spiritual, emotional or literal) in the family structure. While we would chastise a woman who abandons her children (as many do to my ex-wife) not enough of us do so to the men who abandon their responsibilities. Anyway, back on topic, I just wanted to finish by saying that this is not strictly a poverty issue as some had mentioned earlier. If you delve deeper you will see, as saintheart posited, that the common factor here is the role of the father in the social fabric. Let me wrap up with a personal anecdote. I worked as a correctional officer in a maximum-security detention centre for almost four years (long enough to get a good sample if nothing else). In that time I had the opportunity to participate in a study being undertaken amongst the inmates. Unfortunately, I don't have the results so take it for what you will, but almost ALL of the respondents reported broken, abusive or ineffectual reationships with their fathers. Most respondents thought favourably of their relationships with their mothers. Again, this is anecdotal evidence seeing as I can't link you to the specific study, but it really doesn't take a great scientific effort to see the common thread.
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LordNyax113 Registered: Oct '07	Date Posted: 6/7 8:53pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	I agree with alot said here. Gangs- and much of our society's problems in general- have ties to one major cause at the least: the breakdown of the family unit. No more dad working in the office, mom ironing and cooking, and the children happy in suburbia, all the while trying keep up with the Jones'. Now its divorce, moms having a career, children rebelling. -----signature----- Padawan of Aiel
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Vezner Registered: Dec '01	Date Posted: 6/8 4:59am Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	I agree. The breakdown of the family is, IMO, the #1 cause for most of society's problems these days. You want violence, crime, rampant extramarital sex, and other immoral and community destroying activities to decline? Fix the problems with the family. With divorce rates at an all time high, gay marriage on the incline (I bring this one up because two males or two females =\|= a mother AND a father), more and more single mothers/fathers due to extramarital affairs, the issues that Saint brought up earlier, and abortion becoming increasingly more accepted, it's no wonder our society is headed down the flusher. -----signature----- McCain 2008 I support the troops that are fighting and dying for our Freedom! Christians have rights of expression too. "The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing." --Edmund Burke
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DarthBoba Registered: Jun '00	Date Posted: 6/8 1:09pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	Yeah, whatever. No offense, but ** *. I was raised by a single mom. So have literally millions of other people. The vast majority of us are productive citizens. It's not due to "disintegration of the family" that our society would appear to be falling apart. It's because whole sections of our society just get written off because serious problems are easier to ignore than fix. -----signature----- Upstate NY: First-World Country, Third-World Infrastructure.
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Darth-Ghost Registered: Oct '03	Date Posted: 6/8 2:02pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	LordNyax113 posted: I agree with alot said here. Gangs- and much of our society's problems in general- have ties to one major cause at the least: the breakdown of the family unit. No more dad working in the office, mom ironing and cooking, and the children happy in suburbia, all the while trying keep up with the Jones'. Now its divorce, moms having a career, children rebelling. Vezner posted: I agree. The breakdown of the family is, IMO, the #1 cause for most of society's problems these days. You want violence, crime, rampant extramarital sex, and other immoral and community destroying activities to decline? Fix the problems with the family. With divorce rates at an all time high, gay marriage on the incline (I bring this one up because two males or two females =\|= a mother AND a father), more and more single mothers/fathers due to extramarital affairs, the issues that Saint brought up earlier, and abortion becoming increasingly more accepted, it's no wonder our society is headed down the flusher. Oh no! Moms are getting jobs, we can't have that! Children have never rebelled against their parents before that started happening! Seriously, saying that the family is breaking down and that it is the cause of our problems is very naive. There may be some correlating relationship, but it's not the cause. Also, there has also been violence, crime, extramarital sex throughout history, and probably at around the same levels we have now, the difference is that other people know more about it because of the media and the people being less secretive about it. Divorce is never a good thing, but two parents who hate each other always being together and fighting is more harmful to any children than them getting a divorce. I disagree that gay marriage is a bad thing, but that's not the discussion here. Also, many adults willingly choose to have kids without any intention of ever getting married. I remember hearing something like most unmarried women getting pregnant are not teens but in their late 20's and 30's, and that they actually wanted to get pregnant without marriage. Our society isn't heading "down the flusher," it's merely going through some changes, as society always does. In my opinion, poverty and education play an important role in kids joining gangs. But I also will agree with you that family has SOMETHING to do with it, it's just not as you think. It doesn't matter if a child is raised by a mom and dad, or by grandparents, or by a single dad, or by two moms. There's no perfect formula, kids raised in any of those cases could turn out good or bad. What matters is the kind of relationship they have with the people who do raise them, whoever they are or how many there are or what gender they are. It's not the people, it's the relationship, whether it is loving and constructive or not. A child could be raised by the traditional mother and father family unit, not have a good or healthy relationship with them, and have a more likely chance to go on to join a gang. Another child raised by a single mom, where their relationship is loving and happy, would probably have a much smaller chance of joining a gang. My mom is a teacher in the 3rd grade, and trust me, most of the troublesome kids' problems come from how stupid and immature their parents are acting, whether they're single or married, straight or gay. Which is usually because the parents themselves are not very well educated, or have lived in poverty for most of their lives and don't know any better themselves. It has nothing to do with if they are married or not.
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LordNyax113 Registered: Oct '07	Date Posted: 6/8 4:13pm Subject: RE: A Discussion About Street Gangs
	Both of the above posters are misconstruing my post, BIG TIME. For starters, I regret immensely that computer screens can't project sarcasm, because my last two sentences were slightly so. I made those statements to show the lucidicrous images evoked by the gilded fifties and early sixties. You know, the "ideal" suburbia. I do not believe in sexist, stereotypical roles, and I do believe in single parent families. I was raised in one. My point was that families, regardless of type, are breaking down. Who here isn't dissapointed with the lack of dedication to make marriages work? Or shocked more and more at the actions of abusive spouses? The divorce rate continues to remain high. I'm not saying children can't grow up to be fine citizens because they were raised in single parent families; but I personally will always remember the day my parents decided it wouldn't work and my father had to leave. But I'm not in anyway underrating the fantastic job my mother did on my own. And I still had a relationship with my dad. But you can not deny the drastic effects divorce can have on children. Secondly, by breakdown, I didn't neccessarily mean in literal breakups of the family. I'm also referring to the moral breakdown of the family. Say what you will, but many of todays parents are oblivious to what their children are doing, or realize until its too late. Both fathers and mothers again, can be involved in drugs, alchohol, or not around enough for the child. Even those parents who are trying their hardest to instill values into their kids are having a tough time, because they are losing the battle with society. Teens are getting mixed messages from society, ones that are different than those parents, teachers, and other role models. Celebreties don't help either, with the latest escapades of Lindsey Lohan, Vanessa Hudgens, or Britney Spears. Heck, even Miley Cyrus recently did a provocative photo shoot. Technology has changed the family, namely in communications. Teens are busy text messaging and using their computers, absorbed in their video games. Is there anything wrong inherently in these things? No. But the communicative relationhips in the family can suffer because of this. Lets not forget the economy. With higher costs of living, in many families both parents must work outside the home. This leads to less time together as families. It is now considered an anomaly to be able to eat dinner every night together as a family. Lives have become hectic, and through no fault of the parents or kids. You can not deny that todays familys face immense challenges in todays world. When families (whether nuclear or single parent, with biological or adopted children, black or white, rich or poor) are stronger, it benefits society as a whole. I'm not trying to be the eternal pessimist, because there are families who make it work, who raise their children to be good citizens. But it is increasingly tougher nowadays... -----signature----- Padawan of Aiel
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