Too many boys from fatherless families end up calling juvenile detention facilities "home sweet home." It doesn't seem fair to make such a generalization, but if you work in a juvenile detention facility, you find out it isn't a generalization; it is a fact.

I have worked in a juvenile correctional facility for the past ten years. Our program consists of three phases: academic, behavior, and core group (counseling.) Part of the counseling program requires the youth (ages 14-18) to present their life story to their caseworker and group. In addition, there are files that outline everything from their criminal history to their socio-economic background and family status. In my years of experience, I have heard thousands of life stories from boys with troubled backgrounds. The number of these boys who come from a fatherless family and/or a dysfunctional mother and stepfather situation (or perhaps a live-in boyfriend situation) is staggering. Another surprising statistic is the number of "would be" fathers who "can't be" because they are incarcerated. A small number of the biological fathers are dead.

Some of the boys know their father. Some don't. Some tell me they don't want to know their father because the coward wasn't there. If the father didn't take an interest in his son's life at the beginning, why should the son believe he would take an interest later? What has this father given him to respect, admire or believe in? The offspring of such losers understandably feel resentment, shame and anger in regard to their father's absence. These feelings stir up a great deal of animosity in the life of a young boy. They feel they are missing out on the whole father and son thing. They may feel sadness and despair, but they grow tired of the pain, and that pain eventually turns into anger; anger that manifests itself in the form of juvenile delinquent behavior, crime involvement, and sometimes death by suicide.

One of the biggest problems for the boys is gang involvement; it runs rampant among youth from fatherless families. It is easy to understand why it happens when you consider the importance of male role models in their lives. In the absence of one, the appeal to join a gang is strengthened. There are plenty of adult males to look up to in a gang, and when the prospect of having money combines with strong males to look up to, the moral aspect of the situation becomes unimportant. Negative attention beats no attention in the mind of the boy who is starved for male guidance.

Is there hope for them? Of course there is. I witness success on a regular basis, but the unfortunate fact remains that the environment the boys return to often pose dire consequences to a well-intended plan for improvement. Only when the environment they return to changes do they have a probable chance for success.

Learn more about this author, Patricia Coffman.
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