By 1990, parents were, on average, available to their children 10 hours less per week than they were in 1980 and 40 percent less than they were in 1965. ³²

The third characteristic shared among the vast majority of violent juveniles is family instability. ³³ Research has shown that in most cases, family stability can trump negative influences that might otherwise lead to a child's violent behavior. For each individual violent juvenile, any number of influences can contribute to violent behavior; i.e., rejection by peers, failure at school, mental or emotional problems, low self-image, early childhood trauma. When researchers study juvenile violence, they try to determine what characteristics or outside influences are responsible.

Does a certain temperament lead to violent behavior? Do certain physical anomalies make some kids prone to violence more than others? Does a child's physical or mental make up determine whether he will grow up to be a violent juvenile? The answer, according to the best research, is "it depends." It depends upon the child's family. In the war against juvenile violence, research shows that there is no more effective weapon than a healthy family.

To take just one characteristic as an example, researchers Sarnoff Mednick and Elizabeth Kendel studied the impact of a child having certain neurological damage on the development of violent behavior. This neurological damage has been linked to violent behavior in some juveniles. But why do some children who have this damage avoid the violent behavior so often associated with it? The difference, according to Mednick and Kendel, is family.

A stable family life serves as a "buffer" to help shield kids from the forces (biological or social) that contribute to violent behavior. A child's family is in many ways his first and last "line of defense," especially in the socially toxic environment that permeates youth culture. Researchers at Columbia University and St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City connected the erosion of family life as a primary cause of teen violence. They said that the family is important because it "constrains adolescents within the bounds of community values. The change in the family structure - the rise in single-parent households and the dispersal of the extended family - leaves less time, patience, consistency, and flexibility in rearing children." ³⁵

The negative effects of divorce, single parent households, illegitimate births and fatherlessness on children have been amply documented. The data clearly shows that children in homes where both biological parents are present have a much lower incidence of behavior problems and criminal activity. The vast majority of violent juveniles come from broken homes, usually a single-parent household headed by the mother. ³⁶

A study by criminologists at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin concluded that family disruption - either through divorce or illegitimacy - leads to greater incidence of crimes such as mugging, violence against strangers, auto theft, burglary, and other crimes. ³⁷

In a 1994 study in Albuquerque, public health researchers investigated the social background of elementary schoolchildren involved in violent behavior. Statistical analysis revealed that "compared with matched control students, children who exhibited violent misbehavior in school were 11 times as likely not to live with their fathers and six times as likely to have parents who were not married." ³⁸

This isn't to say that kids reared in living arrangements other than a two-parent family will automatically grow up to be violent juveniles. Such a conclusion would be incorrect. Nor is it accurate to conclude that a child who grows up in a two-parent home is guaranteed not to become violent. In fact, the killers at Columbine High School both came from two-parent homes. So what is it that makes the difference?

Most experts agree that what traditionally has been the advantage of the two-parent home can be summed up in one word: time. Adequate time with parents is critical for the development of every child, especially for self-esteem and confidence. The amount of conversation and the level of interaction between parents and children has an enormous impact on the child's development. It is stating the obvious that the more time a parent and child can spend together, the more influence the parent has in shaping the child's values and behavior.

But parental time with children is becoming increasingly scarce. By 1990, parents were, on average, available to their children 10 hours less per week than they were in 1980 and 40 percent less than they were in 1965. ³⁹ Work obligations and career building have pulled parents away from their children. Lynn Jamieson, head of the sociology department at Edinburgh University and author of Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, says that the problem of absent dads is "acute." According to her research, many dads are spending an average of only 15 minutes a day with their children. Says Jamieson, "The increasingly common 10-hour-a-day jobs leave almost no time at all for family life." ⁴⁰

The problem is not uniquely American. Other countries are facing the same dilemma. The Sunday Times reports:

In a Massachusetts Mutual poll, 33 percent of parents said they did not spend enough time with their preschool children and 46 percent said they did not spend enough time with their teen-agers. ⁴²

Juvenile crime is directly linked to children being unsupervised. Dr. James Fox, Dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, stated at a recent congressional hearing on juvenile delinquency:

The growing trend in two-parent homes for both parents to work full-time, even when their children are very young, diminishes not only the time that a child is "supervised" by a parent, but also the time that it takes for the child to form healthy attachments to his parents. Child psychologists argue that this attachment is absolutely vital in a child's healthy psychological and social development. ⁴⁴

Garbarino states that developmental science and theory point to a fundamental fact: human development proceeds from attachment in the first year of life. By just nine months of age, babies have formed a specific attachment to one or more caregivers. Studies show that a child who does not experience this attachment process, is at great risk of experiencing difficulty connecting with other people. According to Garbarino, the majority of violent juveniles share this early childhood problem. The first few years of their lives are marked with inconsistent care, abandonment and parental absence.

The number of two-parent families where both parents work has risen dramatically over the past 30 to 40 years, as more women have entered the labor force. With more and more parents spending less time with their children, the greater the chances are for attachment problems to occur at early ages, for supervision problems to occur later in life, and for a "toxic" culture to have increased influence on a young person's development.

In each stage of a child's life, parental involvement is highly important. Even beyond the early "attachment" years, through adolescence and into adulthood, children need parents to help them make their way through a myriad of changes that will shape their character and establish their values. If parents do not spend time with their children, their values will be shaped largely by their peers and by popular culture.

As Dr. James Dobson, child psychologist and founder of Focus on the Family notes, "The heavy demands of child rearing do not slacken with the passage of time. In reality, the teen years generate as much pressure on the parents as any other era." ⁴⁶ The adolescent years are wrought with incredibly high levels of activity and emotions, creating a ripe environment for stress to overwhelm a family. It takes enormous amounts of energy and time on behalf of parents to manage these exciting but tumultuous years in a child's life. In adolescence, as in every stage of a child's life, the importance of parental involvement remains constant. Children, of all ages, need their parent's time.

Conclusion

Spiritual emptiness, a toxic culture and family instability are all coming together to create a lethal prescription that, as the news stories sadly remind us, is amassing a growing list of victims. Secular society's vacuum of transcendent themes and meaningful existence is being filled by a brutally violent ethic. This toxic combination, coupled with parental absence, has created what many young people have decided is an "intolerable world." Unable to cope with the pressures that such a world presents on a young soul, some have acted out with shocking, violent behavior.

These are the root causes of juvenile violence. Until we as parents and as a society address these issues, we will continue to read headlines that shock and disturb us, but we should not be surprised. Kids need the hope that is found in religious faith; their innocence needs to be protected from a poisonous culture; and they need a mom and a dad who, as child development expert Urie Brofenbrenner has said, "are crazy about them." ⁴⁷

Juvenile Violence

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Spiritual Emptiness

Part 3: Family Instability

Part 4: Toxic Society

Endnotes

³²Patrick Fagan, "The Breakdown of the Family: The Consequences for Children and Society," The Heritage Foundation, 1998.

³³Garbarino, p. 73.

³⁴Ibid. See Sarnoff Mednick and Elizabeth Kandel, "Genetic and Perinatal Factors in Violence," Biological Contributions to Crime CausationaI, (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff), 1998, p. 121-134.

³⁵Jonathon L. Sheline, Betty J. Skipper, and W. Eugene Broadhead, "Risk Factors for Violent Behavior in Elementary School Boys: Have You Hugged Your Child Today?" American Journal of Public Health 84, 1994, p. 661-663.

³⁶See Karl Zinsmeister, "Raising Hiroko," The American Enterprise (March/April, 1990), pp. 53-59. See also Judith Wallerstein, Surviving the Breakup: How Children and Parents Cope With Divorce (New York: Basic Books), 1980; Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 1994; Darin R. Featherstone, "Differences in School Behavior and Achievement Between Children from Intact, Reconstituted and Single-Parent Families," Adolescence 27 (1992): 1-12.

³⁷Marilyn Elias, "Studies Find Dads Make a Difference," USA Today, August 24, 1998, p. 1D.

³⁸Patricia Cohen and Judith Brook, "Family Factors Related to Persistence of Psychopathology in Childhood and Adolescence," Psychiatry, November 1987.

³⁹Patrick Fagan, "The Breakdown of the Family: The Consequences for Children and Society," The Heritage Foundation, 1998.

⁴⁰John Harlow, "Men Give 15 Minutes a Day to Children," The Sunday Times, May 23, 1999, Home News Section.

⁴¹Ibid.

⁴²Patrick Fagan, "The Breakdown of the Family: The Consequences for Children and Society," The Heritage Foundation, 1998.

⁴³James Allen Fox, testimony at a hearing on juvenile drug use, Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, December 20, 1995.

⁴⁴See Dr. Isabelle Fox, Being There: The Benefits of Stay-At-Home Parent and accompanying bibliography, (Hauppauge, NY: Barron's), 1996.

⁴⁵Garbarino, p. 39.

⁴⁶Dr. James C. Dobson, Solid Answers (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1997) p. 319.

⁴⁷Urie Brofenbrenner, "Discovering What Families Do," David Blankenhorn, Steven Bayme, Jean Beth Elshtain, eds., Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the American Family (Milwaukee, WI: Family Service America

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