Friday, March 7, 2014
thoughts about statistics
Of interest to me as a result of the conversation in class on Thursday are the data sets which elucidate that violence and criminality rates are highest in areas of poverty or urban centers, and are even reported to be centered in these areas as the locus of its origin. Predominant in these areas are peoples of color. Psychological and anthropological studies alike report these findings. My curiosity about these statistics, after our discussion, is whether they exist and exhibit such high findings as a result of hyper-surveillance, or whether the presence of such statistics produced hyper-surveillance, or if either can be truly distinguished from the other.
Also interesting are the findings that in cases of non-nuclear families, single black mothers are reported to have the greatest positive influence upon their children. These single, black mothers are statistically demonstrated as being better at solving and resolving violent or criminal behaviors in their at-risk children. These children are deemed "at-risk" not because of their non-nuclear family, but because of the socio-economic position in which they are typically found, which is a resulting factor from the single parent, but not necessarily the fault of that parent. Cohort studies between single mother families in similar socio-economic positions demonstrated that black mothers were better than white mothers in teaching their children to avoid criminal or violent behaviors (see Garbarino Lost Boys or Way Everyday Courage for more information).
Similar studies also find that nuclear families, whose maintenance comes at the cost of the children, are more likely to produce children who engage in violent or criminal behaviors in both black and white communities.
My main questions revolve around the question of whether or not, as the statistics suggest, the relationship between hyper-surveillance can be clearly elucidated and, if they can, does the relationship between hyper-surveillance and criminality need to be refocused upon the dysfunctional nuclear families who seem to be producing higher rates of criminality? Hyper-surveillance, if unavoidable, seems to need an alternate outlet.
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Elyse, you raise a really good question and really interesting evidence to support your claim. I do believe that the statistics are skewed by the hyper-surveilance of people of color and lower socioeconomic communities. I'd like to see some studies that attempt to control for this variable to see where these crimes are really occurring more frequently. What I am more intrigued about is the purported dysfunction of nuclear families. I have taken infant and child development and adolescent development courses (in which we read Lost Boys and Way's Deep Secrets). Throughout these courses, I remember various discussions of the nuclear family. There were definitely arguments that maybe the nuclear family wasn't the best household structure (and arguments instead for extended families), but I don't think we came across any conclusive evidence that such a nuclear family was correlated to more negative outcomes. For example, the separation from extended families that is present in America's nuclear family does not seem to be the best for any involved. Extended families provide more caretakers (which means less day care), more adult role models for children, more life and usefulness for aging grandparents rather than them feeling like a burden to family, and more incidental learning for the children. From my knowledge, it seems that the "American Dream" consisting of a mom (who stays at home with the kids) and a dad (who brings home the bacon and not much else in the way of emotional support), 2.5 kids, and a dog dismantled the idea of the extended family living under one roof.
ReplyDeleteA major point of Garbarino's Lost Boys, assuming I'm remembering correctly, is that violent child and adolescent boys are not commonly of the status we might assume. Almost all of the students responsible for the major school shootings in the U.S. were from middle to upper-class white nuclear families. If that is the argument you are trying to make, I agree; however, based on Garbarino's book and not having read the Way book you refer to, I must disagree that nuclear families are necessarily a detriment to society. They may not be the best option, but they don't CAUSE negative outcomes. Without an experimental manipulation (which is ethically and legally impossible in this situation) in which you place sets of identical twins in nuclear and non-nuclear families while maintaining all other environmental variables (read: impossible), we cannot derive causation, only correlation.
Dysfunctional families are dysfunctional whether in single-parent households or nuclear families. I don't think we can say that the nuclear family is dysfunctional, just that there are dysfunctional nuclear families. Same for single-parent households: a single-parent household is not dysfunctional in and of itself, but there are dysfunctional single-parent households. Studies that tease these two apart and then look for rates of criminalization or incarceration are what's needed to determine (one of many) sources of criminality.
This is a really good point and is very interesting. I agree that most people believe that it isn't necessarily only the socioeconomic class that determines crime and poverty rate, but the fact that they were raised in an environment that they thought was "high risk." I'll admit that I was guilty of this for a while and believed that people who came from whole families had a much better chance to be successful than those from broken families. But the more I have thought about it and the more statistics I have seen show that his is not necessarily true. Many people in these "high risk" situations turn out to be great people and many people who have grown up with whole families turn to crime. I think that it is a factor but it is definitely not the only deciding one.
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