Family Fact: Gang Girlz

Family Quote: Good Gangs?

Family Research Abstract: Joinin' the Gang

"Several recent nationwide surveys conducted by law enforcement agencies have estimated that between 8% and 11% of all gang members are female. This may be an underestimate, however, as surveys of at-risk youth in a wide range of cities have identified between 9% and 22% of females as claiming gang membership."

Of 522 single African-American females, aged 14 to 18 years surveyed, researchers found that only 21.6 percent of the adolescent girls lived with both parents, while almost three-fifths (57.5%) lived with their single mothers.

(Source: Gina M. Wingood, Ralph J. DiClemente, Rick Crosby, Kathy Harrington, Susan L. Davies, and Edward W. Hook III, "Gang Involvement and the Health of African American Female Adolescents," Pediatrics, vol. 110, no. 5 [November 2002], 57.)

"Steal away and stay away.
Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any.
Join the United States and join the family
But not much in between unless a college."

(Source: Robert Frost, "Build Soil," in Andrews, Robert; Biggs, Mary; and Seidel, Michael, et al, eds., The Columbia World of Quotations, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996; www.bartleby.com/66/, [accessed 28 July 2003].)  

Fatherless homes provide a wonderful opportunity for street-gang recruiters. Since the interests of street-gang recruiters do not coincide with those of public officials, however, these officials may see not opportunity, but disaster in the kinds of family backgrounds that receive particular scrutiny in a recent study of street gangs.

Based on research conduced by scholars from the medical schools at Wayne State and West Virginia University, this new study (published in Youth & Society) illuminates the importance of both family functioning and family structure in predicting the likelihood that adolescents will join an urban street gang. In survey data collected from 349 urban African American adolescents, the researchers discern clear indications that "strong family involvement" helps to "protect against gang involvement."

The survey data show that among the adolescents in this study "higher levels of family involvement, open family communication, and parental monitoring were significantly associated with non-gang membership." The authors of this new study view such findings as consonant with those of "other studies demonstrating the role of strong family relationships and the presence of caring and support as a factor associated with emotional health and in protection against involvement in high-risk activities."

Predictably, not all family configurations are equally likely to foster the kind of family ties needed to keep adolescents out of gangs: researchers limn a statistical linkage between family structure and likelihood of gang membership, with significantly fewer gang members than non-gang members reporting "living with both biological parents" (p < .05).

Nor should anyone underestimate the social costs when families fail to keep their teenage offspring out of gangs. The authors of the new Youth & Society study report that, compared to peers with no history of gang involvement, "youth with current or past membership in a gang demonstrated higher levels of risk behavior involvement, lower levels of resilience, higher exposure to violence, and higher distress symptomatology."