As social creatures, we all need to belong to some kind of family – and not necessarily in the traditional sense. It could be a bunch of friends, or an after school study group. Maybe “The Boys” are your family, or your band, or the bingo night golden girls. Perhaps it’s your local dog walking group. It could be your church, your pub quiz team (that finishes last every week), or a gym bro that never lets you skip leg day. Any of these can be family… and it could also be a gang. The correlation between fatherless boys and those who join a gang is an unpopular topic, but it’s also one that ought to be discussed. Because tragically many young boys without a father go looking for structure, for protection, leadership and ‘family’ elsewhere – leaving many vulnerable to gang recruitment. “They look for young, angry kids who need a family”, said the former Neo N*zi, T.J. Leyden. It was in World War II, that the same method was used within the Hi*tler youth; who often recruited fatherless boys and isolated them in camps for training. These broken and brainwashed boys that “sprang like wolves against tanks” in the war, were fearless fighting machines - who even if encircled would fight until the last boy was killed. Killed by men old enough to be their fathers. We see the same again in many terrorist groups, across the world, including the Middle East We see it too in the fraught expression and empty eyes of so many high school shooters. “I wish I had a father”, posted Anthony Sims before he became the Oakland shooter. The hole in the heart of fatherless boys. And too often these hurt boys, hurt us. Behind all this tragedy is the realisation that dads are not clowns, or baby-sitters, second class parents or social punching bags for our lame jokes and gibes, nor are they the laughing stocks of the family. They are often, beneath it all, essential members of a household, just as much as mothers, and especially to boys. So what can be said about our lost boys, and how do we bring them back? ~ Images by Ryan Price, Donny Jiang, Matthew Henry, Rachel Mcdermott, Levi Dier Clancy, and Ray Zhou from Unsplash.

2023-04-11