INNER-CITY male youths remain at highest risk of turning into criminals, as fathers remain largely absent from their lives as role models and protectors.

Of the 30 inner-city male youths, aged 15 to 24, interviewed as part of Dr Herbert Gayle’s Complete Snapshot study, only one (three per cent) identified his father as being the person he spends the majority of his time with and who is, therefore, his primary source of influence. That youth is also the only one in the category who is at university.

Sixteen or 53 per cent of the 30 such youths who were sampled, identified their friends — who include community dons — as being the persons they spend the most time with and who, therefore, are their primary sources of influence. Importantly, these youths are also the ones with only one source of influence.

It is a dismal reality, according to Gayle, who said it does not augur well for an end to crime in the inner city and Jamaica as a whole.

“A number of studies show that three-quarters (75 per cent) of boys want to be like their fathers and more than half of girls want to be like their fathers. So once a father has a job and is stable and spends a lot of time with his son, that boy is most likely to be stable,” Gayle, an anthropologist of social violence, told the Sunday Observer.

“It is not the same thing for his mother. So the mother can have a stable job and thing, but the boy is still problematic because the mother is not a role model for her son. Very few boys choose, (for example), the careers of their mothers,” he added.

“Professor (Barry) Chevannes’ 2001 study “Learning to be a Man” discusses the influence of the street versus the home. He found that the influence of the mother cannot beat the influence of the street. For inner-city males, there is a war between the home and the street. A boy from the inner city who beats the influence of the street usually has a male influence somewhere. A male teacher, pastor and uncle are the three we usually find in studies. So when a mother comes out and says ‘is me and God alone’, it’s a lie…” the researcher said further.

Fathers, Gayle said, need to wake up to this reality and spend more time with their sons, especially those in the inner city. Certainly, many of them provide financial support for their sons, but simply not enough of them are there emotionally or to provide guidance.

The Complete Snapshot data — which sampled 240 youths from five rural communities, and Kingston and St Andrew — shows that some 20 per cent or six of the 30 inner-city male youths interviewed identified their fathers as their primary source of money.

“But then, that 20 per cent (who have their fathers as their main) source (of financial support) drops to three per cent (one) when it comes to being the main influence for a youth in a war zone. What the hell?” observed Gayle.

Meanwhile, several inner-city male youths without parental influence, in the absence of friends, opt to go it alone. Eight, or 27 per cent of them fall into this group.

“It better you live alone. When you have friends and they die, it is too painful… Also, he who stays alone keepeth his life here,” the study — done as part of Gayle’s talk show The Complete Picture, aired between noon and 3:00 pm Mondays to Thursdays on Newstalk 93 FM — quoted one male youth from the inner city as saying.

It is a statement that bears testimony to fact that “in the sense of loneliness, the urban poor are the most likely to isolate their young men — inner-city males and working class males”, the study noted.

Conversely, upper and middle-class male youths — another category of youths sampled — are protected by their parents and are more likely to have the benefit of two or more sources of influence.

Sixteen, or 53 per cent of the 30 upper and middle-class males sampled have two or more sources of influence, according to the data, while 14 or 47 per cent enjoy at least one source of influence. Their mothers top the list of these sources of influence and Gayle said there is little wonder why.

“It’s patriarchy… Patriarchy means that they (parents from the upper and middle classes) have to groom this young man to take over the business. The father is a businessman and he is traveling all over the world, so the mother’s role is to ensure that the next patriarch is OK,” Gayle said, noting that of the 30 male youths in this category, 12 are from business families and all of them are close to their mothers.

Upper and middle-class females were found to be close to their fathers with whom they spent most of their time.

“They are daddy’s pet,” Gayle said simply, in explanation. “And they are not being groomed to take over the business.”

The situation with inner-city male youths, the University of the West Indies lecturer said, is deemed even more dire when compared to upper and middle-class male youths and even the 30 urban working-class male youths interviewed — seven, or 23 per cent of whom identify their fathers as the person with whom they spend the most time.

“There has to be intervention… from (entities such as) the PMI (Peace Management Initiative) and all of these. There has to be intervention also (in terms of) skills training and just mentoring (and) apprenticeship just for these guys to have somebody other than a criminal to show them the way forward,” Gayle said.