While the literature review in chapter two did not cover the impact on families from having one or more of their teenage children involved in gangs it did highlight the importance of establishing quality social bonds and critical family functioning in the family home (e.g. being interested in the participant’s friends, school work, extracurricular activities, putting aside time for the participants, providing rewards for good behaviour, rules and so on) in order to deter them from anti-social behaviour (drug related behaviour, aggressiveness, dishonesty, intimidation, and waywardness). Most of the participants said that it was their family that pushed them into gangs. They explained that the lack of attention and intimacy provided by their parents and other family members contributed to them being drawn into gang life for a sense of belonging, support and connection. In some ways growing up in a situation where connectedness was to an individual family member rather than the whole family, where memories were more negative rather than positive family experiences, if participants saw violence as a way to resolve problems then they could have built up their immunity to violence and perhaps even copy the behaviour and apply it on anyone. By being gang members there were far happier memories such as a sense of belonging, being listened to and loved, and had access to all kinds of vices, not provided by their families. Choosing the gang over the family was a constant choice the gang
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members in this study had to make and for some it was a difficult decision for others it was easy. So the main questions I asked gang members was whether it was their “family” that led them to joining a gang and what were the effects of gang life on their family.
The effects of gang life on the gang members and then on the family they grew up in was widespread and far-reaching. The first and most persistent effect was the difficulty of leaving the gang after joining (e.g. Negro). Another effect reported by participants was the danger their gang membership brought to their family (e.g. Agitate). The third side effect was when the family was actually directly confronted by rival gangs (e.g. Dust). The fourth effect was the emotional impact that gang involvement brought upon their families (e.g. B-Red and Rasik). The final effect was the changes that occurred to the participant’s attitude and interpersonal development because of gang involvement which subsequently affected their families through abuse (e.g. Negro).
With regards to the first effect, Negro found it hard to ignore the attractiveness of gang life despite his parent’s warnings and pleadings and once he made a decision to join a gang it was hard to get out because he had made a commitment to be loyal to his gang rather than his family. The gang was his new family now.
“Cos I was too much in da hood aye like...fucken it just, it just took my soul away from me aye. Like being with the boys it was just I got into deep with the gangs stuff, going gang banging like I was slanging (see drugs) for them…”
(Negro)
In relation to the second effect, Agitate points out that he regrets choosing his gang over his family because he realises if he leaves his family could become an easy target for rival gangs planning revenge directed at him. So he decides to remain with the gang, even though he regrets it, so his family can be protected by his gang.
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“Just disappointing aye, choosing just the colour (the gang) over your family and your culture. But I worry if you’re gonna get jumped like people from the past that you’ve gave a hiding like…I’ve had guys say… gonna come burn your house down I know where you live….I know where you live, I know your family. Just worries you like when you come home and you just look at your family and they got nothing to do with it and they’re just being all happy but really they don’t know what you’re getting up to.” (Agitate)
The third effect was highlighted when Dust’s family home was attacked by rival gang member using firearms. Dust and his gang carried out a raid on a rival gang’s house and a few nights later his family home was shot up while his parents were at home. Bullets narrowly missed his parents while they were in the lounge as windows were smashed and walls damaged. The incident was not only reported in the national news but witnessed by other boys like Mynar (he’s in the same gang as Dust), who heard Dust’s mother screams and saw Dust’s father running around inside the house.
“...they saw my brother (Quest) walking and they just pulled up and pointed the gun at him then he jumped the fence and gapped it and yeah they were shooting and then they shot at the house, they shot the windows then gap... my mom and them were scared and I was just buzzing out aye.”(Dust)
The fourth effect was illustrated by gang members like B-Red who often thought about the effect his gang activities would have on his family, usually after getting arrested and waiting to be picked up from the police station. B-Red knew his family would be disappointed and ashamed because they had high expectations for them to be successful in their lives; instead, his parents faced the task of saving face.
“Yeah the leoleo’s (police) caught me and I just felt bad...I was like bro this is so embarrassing, it’s shameful on your family when, even when the extended family found out I was arrested and locked up they were sad cos they knew, they go ma’i mau le tino le lakapi (what a waste of a good body he had for
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rugby) or boxer... like everything I did for the boys... and when during I was locked up my sister told me mum cried every night.” (B-Red)
Rasik also thought about the humiliation he brought upon his family and the fuss his actions created for his parents. On top of this, he knew that his transgressions would extend beyond the family home to church, which would bring further ridicule upon his family.
“Ah for example I’ll get kicked out of school or I used to ring them from the police to come and pick me up like…at one in the morning…they came yeah these are the hard times, both my parents would come, their faces disappointed, I’m disappointed too just um probably feel ashamed about the thing that I done ah cos everyone else like people for example from my church gonna find out about it and they gonna go straight to my mom and yeah talk about my family.” (Rasik)
The final effect or emotional impact on families meant that not only did many gang members embarrass their families but their attitudes at home changed as well. Gang members said their families became concerned at the way they behaved at home and knew it was because of the friends they were associating with. For example, Negro said his dad picked up on it and said that he was becoming mischievous and disrespectful and that it was noticeable every time he came home after associating with the gang.
“Nah it was probably like yeah twelve years old when I went to school and yeah we formed that gang but every like midnight I just sneak out of the house go drink with the boys. My dad yeah he recognised a change in me aye and he like he didn’t know where I got this whole new attitude from and that and he used to start giving me hidings...” (Negro)
Overall the effects of gang life on the participants and their families centred on the participant’s choice in putting the gang first over their family which would have been a decision based on negative family socialization experiences so most of the participants said that it was their family that pushed them to joining a gang. Despite the attractiveness of
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gang culture (friendships, socializing, supporting, surrogate family, and access to vices) had on the participants they still thought about their families and growing up alongside their parents and siblings. Still it was difficult to leave the gang once they joined. Rival gang members knew who they were and eventually they would find out where their family lived and who their family members were. Continuing to stay in the gang, they believed meant protection for their family and embarrassment to the family’s Samoan status and integrity. Being a gang member also brought personality and attitudinal changes to their character where Samoan cultural values like respect, honesty and obedience was redirected away from applying it to their family toward the gang they joined instead.
Families get caught up in the world of gangs because of their children’s involvement and this was not what the gang members in this study intended, they wanted to keep their gang life separate from their family and home life. And yet a few of their fathers were former gang members while their older siblings were still active so few participants followed their family member’s footsteps. So an unintended reverse effect is that families are one of the reasons that their teenage children join a gang. The effects of gang life for the family and vice versa are complex and contain many dynamic factors contributing to what the participants shared about their family socialization experiences and how some of these influenced their decision to join a gang.
4.4 Chapter summary
In closing, there are strong indications in the participants’ experiences of family socialization that could explain their choice of being a gang member. According to the participants it was in their relationships with other family members, in the critical events they experienced, and in the various ways they became exposed to gang culture. If participants grew
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up in family homes where there were high levels of intimacy and regular occurrences of attention and interaction then there should be equally high levels of connectedness, trust, and sense of belonging. It seems this was apparent when the participants were children; somehow the closeness they initially had to their family began to diminish in importance and relevance.
There were positive signs of connectedness early in their childhood where family got together to celebrate a special event or one of their parents spending time with them like watching them play sport. There may be something to Samoan males being tracked into particularly physical, collision sports, such as rugby (perhaps not so much in swimming) that reify the same types of stereotypes tied to gang membership. For instance, the racialized stereotypes that Samoan males are physically big, explosive, tough and so forth, but not intellectually sharp in the classroom is not only a highly gendered social phenomenon but could also push Samoan males into both rugby and delinquency.
Nevertheless these early positive memories of connectedness and closeness were scant and for those participants who mentioned them it was obvious they were very important to them. It was not until participants are asked to share a highlight and a low point during their life course where there are more negative than positive memories does one get a sense that this aspect of family socialization probably had more of an impact on participants choosing to join a gang. Especially events such as witnessing family violence during childhood, receiving excessive use of force in physical discipline and punishment during adolescence, watching their family breakdown and break up, and grief are all very intense traumatic experiences. For some of the participants account of fathers being abusive to their mothers it reflects levels of patriarchy that have impacted them not only in the form of learning to solve problems through violent means, but also seeing violence as a particularly masculine
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behaviour and a gendered story to this thesis. More and more negative memories were being absorbed that eventually positive memories withered away and new ones were overshadowed. If this happened then participants would seek happiness and gratification elsewhere like a gang.
By the time the participants were teenagers the decision to join a gang could have been made easier if family socialization experiences were mostly negative. It is an important transition because as a child they would have done more listening and observing but as a young person they began to test and apply what they had remembered listening to and observing. Some would remember how problems were solved through violence and others through alcohol and substance abuse. Some would behave one way at home and another way outside of home. They began to lead double lives, act out various personas, and maintain a balancing act both in the family home and in the gang. The bonds they had built with a trusted parent or older sibling may have subsided and been substituted because family was no longer held as important but shared with gang members. The negative memories that dominated their childhood may have lost its impetus as new positive memories flow-in from their gang participation. So the decision to join a gang could be justified but then there are problems with this situation as well such as family homes being targeted by rival gang members and attitudinal changes like being disrespectful, dishonest and deceitful.
The findings seem to corroborate many of the theoretical literature’s explanation of the link between family socialization and youth gang and delinquency. Delinquency theories purport that strain (personal, financial, social, cultural), control (self-control and social control), and learning (replicating and modelling) factors, when these are integrated and studied over the life course, explain why young people join gangs. There were many instances where participants experienced extreme cases of strain, particularly personal and emotional stress from excessive physical
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discipline and punishment, from witnessing family violence, and the loss of a loved one. When there is too much stress in the family home the socialization experience is affected. One of the family home’s responsibility is to ensure its family members are controlled through, for example, house rules. Over time these house rules could succumb to overwhelming stress and the control that the family home has over its member’s wanes. For example, when parents tell their teenage children not to join gangs and then later their family home is shot at by bullets that narrowly miss them can cause a lot of stress and affect the control that the family exacts. Or if the parents are away for long periods working their teenage children are neglected, house rules are disobeyed, and they end up spending time with the neighbourhood’s kids who introduce and teach them to alcohol and drugs; how to consume and sell it. A few of the participant’s older brothers did this, while other participants learned how to be a gang member because their father or older brother or both were former or current gang members.
Finally, if Samoan young people are to be prevented from joining gangs then initiatives, programs and strategies need to target the family institution and improve its family functioning and family structure. It should be an early intervention and prevention plan that target parents and educates them on how to relate better to their teenagers and also target young people on Samoan cultural dimensions such as absolute deference to parents. An interesting feature of the findings is that despite the participants choosing the gang over their family, most were still living at home and a few of them helped cook meals, clean up, and run errands. Even though they were gang members they were also sons. Another interesting feature is while most of the participants shared horrific stories about the kinds of physical discipline and punishment they received from their parents only a few participants wanted to report it while the others took it as a part of growing up. There are more accounts of this unique phenomenon in the next chapter but the participants should not be the
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only focus of intervention albeit social policy and/or social work. Without an ethnic minority perspective that contains aspects such as an awareness of cultural socialization processes, cultural strains (e.g. rejection of Samoan culture), lack of control by cultural institutions such as the aiga (family) and fa’asamoa, and lack of acknowledgement in passing on to the next generation the significance of learning cultural values such as respect and humility; understanding why Samoan young people join gangs will not be fully realised. Family socialization is one of the keys to understanding Samoan young people’s participation in youth gangs and delinquency; the others are cultural and societal socialization in the next chapter and gang socialization in chapter six.
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Chapter 5 Cultural and Societal Socialization
5.0 Introduction
Socio-cultural socialization is another important factor in understanding Samoan young people’s involvement in youth gangs because it is not only in the family home where explanations might be found but also in their cultural backgrounds as well as social institutions outside of the home. In other words the development of their Samoan cultural identity is one form of socialization, whereas their experiences in schools, church, and the neighbourhood community where they lived are other essential socializations that could all provide possible reasons. Generally, cultural socialization is the transfer of linguistic and knowledge (cultural practices) particular to their identity that distinguishes them from another ethnic group (Ballantine & Roberts, 2011; Harro, 2000; Saracho & Spodek, 2007). This cultural knowledge is then internalized by the learner and moulds him/her into thinking and acting the way their culture does (Hughes & Chen, 1999; Hughes, Bachman, Ruble & Fuligni, 2006; Phinney & Chavira, 1995; Umaña-Taylor & Fine, 2004). Societal socialization is similar particularly in the process of learning where instead of internalizing cultural values the learner internalizes social norms (this is how things are done e.g. travelling in a residential street is 50km/h only) and social control (school regulations, church obligations, and safe community living) (Fox, Lidz & Bershady, 2005; Parsons, 1964a, 1964b, 1966).
Amongst the twenty-five gang members interviewed the majority (18) were born in New Zealand and the rest (7) in Samoa including one in