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GlossaryA Father’s Role in Thwarting Crime
June 20, 2021Many winters ago, New England sunk under snow, passing a Russian speaking family up a hill, all of us on cross-country skis, them perhaps not realizing I understood them. I’d put their boy at 5 or 6.
Look at Kolya, it’s too steep, he will fall, said the woman, probably mom.
Then he falls, said the man, probably dad.
Evident was what child development specialists refer to as the father’s unique role in facilitating “rough and tumble” play, a critical element in building resilience. Of course, a father’s role goes deeper than that, based on both data and personal experience.
Regarding the data, a 2002 study of inmates revealed 40% of them grew up without a father; 85% of children with behavior problems are from a fatherless home, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Overall, statistics suggest having a present father seems to generally be a good thing. My podcast conversation with Roger Johnson poignantly describes the opposite. While a disruptive economy is essential for wealth creation, a disruptive childhood is not.
Regarding personal experience, some readers know the story of Raising a Thief. In 2001, my wife and I adopted a 16-month old child from Russia. I wrote a book about the experience and am speaking today at 3 pm on lessons learned on “What Happens Next In Six Minutes,” a sort of compressed Ted-talk-like format.
Three observations stand out.
1. The roots of conscience, curiosity and reciprocity begin with the relationship of child to primary caregiver. This is called attachment. This process was first documented by English psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 1930s. When this bond is ruptured, a child’s brain changes; they can exhibit anti-social behaviors, like lying, stealing, even homicide.
2. A family with a difficult member often requires structural shifts. While the specific challenge varies—mental illness, alcohol dependency etc.—a difficult family member forces a reckoning. In our case, I had to up my game.
3. An ounce of prevention is worth pounds of cure. Once a child has been damaged, it can be surprisingly difficult to treat. The US spends 0.5% of GDP on early childhood intervention, below the OECD average. After our experience, I think the risk/reward of early childhood investment is meaningfully undervalued.
More below.
Lesson #1 – The roots of conscience, curiosity and reciprocity begin with the relationship of child to caregiver.
The next time you watch a parent with a very young child, pay close attention. The micro interactions may seem banal. They are anything but.
I witnessed this scene with friends last week: an infant getting a bath, defenseless. Whoops! The infant slipped in the tub, got scared at the sudden movement and squawked. Mom instantly picked her up, wrapped her in a dry towel and said, “you are OK.” The child calmed down. Neurologically, something fundamental just occurred, trust was built in mom and the world.
Dr. Bowlby was trying to understand why children steal. At the time, psychiatrists were in the thrall of Freud and believed childhood theft was due to repressed sexual desire. Bowlby found in many cases, the tie to the thieves’ primary caregiver had recently been severed due to death, illness, or war. Bowlby asserted theft was a “childhood disease” like mumps.
Others have built on his work. Bowlby focussed mostly on mothers, not surprising given the time. The father is also crucial. Before we took our daughter in, she had been starved. While she was lying in a Russian communal apartment, her screams for food unanswered, her brain was being re-wired. She developed what’s called an “attachment disorder.” The birth mom was stripped of her maternal rights. Where was Dad?
The earlier attachment is damaged, the worse the effects, suggested Bowlby.
Such kids are emotionally disjointed, even if physically and intellectually robust. Like many mental health issues, the severity exists on spectrum. My wife was kidnapped as a child in Pakistan. Yet my wife is not only intact but flourishing. The difference, according to Bowlby’s theory, is the timing of the disruption. My wife was 8.
Lesson #2 –– A family with a difficult member often requires structural shifts.
When we adopted our daughter, we were ecstatic. My wife and I had been married six years. We had an adorable, biological son so we were broken in as parents. I worked as a banker, my wife as a teacher. We lived in the leafy, well-educated enclave of Brookline, Massachusetts. We knew Russia well. My wife is Russian. We met when I worked as a reporter there in the early 1990s.
We almost immediately encountered challenges. When our daughter could walk, she ran away. When she learned to talk, she began to lie. When she was old enough to be out of an adult’s field of vision, she stole. These behaviors continued right through to adulthood when she was convicted of fraud. Many of her early transgressions were, in isolation, insignificant. She lied about tooth brushing, homework, hand washing, cleaning up her room, logging onto another family member’s computer, laundry, petty theft, bullying others, etc. All kids lie. Our daughter had no other way of interacting.
This forced us all to shift. In particular, I had to up my game. Too often I had dismissed my wife, who was faster at seeing what was going on with our daughter. I would tell my wife to “calm down” and be “logical,” which led to awful fights. As an adult, I have also had to set firm boundaries with our now adult daughter. There are conditions to unconditional love, both in terms of what I had to expect from myself and others.
Lesson #3 – Early childhood education is a great bang for the buck
My wife and I tried every intervention modern medicine has to offer––psycho-therapy, behavior modification, pharmacology, residential treatment, wildness therapy, parenting coaching, diet, neuro-feedback. Nothing fundamentally changed the underlying behavior.
Dr. Bowlby believed early intervention was key. While we took our daughter to a leading hospital in Boston and had a team of specialists evaluate her, no one either warned us about the risk or, once symptoms were present, accurately diagnosed her until she was 9. Too late.
My conclusion is that you want to do everything possible to prevent this from happening. What Geoffrey Canada has done with Harlem Children’s Zone makes the most intuitive sense to me, though I am no expert in his work. What I do know is that they begin working with families the moment the child is born in the belief that “today’s newborns as tomorrow’s college graduates.”
I generally share an investment implication in these posts. My experience and the data suggests it’s harder to accumulate wealth if your childhood is chaotic and investing heavily in early childhood seems like a wise way to even the playing field. My motto is socialism for infants, personal responsibility for adults and part of that personal responsibility is for Dads to recognize their power, even if it is sometimes expressed in something small, like letting a kid tumble down a hill.
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