I never know how to treat family “issues” on the blogosphere, but since this current situation is shaping a new theory I’m working on (and because frankly, this story is so over the top), I’ve decided to share it here.

I’ll start with the headline “Eleven Arrested, One Tasered, During Manchester Drug Bust” – and now you can tell where we’re going. In that day’s newspaper, there were actually three different stories about drug busts in CT, but this one involved my younger brother.  In fact, he’s almost the star of the article

MANCHESTER — Police arrested 11 people and seized more than a pound of marijuana, plus $7,796 in cash, during a drug bust Monday that included a violent struggle.

Many of the arrests were the result of drug dealing in the Spruce Street area of town, where undercover officers from a regional task force had bought marijuana, crack cocaine and heroin over several months, police said. One of the arrested people is accused of having children sell drugs near a school. In all, police served 28 warrants.

Millard “Marquise” Jackson, 19, of Oak Street was shot with a Taser by officers when he resisted arrest on a warrant charging him with selling marijuana to an undercover officer in the Spruce Street neighborhood. He continued struggling after being Tasered, police said.

When officers got Jackson under control, they found 86 bags of marijuana on him, police said. Officers added charges of possession of marijuana, possession with intent to sell and resisting arrest.

Yeah so that’s my bro. And while I could go on and talk about how hard his life has been (which is has) and his issues with mental illness, the fact of the matter is that my brother is his father’s son.  And I expect to see more stories like this for at least another 10 – 20 years.  And at this point, I’m trying to figure out how I want to deal with this, or if I want to deal with this.  Because I’ve been here before, and I’m not looking forward to doing this again.

So where does this theory come in?  The last time my brother was incarcerated he blew up my phone.  He called multiple times a day, told me how much he loved me and told me he was going to turn his life around.  Now rewind about 15, and this is exactly how my father behaved.  Much like my father, my brother pretty much calls when he needs something (the last time was to read a contract for a record deal that never worked out) or he disappears for months.  And like how I felt with my father, I’m used to him being gone and silent because that means that he’s fine. Fine here is relative, because for a long time with my father, and for the next 10 – 20 years for my brother, fine means running around in the streets doing things that are most likely illegal.

Long story short, some (a lot of?) sons who grow up without their fathers mimic their behavior as adults. I’m not sure that this has actually been written and this may be where I need to start. But I know a lot of nonresident fathers grew up without their fathers.  (Not knowing your father may make it hard to “prove” that they act in similar manners).  Anyway the theory that I want to work on involves the daughter’s relationship to her brother, who now acts like her father.  How does she act?  How should she act?  By this point in life,  I’ve had about 23 years of dealing with my dad acting crazy and simply do not have the patience to humor this behavior in my brother.  But I am unsure if this is the norm.  I need to flush this idea through… or just write my dissertation, graduate and then flush this idea through, but I wanted to put it on paper.

peace,
e.

jeez i wrote this last week and never posted. lame.

So everyone’s asking if I read the NYT’s article, In Prisoner’s Wake, a Tide of Troubled Kids.  Yeah I read it and I did not like.  As a child of a parent who spent most of my childhood in jail or cracked out, I turned out fine and I am tired of reading all these articles about how kids growing up in single parent households are screwed for life.    This is defeatist.  Yes, fathers are important to a child’s well-being but if a father is not there, that does not mean that child has no chance of  a positive upbringing.

I had many problems with the article.  The article appears to say create difference categories in father absence by protraying a parent is jail as more damaging to a child’s well-being than a child whose father just isn’t around?  In both cases, a child does not have a father.

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

Children who grow up with fathers, whether they are in jail or not, are all at risk of low educational attainment, risky sexual behavior and violence.   I don’t understand the need to create levels of father absence as if one reason a father is gone is better than another.  They are all damaging.

We are introduced to the “Incarceration Generation,”   children who grew up with at least one parent in prison and the article.  The two children of the Incarceration Generation interviewed for this article are, in my opinion, extreme examples.  Herbert Scott, who is 20 with a child and was awaiting sentencing for drug possession and robbery.  By the end of the article, he was in jail.   Then there is Terrisa Bryant who also had a child and was a high school dropout.  I get it, the prospects are dim but it is not hopeless.  Why not at least provide an example of a child of an incarecerated parent who was jail bound, a young (single) parent, or a drop out.

The article feels like CNN’s Black in America – providing no new information to the Black community, downplaying the positive – specifically Adam Gaine’s story – to focus on the negative Herbet Scott and providing no solutions.  I would have rather read about how Gaine’s beat his addiction and how he got into (and stayed in) a program to train him to become a fitness teacher.  I am not interested in Scott’s oh to common story of coming out of jail, talking about how he wants to be there for his kids and then winds up back in jail within a year.  I don’t need to read that.  I don’t want to read that.  I would rather read about programming or policies that reach out to these children offer assistance.  I would have rather read about programming that successfully reintroduces Black men into society and assists with training and housing.  I would rather read about policies to loosen licensing restrictions to ex prisoners so that even low skill men can acquire jobs and make a decent living.

The article ultimately ignores a glaring issue – why are these men going to jail in the first place?  It makes little  mention of extremely harsh drug laws, and no mention of  the limited employment of ex-felons, the impact of low educational attainment on potential earnings, lack of support upon reentry to society, I could go on for days.  To place the blame solely on parents who are incarcerated is dangerous.

peace,
e.

So I was perusing some blogs and someone mentioned this one – some single women choosing the single mother route.

“I don’t need a man to have a baby. I don’t have to find “The One” and fall in love and get married to procreate. My body doesn’t actually care if Cupid has shot my heart straight through with arrows. Love and sentiment technically have nothing to do with the fact that since my menstrual blood began I have been able to have a baby — whenever I want.”

This concept is not new to me, it just frustrates me.   Yes, one doesn’t need a man to have a baby but so much research shows the benefits of two parents.  I was raised by a single parent, and it was ideal considering what my father was up to, but that wasn’t the choice that my mother intended to make.  I haven’t met anyone of my mother’s generation that willingly had a child on their own.  They either divorced or broke up, but we all came from a relationship.  I’ve met quiet a few successful Black women who have said that if they aren’t married by a certain point in their life they were going to have a child on their own.  To each her own.

And I know where this thinking comes from.  It’s no secret Black women are least likely to marry.  And I’m sure these women will make amazing mothers, who will love their children unconditionally and do everything they can to give their child anything they could ever want or need, but that’s not for e. Given my line of research, I can’t, in good conscience, just have a baby just to have one.  If I have a child I want to bring it into the most supportive, loving and stable enviornment I can.  And to me, that means in a stable, happy and functioning marriage.

peace,
e.