Absent Fathers and Delinquent Sons among the African American Families

Abstract

Father son dyad has been one of the important research areas when it comes to psychology and family relationships. This importance is a result of the overt emphasis being given on a family structure that constitutes of a mother and a father with their children. This is the model that is accepted as being the consensual model of a good family and anything different from it is considered an aberration which in the end in linked to some social problem arising primarily due to the lack of the model family structure, which carries out various important functions like socialization of the new born, with family being the first socialization agent, which in turn helps in development of the young ones into good socialized beings. In 1949 the American anthropologist George Peter Murdock published the results of a major survey of kinship and social organization in a worldwide sample of 250 societies. Murdock’s starting point was the family, and on the basis of his survey he argued that the nuclear family is universal, at least as an idealized form. this and many such researches marks the acceptance of nuclear family as the true model of family and this was conveyed through many mediums and channels which had an effective and quick access to the minds of the people