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Listen to thisYouth often use significant events in their lives as developmental pathways or “rites of passage" to serious antisocial behaviors. A youth’s progression along these pathways can be arrested and even reversed through positive rites of passage that are guided and supported by prosocial adults.
When I met Juan in 1989, he was 16 and classified by the Miami police department as a serious habitual juvenile offender. Juan's history with family and institutions included being abandoned by his mother shortly after his fifth birthday, expelled from the Dade County schools at age II, injured in a gang fight that left him physically disabled by the time he was 12, and rejected by most social service agencies due to his repeat offender status. I was working in Miami at the time with federal SHOCAP (Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program), and Juan was considered by his probation officer to be a perfect candidate for interagency monitoring under the program. My first task was to determine Juan's eligibility by interviewing him and the professionals who had worked with him over the years. With each interview, it became clearer that Juan had become increasingly disruptive and antisocial as he progressed from childhood through adolescence. Juan confirmed these reports by admitting that as he got older, he involved himself in more serious acts of aggression against family, friends, classmates, and adults.
Prompted by a daily journal, Juan described proudly many events that contributed to his aggression. According to Juan, these acts were almost always tied to significant events in his life. Some of these events involved separation like the day he was sent by his mother to live with a despised aunt. Juan reacted to these problems at home by finding a “family" in a neighborhood gang, confirming the opinion of at least one researcher that most gang problems are homegrown (Howell, 1998).
A male offender in “street skills," which he used to complete his first successful petty theft, Juan also talked about periods of transition from one exclusionary program to another, usually involving schools, during which he would respond with overtly aggressive acts including attacks on classmates. And according to Juan's journal, covert criminal acts like robberies and shootings, committed when he was older, increased his status in his street gang and were followed by “good time" celebrations where he was often recognized for his accomplishments by the gang’s leadership.
Rites of Passage
Juan's self-reflection offers insight into how youth can use
significant events in their lives as pathways or “rites of passage to
more serious antisocial behaviors. Authorities have frequently described
such significant events, especially in children's lives, as rites of
passage (van Gennep, 1960; Turner, 1969; Myerhoff, Camino, & Turner,
1987; Warfield-Coppock, 1992; Delaney, 1995; Harvey & Rauch, 1997).
Rites of passage mark distinctions in an otherwise continuous life
course, celebrating and facilitating change and the disruption of
standard social categories, while at the same time preserving them. This
ritual process achieves a shift in consciousness that parallels the
youth’s new social standing (Myerhoff, Camino, & Turner, 1987).
For most groups and societies, rites of passage for young people usually include benign forms of separation, preparation, transition, and acknowledgment (Delaney, 1995), and are based on life-affirming needs for acceptance, ceremony, and recognition. But in certain cultures, including our own, these rites can become pernicious. For example, the rites of cicatrization (the inducement of scars), genital mutilation, and teeth gouging practiced today in some primitive cultures are analogous to modern forms of extreme body modification, needle sharing, and gang initiation rituals that involve committing violent or criminal acts.
Without prosocial adults to support and carefully guide these rites and rituals, youth may upset the delicate balance that exists between rights and responsibilities, causing what they may perceive as fights to degenerate into a license to act where crime, violence, and victimization follow (Garrison, 1988). The recent shooting death of a 1 6-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, for example, was described as an initiation act for a new member of a rival gang (Nirode, 1997). Another young man described his transition into puberty without adult guidance in this way:
"I was restless and school was boring; being good was like I’d been missing out.. What mattered was to experience life, so I tried everything there was. My first time of taking drugs, of drinking myself incapable, of having full sex with a girl – they all happened with a rush, within just a few weeks of me being fourteen." (Parker, 1995, p. 32).
Developmental Pathways
Juan's recounting of his own life events and personal acts also
indicates how the classic rite of passage elements of separation,
preparation, transition, and acknowledgment can go awry when not guided
or supported by the community. For example, without a separation ritual
fostered by significant adults, Juan's traumatic detachment from his
mother contributed to problems at school and eventually led to his
escalating gang involvement.
The experiences of Juan and other young people with chronic misbehaviors that become sequentially more harmful to themselves and others parallel the research of Roif Loeber. Loeber and his colleagues articulated a developmental model to describe how children progress from disruptive to criminal behaviors (Loeber & Schmaling, 1985). According to these researchers, some children follow specific developmental pathways that lead to increasingly disruptive and delinquent behavior. Especially in boys, these behaviors are displayed in a methodical, progressive manner with less serious problem behaviors preceding more serious ones.
Loeber found that these increasingly disruptive and antisocial behaviors in childhood and adolescence roughly follow a sequence of progressive activity from difficult temperament to criminal recidivism (Loeber, 1990):
Difficult temperament
Hyperactivity
Overt conduct problems and/or aggressiveness
Withdrawal
Poor peer relationships
Academic problems
Covert or concealing of conduct problems
Association with deviant peers
Delinquency and arrest
Recidivism
Loeber’s theory was field-tested beginning in 1986 with a longitudinal investigation in Pittsburgh, involving repeated contacts with the same male juveniles and their primary caretakers over a substantial portion of their developmental years (Huizinga, Loeber, & Thomberry, 1993). This research inquiry, later known as the Pittsburgh Youth Study, confirmed that for the males studied, less serious forms of delinquency developed into distinct behavioral pathways that often steered individuals toward more serious criminal activity.
The Pittsburgh Youth Study also found that boys who never progressed beyond the first stage of any pathway reported very low offense rates during the prime delinquency ages of 13 to 16. However, as soon as boys started to develop their disruptive and delinquent behavior characteristics along several diverse pathways, the rate of serious offenses increased (Kelly, Loeber, Keenan, & DeLamatre, 1997).
Pathways and Resilience
The developmental pathways model proposed by Loeber (1990) argues that
disruptive behaviors are both age-dependent and sequential. Children
have an innate ability to consistently display disruptive and antisocial
behaviors even though the behaviors are disclosed differently with
increasing age. Yet although these behaviors may be antisocial, they
nevertheless help to define the nature of resilience in children.
We learn from young people like Juan that resilience is not necessarily pretty, social, or lawful. Resilient qualities can go beyond accepted social norms and even toward criminality when a child's circumstances become desperate or unsupported by caring adults. If a child is left alone or exploited by nefarious others, resilient traits surface to help him or her to survive hostile environments. When human children are forced to care for themselves, like some primates, because they have been abandoned by caregivers, species-specific resilient behaviors begin to emerge. These behaviors can acquire special meaning for the children and adolescents who use them and, as a result, often become ritualized. When these ritualized, resilient behaviors become disruptive, adults and their institutions, rather than listening, observing, and supporting, too often choose instead to discipline, medicate, or punish.
Developmental Pathways as Rites of Passage
The seeming paradox that exists between resilience and harmful behaviors
can be unraveled by understanding the need for structured,
multiple-component prosocial rites and rituals directed by adults and
supported by community. Developmental rites of passage can assist
children and adolescents in choosing prosocial pathways if adults
support age-appropriate rituals based upon contributing resilient
qualities.
For example, Steven Venable (1997) studied rites of passage programs that incorporated mountain climbing and backpacking. He concluded that “the rites of passage structure represents a significant and positive possible resource for growth and transformation in the lives of adolescents" (p. 12). African-American male teenagers living in high-risk environments were found to greatly benefit from comprehensive Africentric rites of passage programs described by Harvey and Rauch (1997). And Cassandra Halleh Delaney (1995) states:
Increased opportunity for young people to participate in appropriate rites of passage may be achieved by updating traditional ceremonies, continuing and expanding rites of passage programs and including bibliotherapy as part of the high school curriculum. It is hoped that these efforts will result in a decrease of self-destructive behavior and a greater sense of fulfillment for the young people coming of age in America. (p. 897)
The destructive developmental pathways that Loeber and his colleagues describe can be the avenues that Juan and his peers follow in order to survive a culture that fails to nurture or support them with ritualized activities that recognize the importance of childhood separation, preparation, transition, and acknowledgment. But with adult-directed rites of passage programs that incorporate ritualized resilience and developmentally appropriate activity, children like Juan can discover their strengths and share their gifts.
Rites of Passage Programs
Prom Catholic confirmation and Jewish bar and bat mitzvahs to the Mormon
mission, most religions have traditionally incorporated rites of passage
rituals into their faiths. However, emphasizing the importance of
prosocial rituals for young people. Nevertheless, one program that has
succeeded is the Boys and Girls Club of Stockton, California’s “Rites of
Passage" effort to initiate boys in the requisites of manhood (Boys and
Girls Club, Inc., 1998).
Using a council of elders, parents, mentors, schools, community based organizations, and the faith community, the club’s “Rites of Passage" program offers middle school youth the opportunity to gain important skills for adulthood. In this program, participating youth complete an application and assessment followed by youth and parent training, once-a-month Saturday family days, and field trips to expand their cultural awareness. Adopted recently by public schools and supported by community leaders, this passages program is designed as a social recovery plan for parents and youth, using 9 rites to reduce risk and increase the following protective factors:
Rites of Passage along Prosocial Pathways
In a recent address, U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley discussed
issues of violence and fear in urban, rural, and suburban schools
(Willerton, 1995). Riley challenged the nation to create new “rites of
passage" for youth threatened by a culture that too often glamorizes
violence. By exploiting the potential of positive developmental pathways
through programs like Stockton's “Rites of Passage,"- adults are
rediscovering the importance of directing children's innate resilient
abilities through prosocial rituals that guide a young person's sense of
possibility and responsibility.
References
Boys and Girls Club, Inc. (1998). Rites of passage. Stockton, CA.
Delaney, C. (1995). Rites of passage in adolescence. Adolescence, 30(120), 891–897.
Garrison, K. (1988, winter). Educated rites of passage. School Safety. pp 10–11.
Harvey, A., & Rauch, 5. (1997). A comprehensive Africentric rites of passage program for black male adolescents, Health and Social Work, 22(l), 30–37.
Howell, I. (1998).Youth gangs: An overview, Juvenile Justice Bulletin. washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Huizinga, D., Loeber, K.. & Thoroberry, T. (Eds.) (1993). Urban delinquency and substance abuse: Technical Report. washington, DC: U.S. Department oflustice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Kelly, B., Loeber, K., Keenan, K., & DeLamatre, M. (1997). Developmental pathways in boys disruptive and delinquent behavior. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Loeber, R. (1990). Developmental and risk factors of juvenile antisocial behavior and delinquency, Clinical Psychology Review, 10(l), 41.
Loeber, R., & Sebmaling, K. (1985). Empirical evidence for oven and covert patterns of antisocial conduct problems. Journal of Abnormal child Psychology, 13, 337–352.
Myerhoff, B., Camino, L., & Turner. E. (1987). Rites of passage. The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: Macmillan.
Nirode, J. (1997, October10). Family blames gang rile in slaying, Columbus Dispatch.
Parker, T. (1995). The violence of our lives: Interviews with American murderers. New York: Hensy Hole.
Turner. v. (1969). The ritual process. Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press.
U.S. Department of Education. (1998), Early warning, timely response: A guide to safe schools. Washington, DC: Author.
van Gennep, A. 0960). The rites of passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
Venable, S. (1997). Adolescent rites of passage: An experimental model. Journal of Experimental Education, 20(1), 6–13.
Wartield-Coppock, N. (1992). The rites of passage movement: A resurgence of African centered practices for socializing American youth. Journal of Negro Education, 61, 471–481.
Willerton, S. (1995, January 30). Riley to salute ,math Olympians as second annual state of American education speech, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education
This feature: Garrison, Ron (1998) Developmental Pathways as Rites of Passage. Reaching Today's Youth. Vol.3 no.1 pp.33-36
