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Lost Boys Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them by James Garbarino Anchor Press 274 pp.; $13, paper

Throwaway Dads Throwaway Dads: The Myths and Barriers That Keep Men from Being the Fathers They Want to Be by Ross D. Parke and Armin A. Brott Houghton Mifflin 252 pp.; $24

James Garbarino's Lost Boys and Ross Parke and Armin Brott's Throwaway Dads were both published shortly before the Littleton, Colorado massacre in April 1999. Both books aim—albeit in different ways—at understanding and reversing such violence whether it occurs in the small towns of America's heartland or in the inner–city neighborhoods of Detroit and Los Angeles. In the process, they shed light on other hotly contested matters—gender differences, fathering, the impact of divorce—with implications that evangelical Christians in particular should heed.

Risk accumulation

Garbarino's approach to understanding how violence arises in young males is twofold. He reviews the empirical literature on correlates of violence in children and, to give dry statistics a human face, shares some results of his one–on–one conversations with murderers in youth prisons run by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services. Two important points that emerge from this are the concept of "risk accumulation" and the close relationship between homicidal and suicidal tendencies. Risk accumulation refers to the progressive likelihood of violence as various negative factors get added to a young person's life. Thus, statistically speaking, a boy's chances of committing murder are doubled if his family has a history of criminal violence, if he himself has a history of being abused, if he belongs to a gang, and if he abuses alcohol or drugs. The odds triple if, in addition, he uses a weapon, has been arrested, has difficulties at school and a poor attendance record, and has neurological problems (possibly the result of previous abuse pre– or post–natally) that impair thinking and feeling.

To these external social risk factors can be added related internal ones: psychological conditions such as depression and shame or, conversely, an inflated sense of self that can lead to a narrowly circumscribed idea of what constitutes personal injury deserving of retribution. Then there are cultural factors: violent media; a gun culture so ubiquitous that two–thirds of American teenagers say that they could get access to a gun within an hour; the dearth of positive adult role models; and schools which even if they have high standards and dedicated teachers are often so large that adequate social integration of all students, especially those at risk, is well–nigh impossible. Finally, there is what Garbarino calls the "spiritual emptiness" of our age—the sense that life has no meaning individually or cosmically. This is compounded by the failure of adults to connect children to "non–punitive" forms of religion that can supply firm but loving adult mentors when needed, and a foundation of hope for the future.

The concept of risk accumulation allows us to see what binds inner city and suburban young killers together. It is not that the particular types of risk factors are exactly the same in every community. But they tend to constitute overlapping sets, and as the total number of risk factors rises the more likely violence is to take place. No more than 10 percent of violent youths are psychotic in the sense that they have lost touch with reality and are delusional. The rest—regardless of location—are responding with a twisted logic to accumulated pressures that most of us have mercifully been spared.

This does not mean that they should not be held accountable for their actions, Garbarino is quick to add. But if there is to be any hope of redeeming them, we also need to understand them. Some are caught up in dangerous Catch–22 situations, as exemplified by one of Garbarino's young informants who said "If I join a gang I'm 50 percent safe. If I don't I'm 0 percent safe." As a result of temperamental vulnerability combined with poor early attachment to caretakers, others fail to develop normal human empathy. Instead they come to see life through the lens of self–entitlement and a "deadly petulance" according to which the slightest evidence of "dissing" becomes the occasion for a fight to the death.

Why boys kill more than girls

A final common pathway of these varied packages of negative influence is the frequent conclusion that life is intolerable, which is why it's often a toss–up for a violence–prone boy as to whether he should kill someone else or himself. Sometimes both are orchestrated to happen at once, as we saw in the Littleton killings. Garbarino notes that the expression "suicide by cop" is used to describe how some armed young men provoke an impossible confrontation with law enforcement personnel with the intent of getting themselves killed. Overall, about 15 percent of American high school boys have seriously considered suicide, and around 5 percent have attempted it. Girls in fact make more attempts, but since their preferred mode is overdosing with pills, whereas boys are more likely to use guns, more boys succeed in killing themselves.