DESPERATE MOTHER PLEADS FOR A MENTOR FOR HER SON

A few weeks ago, a reader e-mailed me after reading a column I wrote
about troubled youths. She told me that she was struggling to find a
man to mentor her only child, a 16-year-old son.

She said his father was more into drugs than his son, and that most of
the agencies she had contacted could only offer him a place on their
waiting lists.

"I am a single parent and my son is spiraling down a dark tunnel," she
wrote. "Do you have any suggestions of where I might be able to find a
male mentor for my son?"

I inquired as to whether she had asked co-workers or fellow
churchgoers to help. She said she had asked two men at her job, but
they couldn't help because their plates were already brimming with
family obligations. The men she asked at her church, she said, never
responded.

She ended her plea with "Sincerely, Desperate/deflated
parent."

Soon afterward, she wrote to say that her son had snuck out of the
house in the wee morning hours - in an act that smacked of a gang
initiation - and robbed a woman.

Now he's sitting in jail, along with shattered bits of his future and
his mother's heart.

My reader's plight touched me.

First of all, it puts to rest the notion that behind every kid who
drifts into criminality lies an irresponsible or uncaring parent; a
parent who can't look up from The Young and the Restless long enough
to care if their child winds up in the system instead of college.

Still, it saddens me that my reader is having to rely on strangers,
rather than her son's father, to help her rear her child.

That's not right.

"I've always tried really hard, and I've struggled as a single
parent," said my reader, who asked me not to reveal her name to
protect her son's identity.

"But I believe that one of the reasons that my son is getting in
trouble is because my son is very, very mad because of the rejection
he's received from his father ..."

Ronnie Cage, who teaches responsible fatherhood via Project MALE (Men
Advocating and Leading by Example) and the Jacksonville Children's
Commission, says my reader isn't alone.

"There are a lot more mothers who are out there screaming like her,"
Cage told me. "Those screams are a cry out to the fathers ... this is
a Father's Day cry out.

"Why should a woman have to do this? Why should she have to beg
someone to help her raise her child?"

My reader shouldn't have to do that.

Of course, no one knows for certain whether her son would have
rejected crime if he had a responsible father or other male figure in
his life. What is also known is that, many times, a strong father can
counteract peer pressure, the kind that might influence a youth to
commit crimes.

"The gang doesn't become his role model," Cage told
me.

Still, many obstacles stand in the way of some fathers being
fathers.

Drug addiction, for example, can take any father out of his child's
life. But one huge reason why so many fathers, and black fathers in
particular, aren't present in their children's lives is because they
have warped notions of what manhood is.

If they don't have a job or money, they don't want to come around.
They measure their capacity to be good fathers by what's in their
wallets, and not by what's in their hearts.

Others feel devalued in a society that they believe denies them
opportunity or dignity. They settle for the act of fathering to
validate their manhood - and give up the responsibilities of
fatherhood afterward.

Cage tries to show them otherwise.

Perhaps if a mentor had stepped up in time, that mentor might have
inspired my reader's son to work on building his academic record
rather than a juvenile record. And we do need more of them.

But as I said in an earlier column, mentors are still
volunteers.

That's why one key to turning this problem around is to change this
idea of what fatherhood is supposed to be about; to help wayward
fathers feel the same pain that my reader feels by being forced to beg
strangers to help her do the job that they should be doing.

From what I can tell, Cage's efforts seem to point the way.