Beyond Their Absence: Male Intergenerational Social Ties and Community Informal Social Control

• Author: Mark T. Berg,Barbara D. Warner
• Published date: 01 August 2020
• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022427819900288
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Beyond Their

Absence: Male

Intergenerational

Social Ties and

Community Informal

Social Control

Barbara D. Warner

1

and Mark T. Berg

2

Abstract

Objective: Examine the degree to which adult male social ties with

neighborhood youth, or intergenerational ties, increase the perceived

willingness of residents to engage in the informal social control of children.

Method: Survey data from approximately 2,200 residents in 64 neighbor-

hoods along with neighborhood census variables are used to examine the

effects of male intergenerational social ties with youth on informal social

control. Multilevel linear regression equations adjust for measures of social

ties, social cohesion and trust, lagged official crime rates, and the propor-

tion of residents that are males. Results: Male intergenerational social ties

with youth are found to be an important and unique source of informal

social control of children net of other forms of neighborhood social orga-

nization, and informal social control of children is shown to decrease

1

Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

2

Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Iowa, IA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mark T. Berg, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Iowa, Iowa City,

IA 52240, USA.

Email: mark-berg@uiowa.edu

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2020, Vol. 57(5) 535-570

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022427819900288

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neighborhood crime rates. Conclusions: This study provides support for

assumptions implied in the urban underclass and social disorganization lit-

eratures regarding the positive role of male ties (outside of the family) in

collective crime prevention capacity.

Keywords

communities and crime, informal social control, social ties, systemic model,

male social capital

A core concern of criminological inquiry addresses how organized groups

regulate violations of their own norms and punish those who break the rules

(Pfohl 1994). This broader concern is reflected in social disorganization

theory’s seminal focus on informal social control as the central concept

explaining variation in crime and delinquency across communities. The last

two and half decades have produced much research supporting the relation-

ship between neighborhood informal social control and crime levels, but the

social processes underlying informal social control continue to be the focus

of theoretical refinement and development.

Traditional versions of social disorganiza tion theory viewed poverty,

racial heterogeneity, and residential mobility as fundamental structural

threats related to the social processes necessary for building community

informal social control. However, contemporary social disorganization

models that emerged in the late 1980s found female-headed households

were also an important structural characteristic associated with decreased

informal social control (Sampson 1985, 1987a; Sampson and Groves 1989).

This focus emerged partly from the urban underclass literature that placed

increasing emphasis on the implications of female-headed households for

communities (e.g., Wilson 1987). Theoretically, female-headed households

weaken the community’s regulatory capacity because they produce lower

levels of supervision, guardianship, network ties, and organizational partic-

ipation. These various deficits in regulatory capacity were thought to result

from increased numbers of absent fathers in the home (Krivo and Peterson

1996; Sampson 1986, 1987a; Wilson 1996). As important as the addition of

female-headed households was in contributing to our understanding of the

structural determinants of informal social control, this “deficit” model of

men (i.e., the idea that the absence of men was consequential for community

organization) surprisingly failed to awaken curiosity about how, or if, men

may potentially contribute more broadly to neighborhood social

536 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 57(5)

organization. As a result, the role of men within communities, beyond their

absence within the household and as fathers, has been undertheorized and

rarely quantitatively examined within social disorganization models.

There is a rich and large literature on the role of fathers in relation to a

variety of issues related to youth development, including delinquency (e.g.,

Lamb 2004; Marsiglio et al. 2000; Popenoe 1996; Simons, Simons, and

Wallace 2004); however, there has been limited theoretical development

regarding the role of men within the broader community context in relation

to informal social control and crime prevention. Indeed, as Wilcox Roun-

tree and Warner (1999) note in their study demonstrating the importance of

female ties for crime control, particularly in neighborhoods where female-

headed households are low, males do seem to bring something of

importance to controlling crime. As the authors write, “[t]his important

‘something’ that men bring is something other than their own friendship

networks, as these were found to be nonsignificant in influencing commu-

nity rates of violence. What exactly men bring to communities that is so

important is undetermined in our study” (p. 805, italics added). Research-

ers’ understanding of how, or if, male social ties contribute to community

crime control remains undetermined two decades later.

An important exception to the lack of theoretical interest in the positive

role of males in the community is found in ethnographic research, suggest-

ing that adult men in the roles of “old heads,” “other fathers,” or “older

mens” provide a certain level of caring and authority that youth are inclined

to respect (Anderson 1999; Harding 2010; Lempert 1999; Sullivan 1989;

Wilson 1996). This stream of work therefore gives some reason to suggest

men may be important for informal control capacity, although more in

terms of their ties to youth rather than their ties to adult neighbors as is

generally measured in the social disorganization literature. Indeed, a recent

qualitative study of nine old heads (both male and female) found that “old

heads were actively enacting informal social control within their commu-

nities” (Carter, Parker, and Zaykowski 2017:1102). Nonetheless, quantita-

tive examinations of these ideas are rare in the communities an d crime

literatures (for exception, see Parker and Reckdenwald 2008). Drawing

on the systemic model of social disorganization theory and the urban sociol-

ogy literature, the current study turns attention to this understudied role of

male social ties in relationship to informal social control and consequen-

tially crime prevention. The limited quantitative literature that has exam-

ined the gender-specific relationship between social ties and crime or

informal social control and has found that only female social ties matter.

Male ties have not been shown to have a significant effect on informal

Warner and Berg 537