IN response to Chris McGovern: Working-class white boys . . . a ticking time bomb, Tom Goodfellow wrote:
The breakdown of the family has as much to do with it as anything. My wife runs an organisation (not for profit) which works with troubled youngsters, mainly white boys. Many of them have been excluded from school multiple times. The background, depressingly, is similar in all cases. Single mother with multiple children from various partners. No role model father. Usually a drug/alcohol history by mother/boyfriends with parental neglect, and often abuse. One very disturbed lad recently was asked about his relationship with his mother. ‘Baby factory’ was his reply. He is one of eleven and is physically and emotionally neglected. He has what the psychologists call an attachment disorder. Surprise, surprise, he rarely attends school and is heading for unemployment, social exclusion and probably destitution.
