Abstract
Vera Lopez is trained as a school psychologist, but her interests run deeply into issues of community, poverty, racism, sexism and social justice, as well as the institutions that play such a significant part in the lives of the girls she writes about in Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice.
Complicated Lives is based on a qualitative study that “presents the life experiences of 65 system-involved girls growing up in multistressed families characterized by parental drug use, domestic violence, and child abuse/neglect”(p. 3). The term, “system-involved,” refers to court-ordered placement in juvenile justice, mental health, and/or child protection facilities. The girls are aged 14–18, and all have been court-ordered to live outside their home in a group home, residential treatment center, or state correctional facility. All have a history of using drugs, and in the majority of cases, the girls used hard drugs, such as methamphetamine, which was their most popular drug of choice. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the girls are Latina, 26% white, and 9% biracial. The study takes place in Arizona. The book favors a “family perspective,” and each chapter emphasizes the girls’ complicated relationships with their parents within “the context of multiple-challenged families and communities”(p. 21).
It is the in-depth and detailed verbatim accounts of the girls’ experiences, feelings, and interaction with their parents and other family members that is the central focus of Complicated Lives. Most often it is the ambivalence and self-blame created by love, caring, neglect, and abuse that characterize family relations. The families are ones in which older siblings care for younger brothers and sisters, and teenage girls run away from home because of abuse and the desire to be free. These real-life accounts are juxtaposed with reminders that stigma, prejudice, and stereotypes are often the societal and political determinants of policies and programs that perpetuate family and community disruption and disunity. Hearing directly from teenage girls provides a gendered perspective that is especially valuable.
Incarceration, domestic violence, drug abuse, residential mobility, poverty are all related to the instability these teenage girls experience. Some of the girls have had helpful therapeutic experiences in out-of-home settings, but community follow-up is generally lacking. The systems currently in place to deal with these situations are often not effective and, in fact, often make things worse by being punitive. How to overcome the intergenerational nature of Complicated Lives is the central challenge raised by the book.
Lopez clearly believes that understanding the dynamics of complex family and community interaction is an imperative first step toward any successful solutions. Grasping the complex nexus between families and their communities is the most important message of this book. These systems cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Interpreting the book from a feminist and social work perspective, this reviewer understands Lopez to be calling for culturally sensitive and gender-specific programs in juvenile justice facilities and a proactive approach to intervention, with prevention and early intervention with parents as possible productive strategies.
As we move forward to overcome, and not further exacerbate, community, institutional, and family disruption, it would be helpful to learn more about successful interventions, possibly from schools and other community partners. From a research point of view, a larger sample, a more diverse sample, and an approach that compares evidence-based findings from different demographic groups and settings would be enlightening.
At the present time, sad to say, officials withhold funds for needed programs because of false beliefs, misconceptions, and political considerations. Lopez’s book, if read and digested by authorities who currently hold back funding from pertinent programs, would make it difficult for them to continue to deprive resources from system-involved teenage girls because she provides firsthand and compelling information about the girls’disrupted lives. Complicated Lives provides the groundwork for evidence-based interventions for a population of teenage girls whose needs are often not being met effectively because of funders’ failure to hear the voices of those most affected by adverse conditions in the home, community, and institutional settings. The book deals with some of the most complicated societal issues. Lopez appreciates the larger picture and leads us in a positive direction toward overcoming the myriad of counterproductive forces that impede successful outcomes.