It is difficult to imagine situations with higher levels of stress and greater relative extrinsic dangers than those faced by homeless youth on a given day. There are between 500,000 and two million homeless youth in the United States (Cooper Reference Cooper2006), with few social service or non-governmental agencies to help them (Wright Reference Wright1990). Homeless youth have a number of hygiene and health vulnerabilities that make them outcasts in society (Staller Reference Staller2004); but they also tend to avoid and be mistrustful of what society might have to offer. Del Giudice's target article informs the issue of homeless youths in two ways: (1) it offers insight into what we believe to be the extreme avoidant behavior of many homeless youths, especially males, and (2) it provides a possible context for many of their behavioral choices, especially those pertaining to sexuality and reproduction. Del Giudice's thesis examining the interconnection between attachment patterns, life histories, and reproductive strategies allows us to view the extreme avoidant behavior, and seemingly illogical reproductive choices (e.g., young girls having children with transient partners while they are homeless), through the lens of an adaptive model rather than a deficit model; except, it is adaptation turned on its head by brutal and uncaring social ecologies.
Many homeless youth begin to engage in sexual activity at an early age – sometimes as the result of relationships and sometimes as a means to an end (survival sex). Del Giudice's reference to Sroufe et al. (Reference Sroufe, Bennett, Englund, Urban and Shulman1993) concerning the intersection between life stress, insecure attachment patterns, and early violation of gender boundaries in middle childhood has particular resonance. A number of youths seem to become highly sexualized in their behavior relatively early in life, with flirtation becoming a dominant form of communication and connectivity. For males, flirtation and early sexual behavior are part of the initiation into the same-sex social hierarchy that will eventually determine their place in the street economy. The need to develop an avoidant stance towards relationships is critical.
The females may be more confused about what their flirtation means. A number of homeless females have been sexually abused, been raped at some point, or used sex for survival purposes. At the same time, flirtation and sex through middle childhood and into adolescence is one of their surest relational strategies.
When homeless youth do engage in sex, many times it is unprotected, leading to both pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Although this may seem like foolish or self-destructive activity to a casual observer, Del Giudice's thesis suggests that these youths are following natural reproductive strategies that meet needs determined by their circumstances. Many of the males will meet violent ends, become alienated homeless adults, or wind up in jail. There is a drive to impregnate females while remaining distant. The females are often left alone with children while they are still homeless or living on the margins of society, leading them to exhibit depressive symptoms (Meadows-Oliver Reference Meadows-Oliver, Lois, Swartz and Ryan-Krause2007). Research has suggested that depressed mothers who have low emotional availability (e.g., are less sensitive, less structuring, and more intrusive and hostile) during the early years of child rearing, tend to have children with low emotional availability (e.g., less responsive, less involving) (Easterbrooks et al. Reference Easterbrooks, Biesecker and Lyons-Ruth2000). And this quality of emotional interaction can lead the insecure attachment patterns (Ziv et al. Reference Ziv, Aviezer, Gini, Sagi, Karie and Korean-Karie2000), perpetuating a cycle of avoidance and alienation.
Stress becomes a regular part of the developing child's life, and the impact of life histories on choices becomes more evident and more dominant, with somatic resources used primarily for survival. Because the street economy often plays a major role in the lives of homeless youth, many males move in the direction of highly avoidant insecure attachment patterns. To establish long-lasting relationships is in many ways to become more vulnerable. They understand that their transient relationships – the members of their “posse” – are critical for their survival. On the other hand, many of the females who have been raised by single mothers understand that they represent the sole opportunity for their children to survive. They necessarily have to choose more ambivalent insecure attachment patterns to protect their child. However, once stress and/or extrinsic danger reaches such a high level that their attempts at caretaking strategies end in failure or prove to be impossible (for ambivalent homeless females' behavior choices don't so much involve “helping at the nest,” as attempts to create a nest), their relationship strategies can change. We have seen a number of occasions where failure in attempts to develop a middle-class-type lifestyle (i.e., with job, stable living conditions) has caused once hopeful females to be even more avoidant and alienated than the males.
It is our hope that some of the ideas from Del Giudice's article might give us a better handle on the development of interventions for these homeless youth. To date, interventions have had only limited success, with one of the major impediments being lack of trust and extreme avoidant behavior. By focusing on reproductive strategies, we can hypothesize that one of the best times to engage female homeless youths is when they are pregnant. It is possible that this is the point at which they are most ready for and in need of establishing relationships, even if these relationships are based on ambivalent strategies. Unfortunately, the same phenomena that cause these females to want to establish linkages and relationships, make them highly vulnerable to failure or avoidance by society at large. If we can develop programs that are nonjudgmental and focused on success, especially involving “nesting” trajectories (e.g., getting stable housing that is not contingent and the resources necessary to raise a healthy child), there is the possibility of reinforcing lifetime linkages. And perhaps more importantly, it would allow these mothers to develop stronger, more emotionally available relationships with their children, breaking the cycle of depressive and self-destructive behavioral trajectories. Thus, an intervention that first helps the homeless females to successfully find the stability in housing, jobs, and social support, will reduce the chances of females being so passive in relation to males' reproductive strategies, leading to fewer opportunities for multi-mating (a major cause of paternal absence in parenting).
