Family Support

 

• A theme that stood out was family support. Like both Wes’s, there are many children out there who can’t be trusted with the responsibility of making their own decisions. Their parents and the people around them have to help guide them in the right direction. The responsibility of their future should not only rest in their hands. Fortunately for Wes Moore, the author, he had the support of his family, more specifically his mother. He was getting into a lot of trouble and doing horribly in school, but his mother took initiative and sent him to military school. She saw that if he was left on his own, he would’ve probably gone down a bad path and gotten involved in the same situations that were engulfing his friends. She was determined to not see her child become another high school gang-banging dropout, and felt that military school was the best fit for him at the time. Because of her determination to see her son succeed, he was able to overcome the difficult situations he was in. Unfortunately for the other Wes Moore, he did not have the extra support he needed. It’s not to say that his mother did not care about him like the other Wes Moore’s mom did, but there was definitely more that could’ve been done to prevent him from becoming like his brother. Wes was left unsupervised most of the time and was free to do as he pleased, and like most teenage boys who are under no supervision, he succumbed to the ways of his neighborhood. With no role model, Wes had no choice but to turn to the one thing that was familiar to him, the streets. That’s not to say that family support is the only factor that affected the outcomes of these boys, but it definitely played a role. The boys’ situations were different because of the mothers but their mothers’ situations were also different. While both Mary and Joy were single mothers,  Joy had something that Mary didn’t, the support of her family members. Joy was able to move in with her parents after her husband died, and got help taking care of her kids. Meanwhile, it was always just Mary taking care of Wes. With both their fathers not being present, one being dead and the other not caring enough to be there for his son, the burden of responsibility now fell heavily on the kids and their mothers.