Runaway Youths

Four distinct types of runaways have been identified: running to, running from, thrown out, and forsaken (Zide and Cherry 1992; Cherry 1993). Running to individuals are those seeking the adventure of life on their own. These are the flower children of the 1960s who left home in search of the excitement of a life outside of the mundane confines of suburbia. These are the children who leave home for the excitement and adventure of a new life in a new city: they crave "limitless pleasures, instant gratification and freedom from parental attempts to set control or limits on them" (Zide and Cherry 1992 p. 158). They believe that the world that awaits them outside of the confines of their parents' rules and regulations is one that is far superior to the one that they are leaving. These kids are not leaving because of some intrafamilial trauma or negative dynamic, nor are they leaving abusive or neglectful parents. In fact, most of these youth come from a normal type of family, and positive familial supports await their return home (Zide and Cherry 1992; Cherry 1993). Another type within the runaway population is the running from subgroup. These are the youth who are seeking to escape something negative within their homes. Many times, these children are running from physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, from the neglect of an alcoholic parent or stepparent, or from extreme financial hardship within the family. Unlike the running to youths, they are not searching for excitement outside of the home: they are searching for a life that is more tolerable than the one from which they escaped. Although their parents may wish them to return, they cannot return home to a positive support system and are thus in a far more dismal predicament than their running to counterparts (Zide and Cherry 1992; Cherry 1993).

A third type within the runaway population consists of youths who are forced to leave home as a result of intense alienation with their families. These throwaways differ from other runaways in that their parents express little or no desire for their return home. Many times, these emotionally distraught youths are leaving a situation that "has been preceded by years of failures, not only within the home, but also within the school system and community" (Zide and Cherry 1992, p. 158). These kids are typically more assertive, engage in considerable amounts of criminal activity, and are more antisocial than their runaway counterparts (Zide and Cherry 1992).

Finally, a fourth type consists of those forsaken children who are forced to run away as a result of the inability of their family to support them financially. These youths generally leave homes with large families with whom they have only the slightest of social bonds, and they also have very few peer relationships. Put simply, these children have little or no social, emotional, or economic support system at home. Thus, these children are more likely to be exploited upon their runs and are considerably more prone to feelings of victimization and poor self-concepts (Zide and Cherry 1992; Cherry 1993).

Other attempts at classification have yielded similar results. However, unlike the statistically driven approach of the previous typology (Zide and Cherry 1992; Cherry 1993), these attempts have created types based on intuition gained from experience working with the population. For this reason, the generalizability of these classificatory devices is questionable, at best. Still, they have merit in that they provide a means for more precisely understanding the nature of the runaway population. Specifically, one study isolated six subgroups of runaway children: (1) self-confident and unrestrained runaway girls; (2) well-adjusted runaway youth; (3) double failures, high delinquency involvement; (4) fleeing youth; (5) young, highly regulated, and negatively influenced youth; and finally, (6) young and unrestrained youth (Dunford and Brennan 1976). Although this typology has more groups, most of the groups included in the earlier typology exist within this one as well.