I just finished reading Family Secrets and Frank Jr talks about how in Chicago they never brought their kids into the life like in NY or the other families out east. Frank Jr being an exception to the rule. So, that’s a good strategy from a blood family perspective but obviously has led to a lot of attrition in the Outfit family.
To me it’s more that Italians moved out of the city and have better things to than join the mob. Virtually every notable gangster started as an inner city juvenile delinquent. By the time they were teenagers they were some nasty little SOBs with one leg in.
Even the neighborhoods that anyone today would identify as “Italian†like the one in the article above, which is probably like 20% Italian anyway, those kids are on PlayStations and could go to college easy if they wanted to, unlike their grandfathers. There aren’t wild groups of Italian kids running around the Chicago suburbs like there was in some neighborhoods in the city 50 or realistically more like 75 years ago.
If you tried to talk to a 16 year old today about joining the mob he would probably think you were an idiot and look back at his phone.
