Research evidence contradicts the common views that female delinquency is a sign of social maladjustment and involves sexual promiscuity, that family factors are more influential in female than in male delinquents, and that adolescent females do not form strong same-sex friendships. However, early research on gangs defined females solely in terms of their relationships with male gang members. More contemporary work has been based on interviews with female gang members and has found that for Hispanic females, gang membership represents an idealized collective solution to a bleak future composed of poverty and social isolation. The female gang members often publicly defer to the male gang members, but they regulate their own affairs and talk indulgently about men when the males are not present. However, their futures are bleak in that 94 percent will have children and 84 percent will raise them without spouses.