I realized it was open enough for people to get the impression that I’m fine with illegitimate births. Unfortunately, I didn’t post my clarification quick enough to escape you calling me a fan of them.
No, I mean higher. African-Americans are native born blacks, but not every black person in America was born here – and their numbers have been increasing since the 1960s. It’s my observation that black immigrants here from places like Kenya, Brazil, Toronto and Haiti come here specifically to work and study in school, and have more traditional, married family set-ups. They don’t have this built-in expectation of government assistance to subsidize child care and living expenses. Don’t get me wrong: many out-of-wedlock births occur among immigrants, too, but not in the frequency it does among poor and working class African-American women where its been a socioeconomic norm since slavery.
Interesting. However, I’m guessing that anybody doing polling probably doesn’t differentiate these subgroups. If you are black and you live in America, you probably get labelled “African American” whether or not you came here a month ago or your ancestor did 400 years ago. That’s jus a WAG on my part, though.
Here’s a suggestion to get this thread back in a civil mode…
Let’s forget about race, and talk about the increase of women having children out of wedlock and how that affects poverty and the kids’ chance of “making it”. In particular, the effect on poor women who are unable to secure child support from the father.
Is there something that can or should be done to reverse this trend and deal with the problem?
You can’t find a cite, but you proceed to build an entire argument around it?
I want to see a cite that shows that married blacks, in the south (to back up your demographics disclaimer), make as much as their married white counterparts.
What are you talking about with this ‘entire argument’ line? I wrote one paragraph, comprised of three sentances. It’s relevant to the discussion, and interesting, but it’s hardly my “entire argument” or even “an entire argument”. It’s an interesting fact that I heard on a TV, so I didn’t have a cite.
Sheesh. Settle down. I’ll try and find a cite for it now.
How does the marriage certificate weigh on earning ability? I would say having children before you have skills to earn a living would have a bigger impact.
Signed – An Unwed Mother Who Is Earning A Decent Wage
Its hard to find data that breaks down earnings both by race and marital status at the same time.
This page from the US dept of health and human services is a bit old. It’s from 1995. But it does break the numbers down to illustrate the differences:
So, on average, whites make 65 percent more income than blacks, but this drops way down to only 16 percent when you consider only married couples.
The way these numbers read, there is a slight difference between incomes of blacks and whites when comparing the same marriage status. Married blacks make slightly less than married whites. Single female household blacks make slightly less than single femaile household whites. (This is no doubt influenced by the fact that they tend to live in the south, where incomes are lower.)
However, having a female household with no husband present means much, much lower incomes regardless of race. This is what skews the overal black incomes way down to only 32,000, instead of the higher 53,000 for whites.
It’s possible that some of these trends have reversed in the past ten years, but I doubt it.
Two scenarios:
A) Statistics aside, a first birth out of wedlock, believe it or not, is not necessarily all that damning, provided that woman has a support group (i.e., responsible, stable, long-term, income-earning adults) behind her that can assist with living expenses, health care and child care while she finishes high school, trade school or college and saves up money from her job. This is all the more feasible if she does not indulge in money-wasting ventures, does not indulge in risky recreational behavior or self-medicates with drugs, food or alcohol. This is especially true if she does not run afoul of the law. If all that is in place, and she has a committed income-earning life partner to share the stress and responsibilities of parenting, at a minimum, a working class lifestyle is attainable and a middle-class is likely.
Arguably her biggest skill will need to be learning to spot and shun, a no good, trifling shiftless man who only wants to fuck her, use her and leave her. These men are legion. Do not fall for his charm. Do not believe his lies. You cannot rehabilitate him. Consider lesbianism.
BUT.
B) When a poor woman with no higher education and **few job skills ** has multiple children out of wedlock, and **no other co-parenting support ** and no extra income, then it becomes increasingly difficult to get affordable health care and child care that allows her time to get in-demand skills that help reverse the likelihood of long-term, possibly generational poverty. This is even less likely if she wastes her money, engages in **risky recreational behavior ** and irresponsibly self-medicates with drugs, food or alcohol. This is exacerbated if she ever runs afoul of the law. This is even less likely if **she cannot find a committed, income earning life partner to love and be loved by, and to share the stress and responsibilities of parenting. **
Chances are excellent from the time this woman was young she has never learned to recognize and avoid a no-good, trifling, shiftless man who only wants to fuck her, use her and leave her. These men are come to her like a line of ants. She has been bedazzled by their looks, height and physique. She falls for their charms. She repeatedly believes their lies. She still thinks if it weren’t for these other man-stealing bitches out there that she can rehabilitate one of them.
The closer a woman’s life is to A), the better off she’ll be.
Sadly, many poor and working class women’s lives are at B).
You start with educating the woman. After that, get her some useful, employable job skills. You help her get some free or affordable child care and health care as part of a support group. (This is one problem I do not have with socially responsible churches.) Teach her to manage her money. Keep her from indulging in risky recreational behavior (i.e., no irresponsible recreational sex, speeding, club-hopping with strange men or drug use) Hope she doesn’t self-medicate with drugs, food or alcohol. Hope there’s no trouble with the police. Hope she finds a decent guy (or woman. Hell, who am I to judge?)
I think the reason this discussion is becoming so volitile is that many of us were raised by working class single mothers and frankly don’t remember our childhood as some unending world of poverty and pain. I was raised in exactly this kind of family- my father wasn’t around, my grandmother and uncles took a major (50%) role in raising me, and my mom was working as a waitress and putting herself through school.
My family isn’t a failure. My family isn’t wrong. My family is no less loving and supportive than if I had a traditional one. I wouldn’t trade growing up in a full house of relatives for the world- kids should be lucky to grow up in a family like mine. How many of you have your mom, uncles, grandma and grandpa on your IM buddy list right now?
My mother is not immoral. My mother is not stupid. My mother did not make a bad or stupid decision. Motherhood was always a dream of hers and she is thrilled to have had a chance. She often opines that she was glad to be a younger mother. I am not illegitimite. I am not pepetuating a cycle of poverty (nor is she- she now makes big bank.) I resent my life being portrayed as the story of a dumb woman who couldn’t keep her legs shut, when in fact I was a much loved and wanted child who was raised in a stable and loving family environment even without all of you all’s great concern.
I also resent the idea that a woman must be well in to the middle class before she is allowed to have a child without raised eyebrows everywhere. It doesn’t take much if you’ve got healthcare and childcare down. Kids don’t need baby yoga classes and Tibetan baby water and a stroller that converts in to six diffent positions based on the Chinese zodiac. There are billions of loving and worthy parents as we speak that manage to raise happy productive kids in huts without running water and electricity. It’s not irresponsible to not wait until your making six figures to have a kid.
Male and female share equal responsibility in the conception of the child. And every child is born to two parents. This thread is ridiculous in its over-emphasis on single mothers. (Thanks, John, for pointing it out.)
There can be complications and expenses involved. I’ve never known a woman who went through the process of abortion who felt that everything was “easy.” That may be true for some, but I would certainly think that it would be the exception to the rule.
Women should be encouraged to name the baby’s father and the government should be in hot pursuit of support for that child. And I’m not talking about just financial support.
One thing that I have seen growing from the Black communities are strong women. Many seem to sense their empowerment and to command respect from their children. I feel reasonably comfortable with that particular generalization.
It is a pretty simple proof. 2 > 1 and the average income of 2 will always be greater than the average income of 1 all other things being equal. Money isn’t everything but you do need to be realistic. Kids are very expensive and it is difficult for one person to do it in a responsible way with only a single parent.
Back to the 2 > 1 argument. I don’t think you can argue that ideal conditions for a child wouldn’t be two loving parents in a stable household with enough time and income for basic needs. Sometimes things happen and households fall short of that and people must make due. I was largely raised by my single mother after a horrific divorce and it was absolute hell on many levels.
I don’t think single-parenthood is something that most people should ever shoot for. It can be a fall-back position if things go wrong but lowering your original sights virtually guarantees less than ideal success on a group level. It isn’t a simple “alternative” family arrangement. It is a crippled family arrangement by definition although some pull it off well despite the limitations.
even sven, I’m happy for you and your mother. In Askia’s dichotomy, your upbringing sounds like it tracks closely to scenario (A); which, assuming statistics don’t lie, makes you and your mom exceptional – it appears more single mothers track closer to (B).
If we’re citing personal experience, I have a counter-example: my niece. 21 years old, mother of 3 (by 3 different men), and a drain on the resources of the state. Fortunately, she’s managed to make some adoptive parents very happy.
Respectfully Zoe, I disagree. In a society like ours, conception is primarily a woman’s responsibility.
Pregnancy is her experience, her responsibility, her choice. You can’t have a woman’s right to choose and exclude the conception as half the man’s burden when he basically has no legal say in whether abortion will occur (excepting something bizarre like a contract.) A man’s responsibility for conception is financial, biological, shared and recognized, but it’s not equal to a woman’s, sorry. Men are subordinate in their authority, influence and coercive powers when it comes to reproduction.
Men provide the sperm and determine the gender. That’s about it. Women provide ovaries and wombs, their nutritional diets, their auto-immune systems and blood. Excepting rape, women choose their partners and ultimately either choose to practice or not to practice birth control during sex. That’s a bitter pill for most people to realize, and it’s also bit more than “equal responsibility.”
If birth control was used and FAILS, by either or both parties, then by default it’s definitely the women’s responsibility to decide what happens next. Her first responsibility, which she may or may not exercise, is inform the man that she’s pregnant. He may not stick around to support her, but the responsibility’s hers. At best, a man gets to weigh in on what happens next: if he actually decides, it’s only because the woman has ceded her responsibility to him.
After conception, it is primarily a woman’s responsibility to choose everything else, too: whether to have the child or to abort the fetus; her diet; how much to exercise; whether or not to introduce recreational or medicinal drugs in her system; the level of prenatal care; natural childbirth or not; breastfeeding or not. Again, men can weigh in on his preferences, but that’s about it.
I agree with Zoe that it’s also a woman’s responsibility and right to hold a man financially and legally responsible for child support after conception, to name the child’s father or get a paternity test.
even sven. Do my posts sound volatile or accusatory? I hope not. I definitely don’t believe a single parent household is wrong, just that ANY kind of family takes work to succeed, and when finances are a problem, single parent households have more work ahead of them.
jsc1953. I don’t see my description of single motherhood as an actual dichotomy so much as two extremes of a somewhat oversimplified spectrum.
Oh, wait. That is an dichotomy. Never mind.
Yes, within our society, the woman has more power over whether a child will be born or not. But… morally and legally the man is equally resposible. Whenever two people have sex, they need to realize that a child may be conceived. The man and the women need to realize this and face the responsibility. The law is clear on this issue, even if there isn’t a good way to enforce it. So, yes women owe it to themselves to pick sexual partners carefully because of the reality of the situation, but that doesn’t change either the moral or the legal situation for the man.
I can imagine a time in the not too distant future when women will be able to easily apply for genetic testing to determine the father of their child if there is any question. If you think of the enormous financial respnsibility that men can shirk by simply “disappearing” from the woman’s life, I think there is ample justification for significant public expenditures in identifying dead beat dads, and making them own up to their responsibilities.
Every child has two parents, and deserves financial (if not emotional) support from both parents. Yes, the paradigm we opperate under puts much more burden on the woman, but that only tells me we need to change that paradigm.
I agreed with everything you wrote except where you wrote “… legally the man is equally responsible.” He’s ONLY legally financially responsible. He can remain fully absent in every other aspect of child support (education, visitation, discipline, providing health care) and not legally be charged with, say, abuse or neglect. Which means the burden is disproportionately on the mother. That is not equal.
True, although I don’t know that that affects the debate significantly. I don’t know if CA is unique in this respect, but any woman in CA can surrender her child within 3 days of birth and renounce all responsibility. Even if the woman doesn’t want an abortion, she has this outlet. I don’t think that paints as bleak a picture as you imply.
Still, I can’t argue with your post, and you are correct that I should have specified *financial *responsibility. But then, that’s all I’m talking about in terms of enforcing the law-- I’m not saying men should be forced to spend time with the kids, just pay their share of support.
According to this study, 50% of African-American births in 1994 were unplanned. That correlates almost perfectly with the statistics for low-income people in general. In any case, not all unplanned births involve unwed mothers. There are a significant number of planned births to unmarried mothers going on. There are also a significant number of women who aren’t specifically planning on giving birth, but welcome the possibility.
While I’m not saying that the 70% statistic is great, or that an unplanned birth rate of 50% is anywhere near good, I think this indicates at the least that there are far more complex social forces involved here. We aren’t talking about dumb teens too horny to use protection. We are talking about a widespread social movement that finds raising children in a single-parent household preferable. Why? Is this a problem we can somehow fix? Or is this a societal change that we can’t/shouldn’t reverse, and instead should we focus on making single-parent homes viable?
This is exactly what I’m talking about.
I think you guys have crippled family arrangements. The idea of raising kids in far-flung cities with only their mom and dad participating in their life on a regular basis sounds absolutely horrific and damaging for me- and most of the world would agree with me (the nuclear family is a European/American phenomenon that only emerged in the last century). If I only saw my grandparents on holidays, I guess I wouldn’t recognize the void in my life left by not having 5 or 6 close family members as an everyday part of my life. How would a family dinner with my mom and dad improve upon my standard family dinners at grandmas where grandma cooked the food that grandpa grew in his garden while mom studied and I laughed and joked with my uncles? How am I worse off because none of those people happen to be screwing my mom? Mom was poor, but we had a whole passel of people dedicated to making sure I never went without. The measly income my undereducated dad would have pulled in would never have surpassed all the stuff my extended family gladly provided.
In most of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East they’d call the “ideal” American family an aberration. One hundred years ago, the rich would have said you were damaging your kids by not handing them off to trained nurses and the poor would have said you were suffocating your kids. Two hundred years ago, the ideal American family would be unrecognizable. We didn’t somehow found the god-given pinnacle of family-ness in the 1950s. Family is something that changes constantly to suit people’s needs and environments. By forcing people in to that outdated arrangement we only make that transition harder. And in the end, it’s not the particular arrangement of the family that matters, but rather the love and responsibility of all of the members.
What I think you’re failing to grasp is that, in my (admittedly limited) experience, single-parent families are NOT AT ALL like what you’re describing. Good on you and your mother and your extended family for being able to provide that environment for. You’re not damaged by it, and neither would most children of single parents if they were raised as you were.
But they’re not.
Very, very close. According to your link, we are talking about teens and young adults 18-24 here – I’ll pass on qualifying their intelligence or horniness – who don’t use protection. Many, if not most of this child-rearing is done in extended family homes with multigenerational adults, not just single parent homes – especially in the case of blacks and hispanics. I suspect that in most of these cases marriage is still preferable, just that it isn’t attainable.
This is where responsibility falls on men: to be . I think most fathers find their baby mamas raising their kids in a separate household preferable. They avoid regular responsibility, financial sacrifices, changing diapers; they get to stay single, are free to screw around and have more freedom – minus child support.
I dunno what the solution is. More men need to be made aware of the consequences of emotional neglect and abandonment and somehow be required to take parenting classes and encouraged to do meaningful shit with their kids. Maybe this needs to be a mandatory part of prison reform.