In the summer of 2001, a series of independent reports based largely on new data from the 2000 Census, all pointed toward a remarkable social and demographic fact. After at least four decades of steadily getting weaker, the black family today seems to be getting stronger.
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Drawing on many of the analyses offered by the contributors to this volume, here is our first conclusion: steadily increasing the proportion over the next ten years of black children who are residing with their responsible, loving fathers is both necessary and possible. This reintegration of nurturing black fathers into the homes and therefore the lives of their children is the prime goal, the umbrella priority, under which all the others fit.
This brings us to our second conclusion: because marriage is a vital support for effective fatherhood, and because marriage on average provides the optimal environment for healthy child development, a major priority for black America and for the society as a whole should be to steadily increase the proportion of children growing up in two-biological-parent, married-couple homes. The entire priority of fathers’ residency with children leads to the question of the father-mother relationship, which in turn of course leads to the question of marriage. "The issue of marriage is complex and difficult, as is evidenced by the breadth of opinion on the issue in the marriage and family literature. On one end of the philosophical spectrum is the belief that promoting married fatherhood should be the overriding ethic end-goal of a modern fatherhood movement. On the other end of the spectrum is the belief that today’s fatherhood leaders, programs, and messages should be strictly neutral, or nonjudgmental, on the question of marriage.
The three editors of this volume are themselves not entirely in agreement regarding the exact role of marriage in the renewal of black (and American) fatherhood. But we are agreed that marriage matters; that it is quite unlikely that we as a society will be able to turn the corner on father absence while simultaneously witnessing and permitting the further disintegration of marriage; and that therefore, as a general rule, bringing back the fathers and strengthening marriage are goals that stand best when they stand together.
Let us stress briefly some of the economic aspects of the marriage challenge. As Ronald Mincy and Hillard Pouncy’s and also Maggie Gallagher’s contribution to this volume emphasize, marriage is in part a wealth-producing institution. Married people earn, invest, and save more than unmarried people. These findings cannot be explained away by the likelihood that economically successful people are also more likely to marry. Nor does cohabitation generate economic gains equivalent to those generated by marriage. Marriage itself changes behavior in ways that tend to make people financially better off (see Waite and Gallagher 2000).
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These economic facts pose a special challenge to African Americans. Currently, by age thirty, about 80 percent of white women but only 45 percent of black women have ever married (Bachrach, Hindin, and Thomson 2000, 3). About 70 percent of all black children today are born to never-married mothers (McLanahan et al. 2000). Forget for a moment about child development, social expectations, or “family values.” Just follow where the money is likely to go. Marriage is a primary gateway to economic success. Accordingly, for an entire rising generation of young African Americans, including the growing numbers who will have attended college, the absence of a stable marriage may be the single most important barrier keeping them from entering the middle and upper classes. For this and other reasons, giving up on marriage, even while pursuing second-best solutions, is ultimately a form of defeatism, the economic equivalent of sitting at the back of the bus.
Continuing progress on this issue may be possible. For example, research by Sara McLanahan of Princeton and her colleagues finds that among low-income black single mothers, almost half are living with the father at the time of the birth. A substantial majority of these couples say that they are romantically involved, and that they either hope or plan to get married (McLanahan et al. 2000; Waller 2001, 457-84; Garfinkel et al. 2000, 277-301). This is good news. This research shows, among other things, that the desire for a stable marriage is not a “white” value. On the contrary, marriage is a nearly universal human aspiration, even in communities where marriage as an institution has been severely weakened.
Most of these inner-city, low-income couples do not marry. But why? Could we help at least some of them to achieve their goal of a good marriage? Currently we do almost nothing to assist these people achieve successful marriages. What if, starting soon, whenever these young parents come into contact with a social worker or public agency, they are given the option of being referred to a local church or civic group that will help them to develop the skills and resources necessary for a successful marriage?
Here is our third conclusion: although new government policies cannot by themselves cause a renewal of black (and American) fatherhood, policy reforms can and, we believe, must play an important role in helping to support fathers and fatherhood, especially in fragile families. A laissez-faire approach — the less government, the better — is, at least with respect to the issue of father absence, fundamentally inappropriate.
Support for this idea comes from a 2000 study by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, which found that the state of Minnesota’s welfare reform program, called the Minnesota Family Investment Program, has led to higher marriage rates, more marital stability, and lower divorce rates among the program’s participants. Why? No definitive answers have emerged, but the Minnesota program combined a strong emphasis on work with a generous set of wage supplements and other financial benefits (Knox, Miller, and Gennetian 2000). These encouraging family and fatherhood results seem to have come not from government’s doing and spending less, but from government’s doing and spending more—combined with different and better. The lesson seems to be that jump-starts in financial security can also foster more and better marriages, which in turn foster financial success. Liberals, who often emphasize economic justice, and conservatives, who often emphasize the traditional family, may be able to join forces in support of this approach.
Similarly, several bills introduced in the U.S. Congress in 2000 and 2001, most with bipartisan sponsorship and support, would authorize significant increases in federal funding for community-based fatherhood programs aimed at reducing the prevalence of father absence in the United States, particularly in our poorest communities, and at incorporating a recognition of the importance of marriage. These efforts are relatively new and therefore largely untested, but they are promising and worthy of support.
Here is our final conclusion: contemporary U.S. father absence is less a black crisis than an American crisis, one that affects the entire society. Stemming primarily from broad societal trends, not subcultural, racial, or ethnic trends, the crisis of black fathers, thought urgent in its own right and deserving of special attention from policy makers, cannot be separated, analytically or prescriptively, from the broader crisis of U.S. fathers, which cuts across all lines of race and class. The fatherhood crisis we face in the United States is essentially societal, not racial (although it has racial aspects and implications). Neither is it a correlate of economic status (although it has dear economic dimensions). For this reason, our response to the crisis must also be societal in nature. In the final analysis, fatherlessness is not a “them” problem. It’s an “us” problem.