# The state of Marriage and fathers in urban poor Black America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 26, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301 "2006-05-26T12:18:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/1 "2006-05-26T12:18:47Z")
Let me make my position very clear from the get-go. I believe that there are systems in our country that have significant racist effects, even _if_ no individual participant had a racist intent. And some do. These issue must be addressed. That battle is far from won. We all also are guilty of prejudging based on superficial appearances and are obligated to make ourselves conscious of those unavoidable thought patterns, thereby placing them under conscious control. But I also cannot help but be aware that there are factors within the urban poor Black American subculture that perpetuate their underclass position within American society. This is not intended as “blaming” but it is nevertheless a factor. As a member of society at large it is my job to address issues such as equitable access to resources. I need to work for educational opportunities in the inner city, for universal healthcare and any other means that allows for access to quality healthcare for all. And so on. But it is not my job to prescribe to the Black American community what needs to fixed within it. I merely note the fact that, statistically, Black American families, in particular urban poor Black American families, are less likely to start off married than families in other American subcultures. A family that begins without marriage is less likely to continue to have a strong and present father figure. It is “fragile” and the lack of a strong and present father figure is a risk factor for all sorts of underachievement. > [@](#): > > Hispanic women had the highest fertility rate (97.7 births per 1000 women aged 15 to 44 years in preliminary 2004 data).3 Rates in 2004 were considerably lower for Asian or Pacific Islander (67.2), non-Hispanic black (66.7), Native American (58.9), and non-Hispanic white women (58.5). In 2004, 23% of all births in the United States were to Hispanic women, compared with 15% in 1990. > \ > From 2003 to 2004, teen birth rates declined significantly for 2 groups: non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black teens (Table 3). Teen birth rates in 2004 ranged from 17.4 for Asian or Pacific Islander teens to 82.6 for Hispanic teens. Teen birth rates have declined since 1991 for all race and Hispanic-origin groups (Fig 1; Table 3).15 Declines from 1991 to 2004 were largest for non-Hispanic black teens (47%), > \ > The birth rate for unmarried women was 46.1 per 1000 unmarried women aged 15 to 44 years in 2004, up 3% from 44.9 in 2003. It remains below the peak reached in 1994 (46.9). In 2004, 35.7% of all births were to unmarried women, 3% higher than in 2003 (34.6%). This proportion has inched up slowly from 32.6% in 1994.1,19 From 2003 to 2004, the percent unmarried increased for all populations. The percents were 69.2% for non-Hispanic black women, 46.4% for Hispanic women, 24.5% for non-Hispanic white women, and 15.5% for Asian or Pacific Islander women. The percent for Native American women, which was 62.3% in 2004, did not increase significantly from 2003 to 2004. - PEDIATRICS Vol. 117 No. 1 January 2006, pp. 168-183 “Annual Summary of Vital Statistics: 2004” I respectfully ask members of the Black American community present here: Why is this the case? What can or should be done to address this? The solution to this situation, if there is to be one, cannot come from pale-complected people like me; it must come from within the Black American community itself. I can, bluntly, honestly, and respectfully ask the questions, but other than that I believe that I can serve best by bugging out. Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/2 "2006-05-26T13:31:04Z")
If I could expand on and ask to clarify your question… So the question is, why do black women (and presumably Native American women too, with similar rates) have babies outside of wedlock at higher rates than Hispanic or white women? And, why are black women more likely to be in lower-income urban areas? Again, as far as Native American women are concerned, are they more likely to be on reservations, which tend to be lower-income areas as well? Are there areas of the United States where white women’s rates of births out of wedlock are similar to urban black or reservation Native American ones? What the statistics don’t show is actual pregnancies. Assuming that these are the same across ethnic/racial groups, which I think is a fair assumption, why do black and Native American unmarried women choose to bring more babies to term? Why are white women so much less likely to do so? What does the level of other (educational, employment) opportunities do to the decision to bring a baby to term? What about the level of intergenerational/extended family support? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/3 "2006-05-26T13:43:42Z")
Read this [The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies](http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_3_black_family.html) ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/4 "2006-05-26T18:26:27Z")
**Astro** , thank you for the link. It provides a wonderful history of the issues that I was ignorant of. It is of some comfort that my own take on it has been preceded by the likes of Moynihan, even if his concerns fell on unheeding ears. The author unfairly lambasts N.O.W. methinks, but that quibble aside a well written piece. That said, I will attempt to clarify the question, as **gigi** requests. I do not believe that this a question of differential cultural use of abortion, although I would be open to any evidence that is presented to make that case. I think that it is a question of what is considered a cultural norm within different American population groups. I am not all that interested in the “why” it is (the “blame game”). I instead am operating on the knwledge that the lack of a strong and present father figure increases the risk for underachievement and for contnuing in poverty across generations, be the mother SuperMom or not, be there multiple generations involved helping out or not. And to me the responsibility for fixing this, if it is to be fixed (not the “blame”) lies within th Black American community; it would be arrogant of me to prescribe change, for example. I am wondering if our various Black dopers agree or disagree with that assessment, and what they think are possible action plans if they do agree. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/5 "2006-05-26T18:51:33Z")
I’m not quite understanding your question. Are you asking if it’s a more acceptable scenario to be unmarried & knocked up in black families regardless of income distribution or what…? I think it’s currently less a race/cultural issue & more (though not completely) an economic class issue. Poor, underclass black & white girls are less likely to internalize the cautions against early pregnancy for a variety of reasons. For girls in those situations they make a lifestyle calculus that getting pregnant is not the worst of all possible alternatives. Re the correlation that fathers being absent from a family correlates with girls tending get knocked up earlier and unwed, I think (IIRC) this has been shown to have a strong correlation. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/6 "2006-05-26T18:59:31Z")
**DSeid** , does your source control for income level anywhere in its study of unmarried birthrates and race? After all, if black people are disproportionately poor, then I would kind of expect to find that they also have disproportionately high rates of social disadvantages such as poor education, crime, substance abuse, and single-parent families. If that’s so, then it would seem that the root of the problem is ultimately poverty rather than race _per se_. In which case, you and I would not need to “bug out” of the problem just because we’re members of an ethnic group nowadays considered white. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/7 "2006-05-26T20:02:50Z")
Well look at the difference, for example, between the Hispanic and the Black numbers. They each have roughly the same percentage of poverty (24% for Black and 22% for Hispanic according to the [U.S. Census](http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html)) but the percentage of married vs unmarried and of teen pregnancies are very different. The point is that while poverty may contribute to a high incidence of unmarried parenthood, moreso does a high rate of unmarried parenthood perpetuate poverty. And that the cultural norm is different in urban poor Black culture than in most other poor groups. According to that linked article Moynihan noted this over 40 years ago: > [@](#): > > Most analysts assumed that once the nation removed discriminatory legal barriers and expanded employment opportunities, blacks would advance, just as poor immigrants had. > > \ > > Moynihan, then assistant secretary of labor and one of a new class of government social scientists, was among the worriers, as he puzzled over his charts. One in particular caught his eye. Instead of rates of black male unemployment and welfare enrollment running parallel as they always had, in 1962 they started to diverge in a way that would come to be called “Moynihan’s scissors.” In the past, policymakers had assumed that if the male heads of household had jobs, women and children would be provided for. This no longer seemed true. Even while more black men—though still “catastrophically” low numbers—were getting jobs, more black women were joining the welfare rolls. Moynihan and his aides decided that a serious analysis was in order. > > Convinced that “the Negro revolution . . . , a movement for equality as well as for liberty,” was now at risk, Moynihan wanted to make several arguments in his report. The first was empirical and would quickly become indisputable: single-parent families were on the rise in the ghetto. But other points were more speculative and sparked a partisan dispute that has lasted to this day. Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. > > \ > > But Moynihan went much further than merely overthrowing familiar explanations about the cause of poverty. He also described, through pages of disquieting charts and graphs, the emergence of a “tangle of pathology,” including delinquency, joblessness, school failure, crime, and fatherlessness that characterized ghetto—or what would come to be called underclass—behavior. Moynihan may have borrowed the term “pathology” from Kenneth Clark’s The Dark Ghetto, also published that year. But as both a descendant and a scholar of what he called “the wild Irish slums”—he had written a chapter on the poor Irish in the classic Beyond the Melting Pot—the assistant secretary of labor was no stranger to ghetto self-destruction. He knew the dangers it posed to “the basic socializing unit” of the family. And he suspected that the risks were magnified in the case of blacks, since their “matriarchal” family had the effect of abandoning men, leaving them adrift and “alienated.” > > More than most social scientists, Moynihan, steeped in history and anthropology, understood what families do. They “shape their children’s character and ability,” he wrote. “By and large, adult conduct in society is learned as a child.” What children learned in the “disorganized home[s]” of the ghetto, as he described through his forest of graphs, was that adults do not finish school, get jobs, or, in the case of men, take care of their children or obey the law. Marriage, on the other hand, provides a “stable home” for children to learn common virtues. Implicit in Moynihan’s analysis was that marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each other but to plan, to earn, to save, and to devote themselves to advancing their children’s prospects. Single mothers in the ghetto, on the other hand, tended to drift into pregnancy, often more than once and by more than one man, and to float through the chaos around them. Such mothers are unlikely to “shape their children’s character and ability” in ways that lead to upward mobility. Separate and unequal families, in other words, meant that blacks would have their liberty, but that they would be strangers to equality. Hence Moynihan’s conclusion: “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure.” Now a White liberal like Moynihan advocating this went over like the proverbial lead balloon. As it would today. But the high rate of Black unmarried mothers does not seem to be a function of economic staus alone. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/8 "2006-05-27T14:57:02Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > They each have roughly the same percentage of poverty (24% for Black and 22% for Hispanic according to the U.S. Census) but the percentage of married vs unmarried and of teen pregnancies are very different. Thanks **DSeid** , that’s important information. If two groups have similar poverty rates but significantly different birthrates in the various categories, then there must be something besides strictly economic factors involved. Judging from the quote in your OP, there are non-economic factors involved in two apparently **opposite** effects. Namely, the overall unmarried birthrate is significantly higher for black women than for Hispanic women. However, the recent decline in teen pregnancy has been significantly greater for black teens than for Hispanic teens. I don’t really have a clue how to convincingly explain this contradiction or any of the rest of your data, and I suspect that the causes are quite complex and interlinked, so any attempt to identify “the” cause or even the chief cause would be mere speculation. There are so many social, cultural, economic, etc. factors involved. For example, how do we compare Hispanics, with a much higher proportion of recent immigrants and the consequent stronger influences of foreign culture(s), with blacks or whites whose American ancestry tends to go back much farther? How do we measure the levels of racism that affect the different groups? It’s tough enough for sociologists to explain a relatively isolated and recent social phenomenon. But what you’re asking for is an explanation of the immense social phenomenon of low-income black family structure in the US over at least the last 40 years, and that’s even leaving out all its history in the American institutions of segregation and slavery. Good luck with the search, but I really don’t see how you’re going to get valid answers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/9 "2006-05-27T15:06:11Z")
If it’s a cultural problem, how can anything be done about it? How can legislation or public policy affect culture? ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/10 "2006-05-27T17:51:15Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Well look at the difference, for example, between the Hispanic and the Black numbers. They each have roughly the same percentage of poverty (24% for Black and 22% for Hispanic according to the [U.S. Census](http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html)) but the percentage of married vs unmarried and of teen pregnancies are very different. Looking [deeper (warning PDF)](http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf) at the numbers, you’ll notice that not all poverty is created equal. While similar numbers of both groups are below the poverty line, the numbers below half of the poverty line, as well as the numbers just above the poverty line are telling. Many more blacks are poor when you don’t use a single line as an indicator, and also that when measuring the poorest of the poor, blacks are greatly overrepresented there, far more so than hispanics. With that, I’m not willing to attribute this to culture instead of economic factors at this point. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/11 "2006-05-27T18:35:34Z")
I do think there is a cultural aspect. The fact that in the days of slavery we specifically worked to break the social bonds of family probably plays a part in it. As do the faint echos of traditional West African family structures. Our idea of the family comes from circumstances specific to Europe and to European Americans. Why would we expect African Americans to have the same one? It’s not all bad, either. For example, grandparents and especially grandmothers play a very strong role in many African-American families, which can be very rich and rewarding. There are benefits and drawbacks to anything, and I think in this case most of the drawbacks can be attributed to the fact that most of society is set up for the European-American family…by this I mean stuff like the way we work, school schedules, urban planning, etc. There are a lot of things we can do to make this kind of thing much less devestating- for a small example, inviting grandparents in to the PTA and parent-teacher conferences. Another factor that can’t be overlooked is the role of prison and the war on drugs in young Black men’s lives. Until we sort out the war on drugs, often the men simply won’t be available. IMHO, Black women have spoken pretty clearly about how they feel about the subject, and rather than tell them they ought to feel differently, I think we ought to look at why an absent father is such a risk factor and work on those things. A society exists to serve it’s people, not people to serve our society. If people want single parent families, let’s make that a viable thing. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/12 "2006-05-27T19:32:20Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > IMHO, Black women have spoken pretty clearly about how they feel about the subject, and rather than tell them they ought to feel differently, I think we ought to look at why an absent father is such a risk factor and work on those things. A society exists to serve it’s people, not people to serve our society. If people want single parent families, let’s make that a viable thing. I’m sure there is a cultural aspect, but I’m not so sure that the Black women in question have spoken about their feelings in the matter. I have known many poor black women professionally over the past twenty years, in every sort of family situation. Some married, some living with the father of their children, some who are no longer involved with the father(s) of their children. Some of those fathers in the last group were still involved with their children. The only emotions I heard the women express about the absent, univolved fathers were negative- they believed the father _should_ help support the children, visit them ,be involved in their lives and were upset that he didn’t. I’m don’t think they _wanted_ single parenthood with an uninvolved father so much as that was where they ended up. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/13 "2006-05-27T20:02:44Z")
**Kimstu** , I am not asking _why_ it is. Oh, I can make up lots of amatuer sociologist explanations, but I am sure that they’d all oversimplify some very complex dynamics. And again, I am not interested oin blame, I am interested in effect and future actions. **Brian** I tend to agree that legislation and public policy are likely ineffective. I wonder if action within the Black community, if they felt it was a problem, would be more effective. I do not know how those voices should be effectively raised and it is not my voice, but I hear them being raised some, in different ways, and applaud them. They range from Cosby’s grumpiness, to MacGruder’s humor, to Louis Farrakahn’s eloquence\*: > [@](#): > > In a predominantly Judeo-Christian society, the Bible is or should be the basic book of instruction and guidance for the politicians as well as the people. The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis that tells us the story of creation. According to the Bible it was on the sixth day that God created man and woman. Before the creation of man and woman an entire earth and universe was created to serve the man and woman that God has created. So, the Bible teaches us that man, and it should be understood that this means man and woman, is The Glory of God. No matter how great all of creation is, human being is the greatest of Godís creation. The second act of creation on the sixth day was a female and God put these two together and gave them instructions. So, before there were nations, governments and systems there was family. This teaches us that family is more important than the government and more important than the nation for it is out of family, and the needs of family, and the rights of family that governments are instituted among men. > > The Holy Qurían states that same principle differently. It teaches us that everything that God created was to serve the human being. The importance of family and its preservation is the duty of all legitimate governments and systems. Anything that disrupts family or is against the general welfare of the family is therefore against the aim and purpose of God and creation for He made all of creation to serve the man, the woman, the family. > > Therefore, anything that we say or do is not in the best interest of family, the injures family, must be revisited and changed. Everything that we say and do must promote the good of marriage, the good of family, and the development of family, then, we know that we are in accord with the aim and purpose of God in creating family. > > I have stated that every human need is a basic human right and any denial of the basic needs of the human being is a denial of their basic human rights. The need of every human being is food, clothing and shelter. God has prepared the earth to provide the needs of all its creatures. Surely the greatest of Godís creation, the human being, should have access to food, clothing and shelter. > > The human being has a need to be loved and that love is the nurturing force of the life in that human being. Therefore, every human being has the need for nurturing. **Therefore, there is a need for a mother, a need for a father, and the need for family as the basic institution for the nurturing of the values that make us human beings.** - [http://www.radioislam.org/march/index.htm](http://www.radioislam.org/march/index.htm) (bolding added) **DMC** That’s not just a pdf, that’s a several minute long high bandwidth download! I cancelled it after a few. I’ll take your word on the figures. I still do not buy that marital status is primarily economically mediated. Teen pregnancies I can see. Total fecundity is worldwide associated with lower education and lower SES. But marriage status? **even** , beyond **Doreen** ’s point, I am not telling Black women how they ought to feel. I am pointing out what appears to be a clear association that was noted over forty years ago by Moynihan and has become only a larger problem after four decades of soft pedelling it: families without ongoing strong present male influences are at increased risk for a wide variety of underachievement and urban poor Black families seem to be particularly prone to this occurence. This certainly contributes to the perpetuation of poverty. It is in no way the only reason or even the largest reason; many other factors are also at play. I am asking how they feel about it. If they feel that the staus quo is okay. And if they do not then what they think should be done about it. I am admittedly ignorant about how to implement change in this subculture. I am trying to become incrementally less so. \*Yes, I know that on that same page are links to some of that man’s antisemitic vitriol. So be it. He can still say things that I agree with as well. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/14 "2006-05-27T22:13:19Z")
To clarify, I don’t mean that Black women have expressed a preference for single-parenthood. But it is pretty clear that it’s not a dealbreaker- people know the odds, and I refuse to believe that every single mother out there was operating under a delusion. The desire for children is one of our oldest and strongest ones, and thats not going to change even if the men arn’t there. As for why the men arn’t there- I think you have to look at America’s absurdly high prison rates, the war on drugs, broken schools, modern-day segregation and general lack of economic oppertunity. Old fashioned sexual morality is way, way, way at the bottom of the list of causes here. It’s a ludicris and insulting joke to try to focus on that. > [@DSeid](#): > > families without ongoing strong present male influences are at increased risk for a wide variety of underachievement and urban poor Black families seem to be particularly prone to this occurence. But why? It doesn’t have to be that way. Humans are immensly creative creatures- I’m sure we could find a way to make single motherhood not automatically improvishing and harmful. And frankly, it seems like single motherhood is gaining ground across the board. Why should we try to mold people into a lifestyle they don’t want instead of looking for solutions that fit our changing world? A few simples changes to workplaces, schools, etc. could really go a longer ways than trying to recapture some imagined past. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/15 "2006-05-27T22:39:44Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > If it’s a cultural problem, how can anything be done about it? How can legislation or public policy affect culture? Well, legislation can have an effect. Whether it can provide a corrective is a separate question. It is fun, (almost trite) to ridicule Johnson’s Great Society, these days, but there was one aspect of the legislation (over which Johnson had no control) that directly contributed to family breakups. The moralists among the Congresscritters, (and not “the Republicans” or “the Dixiecrats”–there is enoughg blame to spread around), included in most of the legislation aimed at poor women and poor children, restrictions on what a family could receive if the father was present. The “reasoning” was that if the father was present, it was up to him to find some sort of work and provide for the family. Reasonable enough on its face, but the result was that a man who could not find work could better provide for his family by abandoning them so that the state would deign to help them. (This practice did not begin with the Great Society legislation, but that legislation was a good opportunity to correct such laws–missed.) ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2006, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/16 "2006-05-27T23:49:34Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > But why? It doesn’t have to be that way. Humans are immensly creative creatures- I’m sure we could find a way to make single motherhood not automatically improvishing and harmful. And frankly, it seems like single motherhood is gaining ground across the board. Why should we try to mold people into a lifestyle they don’t want instead of looking for solutions that fit our changing world? A few simples changes to workplaces, schools, etc. could really go a longer ways than trying to recapture some imagined past. We absolutely could find a way to make single motherhood not automatically impoverishing- in fact, it already isn’t . It’s going to be a lot more difficult to make the lack of a father’s presence ( in life, not in the home) not harmful, because that harm very possibly comes from the kid’s emotions. I remember once reading about a study that found kids whose fathers were dead had fewer emotional/behavior problems than those whose fathers were alive but uninvolved. The theory was that the problems came not from the father’s absence itself, but the feelings the kids had about the father’s _choice_ not to be involved. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/17 "2006-05-28T00:28:09Z")
Previous SDMB topic. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7010950#post7010950](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7010950#post7010950) Add my thanks to others’ to **astro** for the link. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/18 "2006-05-28T14:13:30Z")
And an important fact from that link: this indeed is a state of single parent households, in particular single mother households, being particularly common in American Black society. Black America is indeed disproprtionately poor, yet even while despite this poverty Black teen pregnacy and total fecudity rates have decreased over time, Black single parenthood has not. It is hard to grow up male without strong, present, and positive role models. It is hard to grow up female without them as well. Despite **even** ’s comments there and here te sol;ution cannot be to change society such that Dad’s are irrelevant. I have been googling to try to find something informed about what the barriers might be, and found an excerpt from this book: [“Black Fathers in Contemporary America Strengths Weaknesses and Strategies for Change”](http://www.americanvalues.org/html/bk-black_fathers-conclusions.html) I may need to buy it. > [@](#): > > 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. > > \ > > 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). > > \ > > 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. [This](http://www.futureofchildren.org/information2827/information_show.htm?doc_id=290953) is also interesting > [@](#): > > During the 1990s, a number of leading family researchers used national surveys to measure respondents’ marital aspirations (whether they hope to marry) and expectations (whether they think they will get married) to see whether and how they vary. These studies uniformly show that marital aspirations are quite high among all Americans, including the economically disadvantaged. … Sharon Sassler and Robert Schoen find an interesting difference by race, but not in the direction one might expect: single black women are substantially more likely than single white women to believe their lives would be better if they were married.10 … > Yet despite their high regard for marriage, poor Americans do not view it as a prerequisite for childbearing.29 Indeed, qualitative studies of low-income unmarried parents suggest that for the disadvantaged, childbearing and marriage no longer necessarily “go together.”30 The TLC3 study asked new unmarried parents an extensive set of open-ended questions about their beliefs about marriage and their marriage aspirations and plans. Though most couples reported having had many conversations about marriage and were eager to share their marital views and plans with interviewers, the subject of children almost never came up in these conversations, except for the frequent assertion that merely having a child together is not a sufficient reason to marry.31 In stark contrast, in-depth interviews with a college-based sample of twenty-five cohabiting women and men living in New York City revealed that most saw marriage as a crucial prerequisite for childbearing. In fact, many could not imagine having children outside marriage.32 … > Many disadvantaged women, it appears, have children in the context of romantic relationships of perilously low quality.49 Yet these same women hold a marriage relationship to high standards. What may be tolerable behavior in a boyfriend, at least for a time, is completely unacceptable in a husband. Further, it is foolish even to consider marriage until a man has shown that he is ready and able to meet these higher standards.50 … So interestingly, while marriage is a vehicle that helps produce enough wealth to get out of poverty, many of the disadvantged want to reserve marriage for when they are are no longer poor. They believe in marriage, they want marriage, but childbearing and marriage are disconnected: marriage is the dream for when they’ve “made it”. A bit of a Catch 22, eh? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/19 "2006-05-28T17:23:36Z")
One speculation that I can find no evidence for or against: Hispanic-American culture is still strongly Catholic and tied to values of family of origin cultures. It seems likely to me that Grandmothers-to-be in these families are likely to be exerting strong pressure on unmarried females and their partners to get hitched. It also seems likely to me that Grandmothers-to-be in Black American culture are less likely to be concerned about unmarried motherhood status and more concerned about the bad influence of an unworthy partner/son-in-law. I guess this question is, what role does the Grandmaother (or Grandmother-to-be) play in facilitating or inhibiting the transition from well intended but unmarried and non-cohabitating father (or father-to-be) to married man/present father? Any? None? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2006, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301/20 "2006-05-28T20:37:11Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I am not asking why it is. Oh, I can make up lots of amatuer sociologist explanations, but I am sure that they’d all oversimplify some very complex dynamics. And again, I am not interested oin blame, I am interested in effect and future actions. But I don’t see how we can possibly come up with **effective** ways to change the status quo unless we understand why it exists. No, we don’t have to put it in terms of finding somebody to blame, but we need to understand the causes. Heck, according to one of your own cites, the problem seems to be in the process of being solved, or at least reduced, already: > [@](#): > > 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. So maybe your concern is actually years out of date, and the major social changes you’re hoping for have already started to take place. Or maybe not. Without a deeper understanding of what’s actually happening and why it’s happening, quests for solutions are apt to sound like nothing much more than smug moralizing—“oh, somebody needs to fix what’s wrong with these people”. What use is that, really? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-state-of-marriage-and-fathers-in-urban-poor-black-america/358301.md?page=2)