Movement to Repair the Black Family is on Hope Road
By Rachel Miller-Bradshaw
The statistics are bewildering:
Seven out of ten Black children are born out of wedlock and live in
single-parent homes; and the marriage rate for birthing African-American women
is at an all time low. Complicating the matter, 70 percent of black women in
the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 have never been married,
according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009.
Many people look at these
numbers and presume that the Black Family is in such hopeless disarray that it
can never be fixed, but it’s heartening to note that there is a surging
movement to rectify this problem by targeting a figure absent in 90 percent of
Black households, the father.
The notion that family structure
for Blacks in America can ever be as stable as it is for the majority white
population is justifiably debatable, in large measure because it got off to an
unhealthy start. During the slave era, a husband was easily separated
from his wife and children on his owner’s whim, if he was sold, for example.
A male slave needed his owner’s permission to marry, and if his love interest
was from a different plantation, her owner had to consent to the marriage, as
well. Many marriages were arranged, and not based on love or even
attraction between the man and the woman. Then there was the “bucking”
process, where male slaves were used to breed with various female slaves to
increase the plantation’s slave population, and the owner’s wealth in the
process.
In the aftermath of
emancipation, President Abraham Lincoln’s Freedom’s Bureau was quickly
defunded; this eventuality, coupled with pressures from a still racially
oppressive South, compelled many black men to leave their families and migrate
north in hopes of finding a better life, after which they would send for their
wives and children. But what they too often found were a lack of jobs and
restricted living conditions in ghettos in northern cities, which undermined
their dreams of reuniting with their families.
By the 1920s, the percentage of
single parent homes in Black communities had soared to about 20%, but that
statistic would be dramatically eclipsed as the twentieth century wore
on. In 1965, sociologist and then Assistant U.S. Labor Secretary (and
later New York Senator) Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his landmark report “The
Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” Moynihan concluded that
erosion of the nuclear family among African Americans had resulted from
continued racial oppression in the aftermath of slavery and Jim Crow, and
warned of devastating social consequences if the federal government did not
intervene.
In his 1939 book The
Negro Family in the United States, sociologist Edward Franklin Frazier
presaged Moynihan’s conclusions by positing essentially the same causes of
absentee fathers in Black families, and suggesting that a high percentage of
unemployment and high incarceration rates among Black men were additional
contributing factors. In the 1970s, the welfare system threw up yet
another barrier between African American couples by discontinuing benefits to
mothers if it was proven that they associated with the fathers of their
children (or any other interested male suitors). However, the roots of
this devastating behavioral pattern remain traceable to plantation life and the
bucking system of the slavery era (the 1970’s Temptations hit "Papa
was a Rolling Stone" addressed this phenomenon).
However there is cause for
optimism, and to believe that Black men will eventually reincorporate into the
family structure, if for no other reasons than they are desperately needed, the
Black community is struggling horribly without them, and – oh yes, it’s just the
right thing to do, and they know it. For my documentary ON MY OWN,
I interviewed numerous black mothers, who spoke with angst and frustration
about the difficulties of raising children without their fathers present.
The film explores the problem, its genesis, and its debilitating
consequences in a quest for solutions, and I believe that some noteworthy
progress is being made.
Fatherhood organizations like
the Father Knows Best program founded by legendary New York
Knick basketball star Allan Houston, and the Forestdale Fatherhood
Initiative, formerly headed by former pro-football player Scott Leach,
are aggressively taking to the streets to teach fathers the importance of being
active in the lives of their children.
On the legislative front,
President Obama’s “Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood” funding
initiative, as well as Mayor Bloomberg’s “Young Men’s Initiative” help shine a
national spotlight on the tireless work fatherhood organizations are doing.
Other politicians are following suit. For example, on March 29th
of this year, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz held a “Bronx Fathers Taking
Action” forum to talk about fathers and their position in the family, excerpts
from which appear in the film.
Teenage women are contributing
significantly to the decline in black single motherhood. According to the
non-profit, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy black
teen pregnancy has declined by 52% among 15 to 17 year-olds and 36% among 18 to
19-year olds, a historic low, that displays great promise for the Black Family
in The United States.
And for their part, men – who
have often been criticized as emotionally vacant – are starting to open up
about their feelings and motivations. At the Bronx fathers’ forum, it
seemed that some men sincerely wanted to be active, responsible fathers, but
that their good intentions are being thwarted by social forces such as
unemployment, imprisonment, disproportionately high early death rates among
African American males, and psychological damage resulting from social and
political disenfranchisement. One single father said he attended the
forum to get insight from other fathers and the panelists to “better parent his
two sons.”
Researching and producing this
film afforded me a level of confidence that this long despairing condition can
be reversed, and that absent Black fathers can and will find their way back
home. For that to happen, dialogue on the subject must be continued,
outreach must be expanded, and one by one, men must be welcomed back into their
families to love and nurture their spouses and children. In the opinion
of this Gen-Xer, the negative stereotype of the absent Black father needs to be
retired, and a positive glow of acceptance must replace it. The future of
the Black family in America depends on it, and the rest of American society
will benefit from it. It’s often said that no man is an island; no group
is an island either, and African American males must be encouraged to reinsert
themselves into their families’ lives.
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