Drop in black marriages hurts families

[Thom Little]

The decline of marriage, especially in many low-income black communities, is cracking the foundation of the black nuclear family and worsening poverty and child welfare. According to The Brookings Institution, 70 percent of African-American children are born out of wedlock and up to 85 percent of African-American children will spend some or all of their childhood in a single-parent home.

.......

The reasons for declining black marriage rates are varied and complex, said Lorraine Blackman, associate professor of social work at Indiana University and director of the African-American Family Life Education Institute.

The women's movement of the 1970s enhanced opportunities for many black women and changed their expectations of marriage, Blackman said. Simultaneously, because of a changing economy, job opportunities for non-college-educated black men have decreased. Furthermore, Blackman said, the government has inadvertently discouraged marriage among lower-income black women by denying them such safety net supports as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps if there is evidence of a man in the household.

Surprisingly, many black clergy who stood at the forefront of opposing same-sex marriage are eerily quiet when it comes to addressing the crisis of declining African-American marriage rates. The irony is that while same-sex marriage has little, if any, impact on the well-being of the black community, decreasing marriage rates between a black man and a black woman threaten to erode black social and economic progress.



http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1205/12edmarriage.html

[Ian David]

1. That's hard to fix. Just blame the fags and hope the problem goes away

It's easier than picking a fight with Whitey or actually fixing their own problems.

Scapegoating- It isn't just for white people anymore.

[eridani]

2. Middle class black women are doing exactly what conservatives--

--always tell them to do, namely "Taking care of your kids is not our responsibility. If you can't afford them, don't have them." With more education and the future orientation of middle class people, black women are looking at the dramatically reduced economic security that used to be associated with middle class jobs, and they postpone childbearing until they run into the fertility problems that start getting worse with age.

Meanwhile, poor black women are also having fewer kids, but their birth rates have not fallen off nearly as much. That's because they think (like lots of poor people) that planning for the future won't do them any good. It's precisely because of the values that conservative black clergy advocate that they avoid marriage. If women are supposed to obey men who are to be "leaders" of the family, why would they ever want to marry a poor guy with a prison record and not much in the way of job prospects?

Note that the birth rates of women in their teens of all races have been falling since 1958. The percent of kids in single parent homes has been rising (especially among black people) because the fall-off is far more dramatic for future-oriented married women.