Stats fail to capture the full portrait of how families function in Black communities
Un-married Mothers Yes, but Not Always Single Parents
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
According to a recent article by the Associated Press, 72 percent of Black babies are born to un-married women. Such numbers, which have circulated for some time, have spurred responses such as calls for “Black Marriage Day” and “Marry Your Baby-Daddy Day” as part of what might be deemed the “No Wedding, No Womb” movement.
Such responses though, like the statistics that inspired them, fail to capture the full portrait of how families function in Black communities. Many studies have suggested that there is a direct correlation between single-mother hood and the likelihood that children born out-of-wedlock are more apt to struggle in school, be incarcerated at some point in their lives, become addicted to drugs and then reproduce that same cycle with their own out-of-wedlock children.
Such studies though, often neglect other powerful influences, such as the quality of schooling, biased criminal justice systems, institutional racism and poverty—conditions that lead to the same kind of outcomes.
Within this context, out-of-wedlock births takes on the feel of what University of Chicago political scientist Cathy Cohen calls a “moral panic,” particularly among the Black Middle Class, which often feels that the lack of moral values among the Black poor, threatens to undermine the social and political gains of the post-Civil Rights era.
But the statistics only tell part of the story in that they don’t fully explore the nature of the relationship between single mothers, the fathers of their children and the children themselves.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
Un-married Mothers Yes, but Not Always Single Parents
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
According to a recent article by the Associated Press, 72 percent of Black babies are born to un-married women. Such numbers, which have circulated for some time, have spurred responses such as calls for “Black Marriage Day” and “Marry Your Baby-Daddy Day” as part of what might be deemed the “No Wedding, No Womb” movement.
Such responses though, like the statistics that inspired them, fail to capture the full portrait of how families function in Black communities. Many studies have suggested that there is a direct correlation between single-mother hood and the likelihood that children born out-of-wedlock are more apt to struggle in school, be incarcerated at some point in their lives, become addicted to drugs and then reproduce that same cycle with their own out-of-wedlock children.
Such studies though, often neglect other powerful influences, such as the quality of schooling, biased criminal justice systems, institutional racism and poverty—conditions that lead to the same kind of outcomes.
Within this context, out-of-wedlock births takes on the feel of what University of Chicago political scientist Cathy Cohen calls a “moral panic,” particularly among the Black Middle Class, which often feels that the lack of moral values among the Black poor, threatens to undermine the social and political gains of the post-Civil Rights era.
But the statistics only tell part of the story in that they don’t fully explore the nature of the relationship between single mothers, the fathers of their children and the children themselves.
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
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