Saving the Black family (and black babies)

An Alternative Black History Month - You won’t be hearing about the rising black middle class or intact two-parent families of the 1950s.

 Excerpt:

... black history in the first half of the 20th century is a history of tremendous progress despite overwhelming odds. During a period of legal discrimination and violent hostility to their advancement, blacks managed to make unprecedented gains that have never been repeated. Black poverty fell to 47% from 87% between 1940 and 1960—before the implementation of Great Society programs that receive so much credit for poverty reduction. The percentage of black white-collar workers quadrupled between 1940 and 1970—before the implementation of affirmative-action policies that supposedly produced today’s black middle class. In New York City, the earnings of black workers tripled between 1940 and 1950, and over the next decade the city saw a 55% increase in the number of black lawyers, a 56% increase in the number of black doctors and a 125% increase in the number of black teachers, according to political scientist Michael Javen Fortner’s new book, “Black Silent Majority.” The number of black nurses, accountants and engineers grew at an even faster clip over the same period. “There are signs that the Negro has begun to develop a large, strong middle class,” wrote Time magazine in 1953.

.... The black family was also more stable during this period. Every census from 1890 to 1940 shows the black marriage rate slightly higher than the white rate. In 1925 five out of six black children in New York City lived with both parents. Nationally, two out of three black children were being raised in two-parent homes as recently as the early 1960s. Today, more than 70% are not. Black nuclear families used to be the norm. Now they are the exception. Jim Crow did less damage to the black family than well-intentioned Great Society programs that discouraged work and marriage and promised more government checks for having more children. But that black history is also kept largely under wraps by those who have a vested interest in blaming the decimation of the black family on slavery and discrimination.

How Marriage Helps Kids

 Excerpt:

Marriage is especially important for children. Fifty years of social science has shown that kids do better on a wide range of outcomes when they grow up in homes with their married biological parents. Unfortunately for children being born in America today, marriage is becoming rarer. According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Index of Culture and Opportunity, the marriage rate dropped continually between 2002 and 2012 to reach its lowest point in history. During almost the same ten years, the percentage of children born outside of marriage grew by 6 percentage points. In 2014, over 40 percent of children were born to unmarried mothers. This is a problem. Children raised by their married mother and father have, on average, better social outcomes, including higher academic achievement, better emotional health, and fewer behavioral problems, and are more likely to form healthy romantic relationships themselves as adults.

Comment: Image source - Summer in St. Louis [Howard Family Album, 1950’s]. Jim's anti-poverty program:

1. Stay in school
2. Don't have children out of wedlock
3. Don't abort what God calls His gift
4. Get a job
5. Get married
6. Stay married

Save the Black Children - Get Married!

The Poverty Cure: Get Married - Black children bear the brunt of single parenthood’s harms.

Excerpt:

71% of African-American infants are born to unmarried women, compared with 29% for white women. The birth of a child doesn’t motivate many African-American couples to get married: 66% of black children are not living with married parents. Nor does it keep their unmarried biological parents together. About seven in 10 white children, from newborn to 18 years of age, are living with their biological parents, compared with one in three black children.

This matters because—as family-structure researchers Sara McLanahan and Isabel Sawhill note in the Future of Children, “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide variety of outcomes.” Cohabitation is not a replacement for marriage.

On average, cohabiting couples stay together for only 18 months. Two in three children born to cohabitating couples will see their biological parents break up by age 12, compared with only one in four in married-couple families. That fact is vital because family instability is a major source of poor outcomes for children.

It turns out that the effects of family instability are measurably worse for boys than for girls—and worst of all for African-American boys. In a landmark new study, a research team headed by MIT’s David Autor and Northwestern University’s David Figlio find that relative to their sisters, boys born to poorly educated unmarried mothers have higher levels of truancy and behavioral problems throughout elementary and middle school, are less likely to graduate from high school, and are more likely as juveniles to commit serious crimes. Many of the gaps between brothers and sisters are larger for blacks than for whites.

... we should never imagine that efforts by government and civil society, however effective, can fully substitute for the influence of stable, intact families. True equal opportunity for African-Americans will take not only programs to boost black incomes, neighborhoods, schools and job opportunities, but also mothers and fathers living and working together to raise their children.

Comment: Another sad note: According to 2010 census data, African Americans make up 12.6% of the U.S. population2 but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that black women accounted for 35.4% of all abortions in 2009 (source Google). Chart below source. Cake topper photo source.