Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Strategies for Change

CONCLUSIONS

CONCLUSIONS OBIE CLAYTON, RONALD B. MINCY, AND DAVID BLANKENHORN 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. Paralleling positive developments in family structure, white America may currently be poised to follow black America when it comes to the turnaround in family structure. The proportion of all U.S. families with children under age eighteen that are headed by married couples reached an all-time low in the mid-1990s—about 72.9 percent in 1996 and 72.4 percent in 1997—but since then has stabilized. The figure for 2000 is 73 percent (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001a). Similarly, the proportion of all U.S. children living in two-parent homes reached an all-time low in the mid-1990s, but since then has stabilized. In fact, the proportion of children in two-parent homes increased from 68 percent in 1999 to 69.1 percent in 2000 (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2001b, F10A–F). A study that looked only at white, non-Hispanic children finds that the proportion of these children living with two married parents stopped its downward descent during the late 1990s, and even increased slightly from 1999 to 2000, rising from 77.3 to 78.2 percent (Dupree and Primus 2001). Another study finds that, among all U.S. children, the proportion living with their two biological or adoptive parents increased by 1.2 percent from 1997 to 1999, while during the same period the proportion living in stepfamilies (or blended families ) decreased by 0.1 percentage point and the proportion living in single-parent homes decreased by 2 percentage points. (The study finds that in 1999 about 64 percent of all U.S. children lived with their two biological or adoptive parents, while about 25 percent lived with one parent and about 8 percent lived in a stepfamily or blended 165 166 BLACK FATHERS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SOCIETY family.) Among low-income children, the decline in the proportion living in single-parent homes was even more pronounced, dropping from 44 percent in 1997 to 41 percent in 1999 (Vandivere, Moore, and Zaslow 2001). Unpublished data from this study show that, among all U.S. children, the proportion residing with their own two married biological or adoptive parents remained roughly constant from 1997 (60.3 percent) to 1999 (60.7 percent). 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 fathermother 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 and 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...