A few years ago, the New York Times published an article on black fatherhood. It felt like an exercise in gaslighting and propaganda. While the article didn’t lie in any technical sense, it did pervert the truth for its own interests. According to data from the Center for Disease Control; black fathers who don’t live with their children are more involved than non-black fathers who don’t live with their children. Those who lived with their children were also more involved than non-black men who lived with their children.
While many applauded this data, as it seems to give evidence against the ‘myth’ of the absent black father, others scratched their head in confusion, and still, others were angered at the assertion that their lived reality (single motherhood) was false. But there are even greater reasons we as a society should be concerned about the way this data is presented and proudly touted by some since its publication.
Back in the 1960s when Moynihan reported on the problem of fatherlessness in the black community, the rate of out-of-wedlock births was 30%. Comparatively, the current rate of out-of-wedlock births for white men is 7% higher than what initially sparked his concern, followed by 59% for Hispanic men and 72% for black men.
The New York Times article on black fatherhood involvement is titled, ‘Black Dads Are Doing the Best of All,’ the idea that a group of men with the highest out-of-wedlock childbirth rates are exceeding all other men as fathers only succeeds in perpetuating a new myth; that of the broken/unformed family as functional, normal, and good. It lies in suggesting to all men that ‘the best’ consists not of forming families and raising children in partnership with one’s spouse but in ticking off particular boxes in the daily activities of children. This is a radical shift in what it means to be a good father, one that we should be cautious of accepting. A father who has failed to form an intact union with his child’s mother has failed his child. While he can and must attempt to do the best he can in that situation, he should not forget that no matter how involved he is in his child’s life this is not “the best” a father can give his child —it is far from ideal.
But even the involvement of fathers living without their children is a sort of “myth” in itself. Of fathers who live with their children 93% talk to them about their day, this drops to 31% for fathers who live apart from their children. For sharing meals the comparison is 94% to 16%, and for homework help, it’s 54% compared to 11%. Unsurprisingly, fathers who live with their children spend a great deal more time with them than those who don’t.
While this may seem obvious, it’s important to highlight considering the increasing desire of society to normalize broken and unformed families. Fathers who do not form families (i.e. wedlock before birth) for their children to be raised in cannot and do not make up for it in a random checklist of activities. If we were to use the fact that black fathers are more involved than their peers in the daily activities of their children to say anything it should be as an encouragement to show black fathers how much value they add to their children’s lives and why their presence in the home is so crucial.
16% of black fathers not living with their children played with them daily (compared to 10% of white men) while 82% of black fathers played with their children daily when they lived in the home. While the 10% difference between white men and black men, favoring the latter, is interesting to note. A far greater distance exists between black fathers who live apart from their children and those who live with them. There we find a 66% difference in daily involvement. Unfortunately, only a little more than half of the black children (56%) will experience that level of involvement —this is true for 79% of white children (82% daily play when living with child compared to 6% when apart) and 65% of Hispanic children (74% daily play when living with child compared to 10% when apart).
While black men may have led the way in the epidemic of creating children out of wedlock, other men are following suit. Once a problem confined to the black inner-city, it has now spread across races and classes. Yet a change in societal norms does not obligate a change in definition. Good fathers spend time with their children —yes, but the dads who are doing the “best of all” are the ones who create stable families long before their children enter the world, and do their best to maintain that stability throughout their lives.
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Related:
- Black Marriages are Failing https://bythefigandtheolive.com/blackmarriage/
- Traditional Marriage for Black Women https://bythefigandtheolive.com/traditionalmarriage/
- Fixing the Marriage Crisis https://bythefigandtheolive.com/marriagecrisis/
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Further Reading/Sources:
- The Negro Family: The Case for National Action https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/webid-moynihan
- Black Dads Are Doing the Best of All https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/opinion/charles-blow-black-dads-are-doing-the-best-of-all.html?
- The Changing Profile of Unmarried Parents https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/04/25/the-changing-profile-of-unmarried-parents/
- The Myth of Quality Time https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-the-myth-of-quality-time.hthl?
- First Premarital Cohabitation in the United States: 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr064.pdf
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
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