An Ideal to Pursue

In the Journal of Black Studies, two scholars from Prairie View A & M University in Texas report their findings from one-hour, face-to-face interviews with a wide cross-section of African American adolescent males (age 13 to 17) living in a midwestern city. The scholars wanted to compare boys who live with their biological fathers with those who do not on a range of educational and behavioral measurements.

Of the 433 boys interviewed, 74 percent do not live with their fathers - a finding that, according to the researchers, "provides some support" for the proposition that "America has become a fatherless society." On each of the seven outcome measurements, boys living apart from their fathers had poorer outcomes than boys who were living with their fathers. On five of the measurements - being held back a year in school, skipping school or cutting classes, being suspended from school, running away from home, and getting into trouble with the police - boys without fathers were significantly worse off. For example, 42 percent of the fatherless boys had gotten into trouble with the police, compared to 29 percent of father-present boys. About 46 percent of fatherless boys had been held back in school, compared to 24 percent of father-present boys. Consequent-ly, these scholars conclude that "keeping the biological father at home should be an ideal to pursue for African American families."

Regarding the pursuit of this ideal, there is some encouraging news from the U.S. Census Bureau. From 1995 to 2000, the proportion of African American children living in married-couple homes rose from 34.8 to 38.9 percent. The number remains distressingly low, but it also represents a significant increase in just five years and the clear cessation and even reversal of the long-term shift toward Black family fragmentation. How good is this news? At a minimum, it appears that the many self-advertised "realists" who have regularly insisted that nothing can be done to change the direction of this trend are wrong.

Sources: H. Elaine Rodney and Robert Mupier, "Behavioral Differences Between African American Male Adolescents With Biological Fathers and Those Without Biological Fathers in the Home," Journal of Black Studies 30, no.1 (September 1999): 45-61. Allen Dupree and Wendell Primus, Declining Share of Children Lived With Single Mothers in the Late 1990s (Washington, D.C.: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 15, 2001).

First published Spring/Summer 2001.