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Originally posted by MBM:
OK - let's really tackle this Herculean issue.

What's the deal in our community with children being born to unwed mothers? In 2001, 68% of all African American children were born to single mothers. Why is this the case?

In 1890, despite many having suffered through the ravages of slavery, over 80% of all African American families were headed by a married mother and father. How did we end up where we are today?

Solutions?



Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy.

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Well back to the subject, in my opinion morality has gone to hell in a handbasket. There's no shame attached to being an unwed mother. Furthermore, I am appalled that some of these unwed mothers don't know who the father is. I can't say its because of the way they were raised either. I have seen this with African American boys as well as girls who come from a 2 parent household. In all cases they are not pushed to marry.

I have seen where white boys and girls are raised to go to COLLEGE, seek out the PROFESSION and then get MARRIED. The last thing a white girl wants to do is come up pregnant. You will never know if she does. I have witnessed a young white girl deciding not to tell her parents about the accidental pregnancy and terminate the pregnancy on her lunch hour. Years later, she marries and starts a family after buying new home.

We are living in the same country but with different moral values as to when we should have children as well as when we should marry.

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Originally posted by ItAintEazy:

My solution? Don't give black women jobs beyond domestics since that what was going on during the "halcyon day" before the Great Society pimpin' started going down. Black women had little choice but to stay with their black males, who were more likely to be providers those days. You all can figure out the rest of the story when women began having more options in the job market and black men's wages are now the same as what white males were gettin in _1967_.

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This is unquestionably some of the stupidest chit I have ever seen...

Everyone slams these females for these OOWB's. There's a PENIS involved all up in this mess!! Guys can talk some fabulous chit when they want it, you know; will promise the female the world; when she get pregnant, she's left HOLDING THE BABY; HE'S OFF MAKING MORE!!! Hone in these BS talking brothers, and that could possibly cure the situation.

Diamond brings up a most important point in this issue when shes says 'when we should have children as well as when we should marry.' They ARE in fact two separate issues.

The tragedy of being born to an 'unwed' mother is not really the fact that no marriage has taken place, but it is the issue of what is BEST and are they PREPARED for the children being brought into this world. Our community MUST decide that strong parenthood is paramount to ALL of our children.

Mother's who do so without the utmost regards to the children's future and well-being are the problem, not necessarily the lack of a formal 'marriage'. Good observation.

Have been reading all the posts for the past couple of days and finally decided to put my two cents in.

My wife and I are very close to a family here in our area, the mother just had her 6th child by a 6th different man. Despite all of our best efforts to help this woman she still made the personnal choice to sleep with a person who she knew was only going to be here in the area for a certain limit of time and who already had a woman back in Texas.

I firmly believe that her huge lack of self-esteem and realization that many men would not give her the time of day because of the first 5 kids probably help her decide that she needed to sleep with this toad. When my wife asked her if she knew anything about the man she replied no and that this guy was happy that she didn't ask him questions and get in his business.

She had the child by C-section Friday and then had her tubes tied, but its to late, she now has 6 kids by 6 different men with no income and no job.

Jazzdog, you are so on the money. This seems to be the typical situation these women find themselves in. I can tell you the same story but with 4 or 5 kids. What can be done before it reach this point(6 kids and no "daddy" or "husband")? We don't have the social programs that we use to have during the "Great Society" era and moral decay is also a contributor to this state of affairs.

Yes this is a true phenomenon noted by Jazzdog, However what percentage of OOWB is related to this phenomenon? I lived with Girl friend for 4 years before we married. She had a child OOWB, before I started dating her, yet, I have served as income and a father figure to that child, Yet, she was counted as a single mom and perpetrator of the phenomenon of OOWB. We have subsequently married and have created a beautiful baby girl within wedlock. However, my point is that single parents and OOWB come in all types of variations, with some being much more problematic than others and others not being problematic at all.

Truth is always fraught with impediments. Truth agreed with is a blessed duet. Truth confronting beloved vice will sever relationships, perpetrate flight, and uncover murderous rage. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn


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Noah The African in America

I agree with you Noah, my wife had a little two year boy when we got married, last week we celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversay and we also have two other kids of our own.

In response to your statement I would say that the phenomenon of OOWB where they are multiple births by multiple fathers does not make up a large portion of the problem, but it is that image that is the most shocking. I would submit to you that most women who have single OOWB are like your wife and mine, they find someone get married and press on with life or else they tend not to get pregenant again and still press on with life.

My anger over this particular women is that when my wife and I got involved with her and her kids, she only had the 5 and we would actively working with her and her kids to improve their life going so far as to get her enrolled in taking classes for her GED while we babysit the kids. All that effort was to no avail as she found an excuse to drop out of the classes and lay down on her back to produce another child whose birth father has since left the state.

I'm sure that they are many social and psychology reasons that a women would continue to display this behavior while at the same time realizing that the children she bears she can't deal with it but it still blows my mind.

Congrats brother on your marriage longevity. I too hope to set such a positive image...God willing.

Truth is always fraught with impediments. Truth agreed with is a blessed duet. Truth confronting beloved vice will sever relationships, perpetrate flight, and uncover murderous rage. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn


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Noah The African in America

I agree with ya'll. I also had one child before I got married. But, while volunteering for a housing organization, There were too many single parent households with more than one child. Working with these women one on one was very difficult because they had issues. So JazzDog, you are correct when you state there is more going on than anyone can cure by lending a helping hand.

Furthermore, what you and your wife did is commendable don't let this experience stop you from doing the same thing for someone who may need, apprieciate and make you proud of the help you gave.

Jazzdog, this maybe an opportunity to stop the cycle. You may not be able to help her but you maybe able to help her children from making the same mistakes the mother made.

Are you kidding. The apple never falls far from the tree. I had a similar experience as Jassdog with a friend's daughter who was sixteen at the time. Because the Single Mother who is my friend was going in a way that I thought would destroy her daughter's life I did everything to help. I started teaching the girl the Bible, gave her extra lessons for her to pass her A-level and go to University. Paid for driving lessons and offered to buy her a new car if she would just make it to twenty-one.

My reward for these efforts was my friend the mother allowed the young girl's boyfriend to come and live with them in the same house. By the time the girl was seventeen she had her first child with the boyfriend. Meanwhile the boyfriend had two children with two other girls. He left her to continue the rampaging. When my friend's daughter turned nineteen she had her second child by another boy. So by the time she reached twenty-one she has had two kids, after this you can guess there was no chance of Uncle Henry giving anyone a car. My experience taught me not to fight against the wind and to look for positives in our children, that is all you can do. Hope for the best. The best seems to be happening in this case. My friend's daughter has now picked herself up. She has gone back to university to make something of her life.

_____________________________
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Diamond,

We have been working with the oldest child who is a 12 year old girl. She has been acting as the defacto mother to her younger siblings and you can see that it is just wearing her down, she literally is having her childhood taken away from her. I don't think I have ever seem anyone so anixous to get away from her family, because when she does get away she turns back into alittle 12 year old girl wanting to do things that typical 12 year old girls like to do.

Sometimes she can be a bother but I think its because she is so deprived where she lives and sometimes she slips into a character that reminds me of her mother which is not encouraging but she is a straight A student and my wife helped her fill out her paperwork to get into the honor society. So we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that we have a large and positive impact on her life.

Jazzdog

It's commendable what you are doing with this 12year old girl, Having read most of your posts on this board I know you are a man of wisdom, I am a bit concerned about your views on the workload on this 12 year old. Because of coming from different parts of the world we tend to see things based on our upbringing and the environment we grew up in but sometimes there is a universal truth that transcends over our different backgrounds and is accepted as wisdom. What I am getting at is, "the Devil finds work for idle hands." Whether its in the West or the poorest part of the Punjab, the way families have kept their children from harms way is to keep them occupied and busy. This is a favourite tool of Indians and Africans both in the West and on the continent. We find it works effectively and we don't suffer so much from the nightmare we are discussing here. What I would conclude is it is very good indeed that this 12 year old is kept busy. It's good that by being busy she is learning first hand what happens if she messes up. The more she doesn't like it the more likely she won't repeat the same mistake on her own children.

Don't worry that she is missing her childhood because being a child she is living it, whether it's by being a responsible child or spending her time idle and day dreaming, either way she has a childhood. Most of us in our forty's remember that we had to do a lot of housework growing up but it did not take anything away from our childhood and so it would be with this girl. Children today just want to watch TV and get up to no good so if this girl is growing up with responsibilities it would do her more good than harm. Take away this responsibilities and anything can happen. Good luck with this girl.

_____________________________
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Kudos to the positive behaviors displayed by brothas in this forum toward marrying single mothers, and mentoring young black girls...

What can we do to increase sexually responsible behavior in black males, who create these oowb's?

Negrospiritual,

If I had the answer to that question about the brothers I would write a book and retired. About the only thing that can be done is to continue to reach their minds about the beauty and nobleness of black women and how that should not be shamed or destroyed by wantonly sleeping around and making babies.

Of course that does not excuse those sisters who make bad choices also.

Henry,

In regards to the 12 year old I think she now has a clear idea of what can happen when one thinks with open legs instead of their minds. I agree that idle hands can get into trouble and truth be told my own kids growing up had household duties to keep them busy.

Here is an article that I concure with on this subject matter. It has some relevant stats that I have not heard before.

promoting marriage

WASHINGTON
There once was a time when conservatives believed in small government. Now that they control Congress and the White House, however, they have increasingly learned to live with big government as long as it serves their ideological ends.

The latest example can be found lurking in the welfare reauthorization bill passed by the House and awaiting action by the Senate: a proposal to spend nearly $2 billion over the next six years to encourage people to marry. States receiving their shares of this money would have to establish services to "encourage the formation and maintenance of healthy two-parent married families." Single people on welfare who marry might even get cash bonuses.

Now, marriage is a good thing. A substantial body of research shows that people who marry tend to benefit economically and in other ways, and that high marriage rates are good for society. But before embarking on a giant federal program to encourage marriage, we should consider whether the program will really help the people it is intended to reach: poor single mothers on welfare.

First, there is the question of whom these women are supposed to wed. The Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson and others have shown that in high-poverty areas there are relatively few marriageable men. A study of census data by researchers at Princeton and Columbia found that more than a third of fathers of children born out of wedlock lacked a high school degree; 28 percent were unemployed; and 20 percent had incomes of less than $6,000 per year. Roughly 38 percent had criminal records.

The truth is, many single mothers are single because they find their unemployed and undereducated potential partners to be unattractive marriage material. Do we really want to encourage them to marry unsuitable partners?

Second, the beneficial effects of marriage on low-income single mothers may be significantly smaller than for American women on the whole. Census data indicate that about half of such unwed mothers already live with their child's father. An additional third are romantically involved with the father, but live separately. In either case, the father can be presumed to be providing at least some support already, so any economic gains through marriage would probably be marginal.

In addition, promoting marriage among young women may have unintended negative consequences. Teenage mothers who marry are more likely that those who stay single to have a second child while still young. This makes them more likely to drop out of school and less likely to return for their education later. In addition, young people have far less stable marriages than those who put it off until they are older "” they are more likely to divorce and have a higher incidence of domestic violence.

Finally, defining the issue as one of marriage misses the real problem: out-of-wedlock births. It is meeting the needs of children, not being single, that helps keep these women in poverty. It would make more sense to focus on helping women delay childbearing until they have completed their educations, established themselves in the workplace and, presumably, married on their own. It seems unlikely the bill's $50 million a year for abstinence education will be of much help.

Perhaps conservatives have grown so accustomed to lamenting an America in decline that they fail to realize that most people in our society, including 90 percent of women by the time they reach age 45, still choose to marry. There is no marriage crisis.

If liberals had introduced this costly big-government social experiment, conservatives would be outraged, and they would be right.

Truth is always fraught with impediments. Truth agreed with is a blessed duet. Truth confronting beloved vice will sever relationships, perpetrate flight, and uncover murderous rage. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn


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Noah The African in America

Good article Noah,

once again big government is missing the point, yes single mothers getting married from a bible thumping moralistic viewpoint is good, but if the man they marry cannot support his family or take care of them because he is uneducated or unemployed what has really beem accomplished. I'm sure many single mothers looked at the potential pool of men and decided that they could do better by themselves.

I can't see how anyone can moralize and see certain people in a bad light when the divorce rate remains so high.

It seems a little hard to me to try to act like marriage has such high "value" when it is so easily 'rushed into' and rushed out of...

Yes Jazzdog, I agree. I think that some racist people have engaged in subterfuge by portraying the lack of marriage as being the "Cause" of continued poverty in the black community. An example of such a person engaged in this subterfuge is the notorious Bill O'rielly of Faux News. They like to trumpet statistics showing that blacks that are married "Almost" have equal household income compared to their white counterparts. Thus, in a toddler example of reasoning prowess, he and they assume that the solution to black economic problems is thus marriage. The reality is that those people who are better educated and have better opportunities and incomes simply tend to get married while those who have the lesser of such tend not to get married. Consequently, the lower marriage rates in the black community are more reflective of the lack of opportunities and education in the black community relative to white communities. To follow the logic the conservative is to conclude that the correlation between income and marriage is created by marriage. In other words, they assume that marriage, in and of itself, produces income and not income producing marriages.

It is the nature of women to want to bear children and it is the nature of man to want to produce them. The question thus really boils down to whether or not poor people should be regulated in regards to child bearing. Should they be restricted in the number of kids they can have? The reality is that women want children as a general rule, as well as do men, but maybe to a lesser degree. Both genders want intercourse. Thus, the viable solution is to promote and provide opportunities and education so that the NATURAL TENDANCIES of humans can be facilitated. However, artificial and shortsighted political motivated programs will only make a situation worse in the long run. Regardless of the said intent, such manipulation and decision made by whites will yet again have a negative long term impact upon black people who are disproportionately victims of poverty and thus disproportionate victims of the side effects of many governments instituted policies and practices aimed at the poor.

Truth is always fraught with impediments. Truth agreed with is a blessed duet. Truth confronting beloved vice will sever relationships, perpetrate flight, and uncover murderous rage. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn


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Noah The African in America

Didn't read all of the posts, but jumping in anyway.

Let me tell you what I see in the classrooms and schools all the time.

The Boyz: Our young men have THOROUGHLY bought into the whole "bitch, hoe, thug, gangsta, hit it and quit it mentality". To them, this is what it means to be a man. They ardently practice the art of being "hard". They really do want to know if "there's anymore room for them in those jeans."

The Girlz: As a defense mechanism, our young girls are adapting and reflecting the attitudes of the boys. I'm speaking of teenagers now, which means that now, the boys are physically bigger and stronger than the girls. So now when one of them disrespects the girls, she can't just go upside his head like she could have in the 5th grade. Now, she's coming into womanhood and like all young women, doesn't want to be shamed in front of her peers and WANTS TO BE LIKED.

She sees that boys are drooling and oohing and ahhing over women in print, video and ads. She hears all the time on wax (yeah I'm dating myself) how much her male peers seem to value coochie. Those dear to her may tell her that men don't respect women who give it up, but WHAT SHE SEES is just the opposite.

So now, you've got the girls dressing provocatively and giving it up because everything around them tells them that this is what it means to be a woman. I see the girls all the time trying to hide the hurt at being called a bitch or hoe by a boy, and they often do it by becoming hard themselves. They'll try to act like they don't care, OR they'll try to deflect the hurt by attempting to own the insult.

That natural sense of humility that all girls display in the beginning is now thoroughly pushed to the side, because it isn't valued by the boys.

The Momz: MOST of the moms at these schools are single and handling their business on their own. Many are doing a great job, but can't always be there for every funciton. She has to work and put a roof over their heads, so her time is limited.

Those with a decent income are able to spend quality time with their kids and actually raise them.

Those who DON'T have a decent income have to work their azzes off! That means that little DeShawn isn't being supervised and BET and his peers are raising him. Some of THESE kids come out ok, but MOST DON'T! By the 3rd grade, DeShawn already wants to be like 50cent, and is now practicing calling his female classmates bitches and hoes.

Deshawn may have brothers and sisters by different fathers. DeShawn's mom isn't a slut, she's a human being with feelings. Just because she got burned by one guy, doesn't mean she wanted to take it out on the others who came into her life. But, seems like the grown men have that "don't luv dem hoes-itis" too.

After a while, mom's self esteem starts to plummet. If she's strong, she'll stop having numerous kids and do the best she can. If she's having a hard time finding her strength, she may start drinking, stop trying, stop caring about her self, appearance, or the whereabouts of her kids. She might start drugging and thuggin' with the best of them.

If it sounds as though I'm laying the blame for this on the men, you're *almost* right. I am. As long as men measure their manhood by the nothches on his bedpost, there will be women who come to believe that their value lies in being one of those nothches. Where men act, women often adapt and reflect.

*ok, flame away!*