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State of the Black Family
A. It is very much a different phenomena now. I was very afraid of turning 40 and terrified of turning 50, and yet I am looking forward now to 60, 70, and 80 because my mentors are in those age categories and doing great. But health care has changed and birth control has helped so much. Imagine...my great grandmother had 21 children. One husband and 21 children including two sets of twins. That's the difference that birth control and good general and maternal health care has made for us. Q. Let me ask you before we delve into more of the true condition of the African American family and its solutions-- I want to clear up any myths about the black family... A. Well, when I first began this work I did a conference in Iowa and a white woman asked, "Why are you studying black marriages? Black people don't get married anymore..." as if marriage was not important and as if we were not marrying. We are marrying. African Americans get married and 80 to 90 percent of us try it at some point in our lives. 80 to 90 percent of women certainly want to get married. The hip hop influence has been such in the last twenty years that we have fewer young men who want to get married. They see the opportunity to play the field for much longer than women. But about 40 or 45, even men say, "This is tiresome I want to settle down and get married..." But one of the major myths within the external community is that marriage is not important to us. It is. It is the thing that people long for. Start any conversation with any group of people about relationships and that's where the conversation will center. People want to figure out how to improve their relationships. There's the myth that monogamy is not possible among African Americans. Women generally believe it's not possible among men and people outside of our community believe it's not possible for African Americans to be monogamous. It is possible but it requires a restructuring of our values and that's where our religious lives made a very important part. We were much more committed to family in the past--and that's not to say there was not any infidelity-- there was, and there has always been extra marital affairs and extra marital child bearing, but the commitment toward one's partner is different now than it was then. However, we certainly can be committed in marriages and it's a myth that we cannot be faithful. That's a real important, pivotal issue for us right now. Q. You co-wrote The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans a study recently released by the institute for African American values. Can you summarize the findings of the study for us? A. Well, a team of us wrote this little report and we were diligent to make sure we looked at marriage for men, for women and for children separately because marriage means different things to those three groups. Marriage for men is wonderful. Men value marriage much more than women do. It is good for their health, their wealth, their general well-being and that is in large part because it requires that they settle down, focus on work and family and they have a partner who generally either cooks well prepared nutritious meals for them or makes sure that is happening in the family. They make sure they go to the doctor and that sort of thing. So marriage is good for men and men are the first to say so. Marriage is great for children. When two parents are there--whether they are step parents or two biological parents, or two cohabiting parents--there is more stability in the family. The parents' needs are met--their companionship needs, their sexual needs, and their financial needs are better met-- so they are better able to focus on meeting the needs of their children and to supervise their children and to provide for the family. The marriage or the couple relationship also brings together two-families, so the couples can draw upon family and friends on both sides of their network that makes family life more manageable. The marriage is great for men, marriage is great for children. The thing that got lots of attention in the study was that marriage is not as good for women. The role strain in marriage for women is tremendous and the conflict between men and women around how decisions are made creates a great deal of stress. The stress level for women translates into psycho sematic illness-- emotional drama-- if you will, and often it is that role strain and emotional stress around decision-making, and power sharing that causes women to be the ones generally to say the relationship is ending. More women actually apply for divorce than men. Women are more likely to cause the relationship to break up even if they're not the ones to say it first. So what we found in our study is that men and women need to learn to work together in harmony so that the family is more functional and so that the family can survive together. Q. There were some key recommendations can you give us a few of those? We need to make sure that everyone knows how to stay healthy. So we need a massive public education campaign to get the word out-- especially to those who are 18 to 30. They are the ones who know least about our history and about how our ancestors survived in tough times to make families work. Q. Let me ask you...We all have family members or friends that get together, stay together, have children together and that for whatever reason they don't get married. Why is it we don't just go to the Court and have a little wedding? Why don't we get married? We raise our families together a lot of times but we don't get married. A. Well, again it's a fallout from the 1970 to the present area. A lot is written now on the effects of divorce culture on children. Most people are simply afraid to get married. They don't know why divorce has resulted in their own parents' lives and in the lives of all the parents they knew. They are afraid that if they get married they will somehow end up in divorce. And that's what we need to teach them, how to make marriages work. Q. So it's not just economic. I know people who say I can't afford to get married. A. We can't get married because we can't afford a wedding. The assumption is that's if you get married you must have the wedding. Marriage is simply a public commitment. Marriage is not the wedding. So again, lots of myths and misinformation out there. There's an interesting program in Milwaukee at a church. At this church they say, "Okay, we understand that women dream of the day that they can be Cinderella. So if you guys want to get married and you're living together now, we're going to teach you about marriage education and we will pay for the wedding." The church has people who donate a wedding dress, make the cake and make the invitations. So while it's not a glamorous wedding--the average wedding costs $40,000--they can have a nice wedding with the veil, the cake and whatever. So they're finding in Milwaukee that couples will get married with proper marriage education and those donated items. Q. That's wonderful. Which church is this? A. I have to remember the name, but the pastor is Pastor Deborah Taylor in Milwaukee. Q. People wouldn't necessarily think about it, but not being able to afford their "dream wedding" probably is a very large impediment to people in our community getting married. A. But they already have children. Q. Right, they've been together eight years and the kids are five years old. But it's their value system. And the funny thing is that when they get married they want to wear the white dress. They don't want a beige dress or a black dress. They want a white dress because that's what they've been taught in this culture that you must have. And it's a myth. It's a lie. Q. It's a lie. I recently read the most compelling case for staying married that I ever read. It made it so clear to me. The report is entitled, "Does marriage make people happy," by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Wade. One of the most startling findings was the finding that two-thirds of the most unhappy married spouses who stayed married, reported that they were happily married five years later. It went on to report that even after controlling for race, gender and income, unhappily married adults who were divorced were no happier than adults who stayed married. So...divorce did not make one happier. I wonder who has been keeping this study under lock and key? A. Well, in the 70s remember, marriage for women was hard. Domestic violence was not against the law. There was no concept of marital rape. There were lots of things about marriage for women that were hard. Please understand that. So the women's movement said you can be happy if you get a divorce. You can be happy if you simply go to work. You can get more education and you can have your own car. Before 1970 women didn't have credit either. Women couldn't go buy a car, and they had lots of impediments. So the women's movement said, "You can be free. You can be happy..." And women have been trying that. We saw women walking away from their husbands and children into the sunset to find happiness and they haven't found happiness. The television series Sex and the City really paints a picture of how women can be sexually free, happy and successful in their careers all at the same time and yet on the few occasions that I've watched that show, those women are in great angst. Q. The same goes for the show, Girlfriends. A. Yes, being sexually free has not made people happy. Focusing only on career has not made them happy. It put their lives quite out of balance. People are happiest, and nobody is going to be in utopia all the time--but you can be content-- more contented with your life if you are in a stable, satisfying low conflict marriage. Q. So “Sex and the City...” Do you think this show portrays the free-sex, carefree lifestyle glamorously— as well as the image that we can have it all, this way? A. Unfortunately it portrays on the surface that you can have it all. They look great. They are dressed well. They are economically pretty secure, and they're happy when they're with a man and having great sex. But those relationships are transient. So you see the women at dinner or at lunch complaining to each other about how unsatisfying that life is. So if you pay close attention to what's happening to them, they don't have it all. You can only have it all in marriage. You can have the money, the man, the good sex, all of that in marriage. You can't have it just moving from partner to partner. Q. I need you to repeat that. You can only have it all in marriage. You know people would like to debunk that quickly by saying it’s not true. A. Well because they don't know how to be married and contented. That's why we really have to teach people how to be married and contented. Q. Well, I agree with you and me and my husband are working on nine years of marriage which isn't a long time, but… A. It's a long time. Q. But now I'm like, "I feel so alive!" I feel like "This is it," this is wonderful. It's not perfect but it's great. We have all kind of challenges, exterior challenges, economic challenges...but if we focus on our children, our health and our family, it really is good and you can't complain. All of the pieces are in order and the most important things are here. A. Yes, during hard times you have each other and your family to draw upon. If it's done right, you have a higher quality of sexual life. Great sex is between two people who trust each other and learn how to please each other and you don't have to worry about whether you're going to get AIDS or an unwanted pregnancy by someone who won't want you. There are just so many things that you shouldn't have to worry about anymore in a good marriage. Lots of married women will tell you "But I did get AIDS." Well, that's because your partner wasn't faithful, that's not because you were married, that's because somebody wasn't doing their part. If you have an unwanted pregnancy, the two of you can say, "You know we really didn't plan on this but we can get through this together," as opposed to getting pregnant by someone who hasn't made a commitment to you and simply says, "Well, I'll give you $250 for an abortion but I don't want to marry you." Those are things you don't have to deal with if you are in a contented satisfying marriage, not a happy blissful marriage, but a contented committed satisfying relationship and they really don't know the difference. Q. So that's what we need to teach. We talked about the fact that divorce does not make us happy necessarily. We do assume that divorce will make us happier and so many young couples need to read this because we give up before we get going good. We've had couples to give up and divorce after two years, and now, after nine years we say, "This is great. I see the vision." Had we gotten divorced after a year or two, we would have missed out on all of this. A. There is so much that people need to know. They think that when you get married you are so happy. You are so in love that you think those feelings will sustain itself for the rest of your life. And if it doesn't, it means you've married the wrong person. I've heard so many guys say, "You know, she was so beautiful, she was so great. Sex was so intense and then after we started living together or got married something happened and I just don't feel like that anymore, and so I think I'm with the wrong woman..." And they've gone through a series of new relationships and that sam phenomena occurs again. You know there's a term called habituation. Nothing remains new and exciting forever. Nothing. So if you think that a relationship is wrong because it settles down and it starts to just feel comfortable and not wildly exciting all the time--then you're always going to be moving from relationship to relationship. No relationship will be ecstatic forever. They're amazed. Folks don't know that. Q. That's true and it's interesting because the divorce rate in American for first marriages is roughly 41 percent, 60 percent for second marriages and 73 percent for third marriage. Why are people having a harder time staying married the second and third time around? A. Because they never figured out what marriage is all about and how to make it work so they keep making the same mistakes over and over again and not knowing how to fix it, not knowing how to fix. And once you've been through a divorce and you know what leads up to it, and you know how badly it hurts, it's easier to throw in the towel the second time around as opposed to staying in it when you think you know how the story unfolds. Q. So you decide to jump out sooner? A. And African Americans give up more quickly than other ethnic groups in this country and we are the lease likely to remarry. Q. Wow, really? A. Yes, when you look at it, our onset of divorce is often within one month, one year of marriage. Q. You mean when we apply for divorce? A. One month to one year. We're more likely to fall into that category than other ethnic groups, one month, one year category. And African American women once they divorce are the lease likely group of women to remarry. We are also the group of women who are most likely to never marry? Q. But we have children though. We do have lots of children. A. We have children. People are going to be sexual and they want to parent and they think that avoiding marriage will avoid the pain and agony of break ups. I even heard older women say I don't want the pain of widowhood again, so I'm never going to marry remarry. And she was shocked when her boyfriend died and she said this hurts just like when I lost my husband. I said you know, love is love. So whether you're wearing his ring or not, once you are in a heart commitment to another person and you lose them, it hurts just the same. I'm just amazed at the things that people don't know about the reality of coupled life. Q. Well the saying is it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Is that kind of the phenomena that's going on here, "I'd rather not-- in this instance-- get married than get married and end up divorced?" A. See even there we're entangling things. This woman I spoke of thought if she loved but didn't marry the loss wouldn't hurt so much. There's something about the marriage that the loss was the source of the hurt. The source of the hurt was losing the person you love whether you're married to them or not. Q. Right, right, that's so true. And one final thing… the University of Chicago study I which says that divorce makes doesn't make us happier...It also mentions that ultimately marriages that got happier, got happier because couples stubbornly stuck it out. So I'm thinking now, is this what our parents and grandparents did? They just stuck it out? Seems to me we don't have the patience or coping mechanisms for that. A. They stuck it out often miserably and then one older woman in her 70s said in a speech, "Leave them alone and they will come home wagging their tails behind them." She had been married to a man who was known for his philandering and she suffered greatly during those years. But as he aged and lost his luster out in the world, burned out with it, he came home and was quite contented just to be at home with the woman who could put up with him. So it's not just the passage of time, but it's also the gaining of wisdom that some things are just not important. Some things are too dangerous to keep doing, and that as you understand life is going to end at some point you want something better for your life. So it's not simply the passage of time but wisdom. Q. That's great. Through the African American Life Education Institute you offer two programs, the African American marriage enrichment program and African American marriage training program can you tell us briefly what those entail and how we can find out more? A. Both of those are curricula. I get lots of calls after news media coverage. People think that the institute is a place they can come to get help. The institute is a place where you can purchase curriculum packages or be trained to teach those materials to people in your communities. We consult with programs around the country and with government on marriage education and marriage policy. So it's not a place to come to get help for your relationship, it is a place to come for curriculum material, for training and for consultation. Q. Sounds like a perfect program for a church or some other group to use for its members. A. Absolutely. And this is the time, since lots of federal money is now in the hand of faith based and community based organizations, they are making decisions about which curriculum to purchase, how to become trained to implement those curricula, and 2006 is going to be a busy year because people have the funds now to now do the programs. There is a cost associated because also the food, the transportation, the child care needs to be a part of implemented as part of these marriage enrichment programs and it's going to be a good time to be in a community starting to blossom with this work. Q. That's awesome. this is such an important topic and there's so much that we need to know, and listening to you I feel like the blindfolds are coming off and we've really been duped by a myriad of institutions and movements, but the realty is that there is a lot we don't know. From what you're saying, we can have happy, healthy marriages. Marriages can be content, and there's a way to learn to do that. A. Yes. And help is on the way. Q. Thank you. That's so wonderful. Thank you so much for your time and God bless you for this ministry. A. Thanks for helping to get the word out. Q. Absolutely! What are YOUR thoughts? Discuss this topic in our forum... For more family statistics view our Data Sheet... Read Part 2 of this Series on the "State of the Black Family"... Copyright ©2006 by Keeping Family First. |
Q. You mentioned that women around age 40 or 50 were already retiring and at home and around to help with their grandchildren. My mother is 21 years older than me, but she's still working. I think it's a different phenomena now.