Black Relationships : ADDRESSING THE MYTH OF FATHERLESS HOMES

Survey: Defying Stereotypes, Most African-American Fathers Are Actually More Involved or Just as Involved in Their Children's Lives as Fathers of Other Races


December 21, 2013 7:49 AM

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Defying enduring stereotypes about black fatherhood, a federal survey of American parents shows that by most measures, black fathers who live with their children are just as involved as other dads who live with their kids -- or more so.
On weekdays, Bryan August-Jones wakes before sunrise in his home in Watts. He gets his three sons dressed, then takes them to the baby sitter and to school. On weekends, they go on bike rides and out to eat. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times / December 19, 2013)


skuderjaymes

For instance, among fathers who lived with young children, 70% of black dads said they bathed, diapered or dressed those kids every day, compared with 60% of white fathers and 45% of Latino fathers, according to a report released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Nearly 35% of black fathers who lived with their young children said they read to them daily, compared with 30% of white dads and 22% of Latino dads. The report was based on a federal survey that included more than 3,900 fathers between 2006 and 2010 -- a trove of data seen as the gold standard for studying fatherhood in the United States. In many cases, the differences between black fathers and those of other races were not statistically significant, researchers said.
The findings echo earlier studies that counter simple stereotypes characterizing black fathers as missing in action. When it comes to fathers who live with their kids, "blacks look a lot like everyone else," said Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center who has previously studied the topic. And in light of the negative stereotypes about black fathers, "that is a story in itself."
In Watts, Bryan August-Jones battles the stereotype daily. Every weekday, he wakes his three sons before sunrise, gets them dressed, then ferries them to the baby sitter and to school. On weekends, he takes them bicycling or to Red Lobster, which his youngest son -- "a little fancy guy" -- prefers over McDonald's.
His Latina mother-in-law and her family think black men cannot be good fathers, but "I prove them wrong all the time," August-Jones said.
Worry about black fathers has been tied to a persistent fact: Black dads are especially likely to live apart from one or more of their children -- and fathers of all races tend to be less involved in the day-to-day lives of their kids when they live elsewhere.
Yet the report also revealed that among American fathers living apart from their children, black dads were at least as involved as other dads not living with their kids, or more so, according to most measures. Among fathers living apart from older children, more than half of black fathers said that several times a week or more, they talked to their kids about their day -- a higher percentage than among white or Latino dads living separately from older children, the report showed.
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SOURCE: Emily Alpert Reyes
The Los Angeles Times

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Posted July 3, 2013 - 10:30am
Single dads head record share of US households with children


By Emily Alpert
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Single fathers head a record number of American households with children, the Pew Research Center said in a report released Tuesday. The number of such households has undergone a ninefold increase in half a century, swelling to more than 2.6 million nationwide.
As of two years ago, single dads led 8 percent of U.S. households with kids, compared with just 1 percent in 1960, the Pew analysis of Census Bureau data found. Now single fathers make up nearly 1 in 4 single parents, but single mothers remain much more common.
Pew attributed the increase to many of the same things that ramped up single motherhood, including more children born outside of marriage and higher divorce rates since the 1960s and ’70s. Other experts have suggested that divorced and never-married fathers now have more chances to get custody of their children at least some of the time — and more interest in doing so.
“For a long time, men saw parenthood as a package deal,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research and public education at the nonprofit Council on Contemporary Families. “If they didn’t have a wife to help them, they tended to not be interested or not feel capable of dealing with the kids.”
Today, “we’ve seen a real decline in the number of dads who walk away from their kids” after divorce, Coontz said. Some men have also asserted their rights as parents outside of marriage, she added.
Single fathers tend to be younger, poorer and less educated than married ones, the Pew report showed. They fare better financially than single mothers, though, even though they are less likely than single mothers to have gone to college.
Being single does not necessarily mean they are alone. Among single fathers, 41 percent were living with an unmarried partner, Pew found — a slight increase since 1990, when the question was first asked.
The rising numbers of single dads are another sign that ideas about fatherhood are shifting, something that has repeatedly popped up in family research. Fathers are spending more time with their children than in the past, Pew has previously found, although they still spend much less time on average than mothers do.
Another Pew survey found that Americans put more importance on fathers providing values or emotional support than on earning income for their families, ranking those roles in roughly the same order as they do the roles of mothers. More mothers are breadwinners than in decades past, challenging the assumption that fathers are chiefly providers rather than caregivers
- See more at: http://thedailyworld.com/sections/n...households-children.html#sthash.IseEAdGr.dpuf


skuderjaymes


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Rashida said...
Many black women will not give credence to these studies because they don't want to accept that their failures to win the hearts of men have a direct impact on their children.

Rocky, this is the truest statement I have read on the internet so far. It is something that the black community as a whole will nerve talk about because even white people don't talk about it.

A woman's ability to "keep" a man will directly impact her children. Is it "fair" to the child? No, but it is the reality. Many women want to live in a world where their actions affect only THEM and everyone else must "do right" by her. This is not nor has it ever been the case.

Many women do not want to take responsibility for their children IN TOTALITY. That means choosing a father for your children who is FIRST COMMITTED TO YOU. Once he has shown that he is committed to you and a future with you, then a child should come into the picture.

This is the harsh reality that we face as women which is why it is of the utmost importance that we (from a very early age) take responsibility for ourselves, our actions and understand our role in society. God gave us the power to give life to a child for a reason and no amount of government intervention is going to change that.

But on the point of black men not being "there" I think that once you control for socioeconomics black men are on par with men of other races/cultures. Just like once you control for socio-economics black women are on par with things like abortion and OOW births. You don't see the same number of abortions and out of wedlock births among black women who grew up middle class. It is the poor and the underclass that exacerbate the stats in our community.

We can't forget about the prison industrial complex and what that has done to the community and families specifically.

White men not also abandon their children, refuse to marry the mother of their child and spend a very small amount of time actually parenting their children. This is why so many young white people face identity crises and such. Talk to a white person in their 20's and 30's and you'll hear a FULL Range of stories about dear old dad. White men are not the model for fatherhood AT ALL


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An interesting perspective!
Addressing The "Black Men Abandon Their Children" myth.
Needless to say, black men are commonly stereotyped as having a strong propensity to abandon their children. The term "abandon" seems to be a preferred term especially by the black female interracial bloggers as well as the so called "black female empowerment" bloggers.

The problem is that evidence disputes this stereotype and shows that the source of the stereotype is more so a case of the failure of black men and black women to form stable relationships. In response to President Obama's criticism of black men's alleged absence from their chidlren's lives, this article cites one study disputing the stereotype:

"A month before Obama made this stereotypical and plainly false assertion, Boston University professor Rebekah Levine Coley, in a comprehensive study on the black family, found that black fathers who aren’t in the home are much more likely to sustain regular contact with their children than absentee white fathers, or for that matter, fathers of any other ethnic group.

The study is not an obscure study buried in the thick pages of a musty academic journal. It was widely cited in a feature article on Black fathers in the May 19, 2008 issue of Newsweek. There was no excuse then to spout this myth. The facts are totally contrary to Obama’s knock."

Of course, those bloggers insistent on degrading black men will, and and have scoffed at this study citing only their own observations as well as the infamous 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate for African Americans. Basically, to them, every single black child born out-of-wedlock has been abandoned by his or her father. Of course, this would mean that no black couples marry after they have children.

This would mean that no unmarried black couples with children cohabitate. This would mean that no black men unmarried to their children's mothers are active fathers.

These bloggers will insist that this statistic as well as their alleged observations of so many little black children who do not know their fathers is proof that black men run away from their responsibilities as fathers.

But the reality is that it is not the children that black men run from, it is the mothers of these children that they run from and their absence from their children's lives is a bi-product of not being in the mother's lives and this bi-product is just as prevalent in the lives of non-black men under the same circumstances. Lets look at some research:

"Only a small percentage of nonresident fathers continue to see their child(ren) after a five-year period following divorce (Blankenhorn, 1995; Stewart). This decreased involvement in their child(ren)'s lives by divorced fathers may be the result of constraints experienced by fathers following divorce.

Cohen (1998) found that non-resident fathers' involvement in their child(ren)'s lives is subject to an array of constraints, resulting in decreased participation. He reported that "the role of fathering must be squeezed into short meetings under strained and artificial circumstances" (p. 200). If a father chooses to avoid these situations by not seeing his child(ren), the father likely forfeits leisure time with the child(ren)".

As we see, this research keys on men in general and concludes that of all men in general, a small percentage continue to see their children five years after divorce. Clearly, this is not a black male phenomenon. Lets look at more:

"Their findings support differences in fathering activities when controlling for income, age, education and socio-economic conditions of wives or co-habitators.

They found that African American fathers are ‘far more likely to monitor and supervise their children’s activities’ (p. 92) and suggest that these men are more strict, cautionary, and authoritarian than European American parents."

And more excerpts from the same website:

"Housaain et al. (1997) found that African American fathers spent more time providing physical care, feeding, and soothing of their infants than European American fathers."

"Comparison of adjusted income means indicate that African-American fathers reporting more frequently participating in caregiving activities than Latino and European American fathers.

In addition, African American fathers also reported participating in more cognitive activities with their child than European American and Latino fathers reported. African American and Latino fathers reported signifi cantly more social skills activities with the focus child than did European American fathers."

"Race or ethnic differences in reported fathering activities were examined.

As stated earlier, a number of studies have focused on absent fathers in minority communities and have supported the idea that minority, particularly African American fathers are not as involved with their children as European American fathers (Carter, 2001; Hamer, 1997; Lindholm, 1997; Mincy, 2002).

The current study found differences in reported caregiving activities across race and ethnicity. Toth and Xu (1999) found that African Americans fathers were more likely to supervise and monitor their children’s activities.

The findings of this study supports this in that African American fathers reported participating in significantly more hands-on care-giving activities than either Latino or European American fathers. This finding is important because prior studies failed to examine some of the care-giving activities that were included in the measure used in the current study.

As a result, African American fathers may be involved in different ways than had been previously reported in that they may participate in more traditional maternal activities. This present study supports the findings of Toth and Xu (1999) that the ‘stereotype of irresponsible and non-supportive African American fathers is inaccurate and should be rejected’ (p. 92)". "Both African American and Latino fathers reported higher levels of participating in social activities than European American fathers.

Social activities are an important concept in early infant development (Parke et al., 2002). This
supports the idea that African American and Latino fathers may participate more in socializing their children especially in such activities as taking their child to visit extended family and friends.

Toth and Xu (1999) found that Latino fathers reported participating in more activities such as spending time in leisure activities such as picnics, movies, sports, etc. They report that in contrast to European American families, African American and Latino fathers ‘tend to reinforce the norms of family closeness … and monitor and supervise their children more’ (p. 92)."

"It should be noted that there may be an issue with sampling bias within the sample of African American fathers. Although mothers indicated a father’s presence in the child’s life, there was some diffi culty in interviewing African American fathers.

One reason for this might be that a higher percentage of these men were not married or residing with the mother of the child. Researchers in the current study found it easier to contact and interview fathers who were residential fathers. As a result, given the higher percentage of African American fathers not residing with the child, our African American fathers might be slightly different than the European American and Latino fathers."

"Despite these limitations it is clear that minority fathers are involved with their children although not always in recognized ways."

So basically, when fathers of similar income who don't reside with their children are compared, African American fathers are more involved with their children. Surprising?

I'm sure that this will surprise many based on the media and sell-out driven stereotyping of black men. Many black women will not give credence to these studies because they don't want to accept that their failures to win the hearts of men have a direct impact on their children.

Black children reside in single parent households at just under three times the rate of white children and it is this fact, not some imaginary desire of black men to abandon their children, that drives the absent father phenomenon in the black community.

:em0200:
Isn't the bottom line the fact that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned as underlined by the GRIEF I've had seeing my children with my ex partners once they deduced that I had no intention of EVER having them as my partner/central in my life again?

Isn’t ANYONE who genuinely believes they are not programmed
graphically illustrating that their programming is COMPLETE?
 

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