The Absent Black Father

This chapter discusses the critical role that absent Black fathers play in the promotion of marital fatherhood as the panacea for children's need. Author, Dorthy Roberts clearly states that the chapter is not meant to answer whether fatherlessness causes poverty or effect children upbringing, but to address the fact not cause by family form but by racism and inequality.

In our culture fatherlessness is seen as a Black problem. Absent Black Fathers represent the "dangers of fathering uncivilized by marriage (146)." Black are used as a tool to explain what ever the general population needs to address at the moment. Absent fatherhood being placed on Black men functions to racially associate as not only a depraved state but also a way to distance itself from the problem of fatherlessness and blame it on Black people.

A female headed house-hold has been the dominant family arrangement for Black families but the trend is now starting to occur more in the white community. The idea of the nuclear family today is now starting to become a myth. Today there are more white single mothers than there are Black mother; however the stigma of single still remains with Black single mothers and Black absent fathers. Roberts argues that the stigma is still placed on Black people because female headed homes are still viewed as a Black cultural trait that is plaguing the structure of White families. Whites that fall into illegitimate families are judged only on an individual basis, no matter how frequent it occurs in the White community.

As a result of Fatherlessness being racialized, the Black single mothers were blamed for not having husbands and not helped. The non-nuclear family was the escape-goat to explain why Black people were not achieving success in America, rather than looking at institutional racism. Black women were seen as rebels for not following the patriarchal family structure and the reason for their poverty. What sociologist and other people at the time did not take in consideration was the high unemployment and incarceration rates that prevented Black women from marrying their children's fathers. In 1988 there were more Black women in the workforce than men and many men could not financially provide for their household. In 1994, there were eight Black men in jail for every White man that was imprisoned. These type of systemic problems are what restrain Black men from being active as they want in their family.

One reason Black men leave their positions in the household is because they can not live up to the breadwinning theory that White America idealizes. The breadwinning theory polarizes men and women work; men work in the public area while women care for the private sphere of the home. In a Black community, where mothers were working full time jobs and men could not find jobs, Black men were emasculated.

Labeling a child fatherless also gives a skew perception of the family arrangement. Fatherless is referred to a unmarried mother. Society does not quantify what the man contributes to their child emotionally, it only cares if the man is a husband, which means the problems linked with Fatherlessness are to be fixed simply by men marrying their child's mother. Welfare re-enforces this belief that marriage is the solution to poverty by making programs that praise the widow who was married by giving them more financial support than the mothers who never married. State welfare programs even created reform bills that would encourage these mothers to get married.

The problem with the overall forcing of marriage and also the laws created to receive the child support they neglect is racism and inequality. Black men are unemployed and poor. Their financial contributions does little to help with overall financial problems. Black women are likely to impoverish with or without a Black husband. Child support only helps 10 percent of the recipients rise above the poverty level because child support can not take something that someone does not have!

Some states even created a bridefare where they actually gave up monetary rewards for marrying. It allowed families to earn 150 percent more money over the poverty line. The purpose was to make lower-class women assimilate into a more middle-class lifestyle; however it over looked the important of a father as more than a money machine.

The welfare of single low-income women will remain to be a problem as long as Black women are seen as the sole beneficiaries of it and Black "anti-culture" of single family homes is perceived as the problem.

My question is have this stuff change in the more recent years with TANF?