re: Decline of the African American family - article

quote:

---

Moynihan, in his report’s conclusion declared, “at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.”
Not much has changed, according to the new report’s findings.
“An analysis of national data indicates that little progress has been made on the key issues Moynihan identified,” wrote Gregory Acs, of the Urban Institute, in a statement released with the report. “Further, many of the issues he identified for Black families are now prevalent among other families.”
Three major factors were at the heart of the Moynihan report: the number of Black children who lived in homes without a father, the number of unmarried women giving birth and the number of Black women married and living with their spouse.
In 1950, 17 percent of Black children lived in a home with their mother but not their father. By 2010 that had increased to 50 percent. In 1965, eight percent of childbirths in the Black community occurred among unmarried women. In 2010 that figure was 41 percent. The number of Black women married and living with their spouse was recorded as 53 percent in 1950. By 2010, it had dropped to 25 percent.

---