Black Love and Marriage/Parental Support - 3/26/04

[Smart Marriages ®]

subject: Black Love and Marriage/Parental Support - 3/26/04

from: Smart Marriages®

- THE STATE OF OUR UNION: BLACK LOVE AND MARRIAGE, 2004
- EFFECTS OF PARENTAL SUPPORT DURING CHILDHOOD

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Africana.com
March 26, 2004 
- THE STATE OF OUR UNION: BLACK LOVE AND MARRIAGE, 2004

For all the real problems black men and women face in trying to find love,
the myths are even worse. It's time to make a positive stand for black love.

> It's time to dispel the greatest myths about black love, 2004.

> For all the foreboding statistics suggesting a crisis in the romantic lives of
> black Americans today, black love hasn't changed nearly as much as America.
> The 1960s witnessed the convergence of three social upheavals that would
> directly affect how black people love one another: the Civil Rights Movement,
> the struggle for women's liberation, and the sexual revolution. . . . As
> post-Civil Rights babies, black Americans today must negotiate a
> newly-integrated, gender-recalibrated, sexually-liberated America.
> 
> Yes, black love as we've come to know it is dying, but a new love is taking
> its place. Twenty-first century black love will undoubtedly defy our parochial
> assumptions about race, gender and sexuality.

By Adam Bradley

This Sunday black men and women in over forty cities nationwide will
celebrate the second annual Black Marriage Day. Established by the
non-profit Wedded Bliss Foundation and sponsored by Black Enterprise
magazine, Black Marriage Day promises to "highlight the benefits of married
life and offer celebrations to strengthen and promote marriage in the
nation's Black community." Let's hope it's not too late.

Yes, black love as we've come to know it is dying, but a new love is taking
its place. Black marriage is in undeniable crisis. Among black people
between the ages of 25 and 35, the prime marrying age in the United States,
fewer than 32% are married. When black people do wed, it isn't always for
long. Shirley Hatchett, a sociologist at the University of Illinois,
reported in 1998 that two out of three black marriages end in divorce, as
compared to one out of two white marriages. The average black woman can
expect to spend 22% of her lifetime with a spouse.

Outside of marriage, black love seems to fare little better. In his
recently-revised Black and Single, social psychologist Larry Davis describes
the "black romantic market." He estimates that, when we account for social
factors like black male imprisonment and interracial relationships, black
women outnumber available black men two to one. Davis' numbers are more
conservative than those others come up with; therapist and Washington, DC
radio personality Audrey B. Chapman estimates the proportion as closer to 4
to 1, or even 6 to 1, when one considers all the factors that make a black
man a desirable partner. With the 2000 U.S. census reporting only 85 black
men for every 100 black women, one can understand the desperation (or
exasperation?) coming from sisters everywhere.

Could it be that black love has made it this far, through slavery and
segregation, only to die here on this side of freedom? Could it be that
young black folk have somehow forgotten how to love? I don't think so. Now
is the time to speak candidly of black love. It's time to move beyond both
the defensive racial chauvinism that would portray black love and marriage
as unquestionably perfect, and the outright resignation that would
prematurely declare their demise. It's time to dispel the greatest myths
about black love, 2004.

Myth #1: "Black men and women are fighting a civil war."

Last December the reigning Miss Savannah, Sharron Nicole Redmond, a
22-year-old graduate of Spelman College, shot and killed her boyfriend when
she discovered he was engaged to another woman. While the particulars of the
case are still emerging, what little we know seems to illustrate vividly and
painfully several widely-held assumptions about black people in what Alice
Walker once called "love and trouble." Black men, the myth goes, are
ravenous womanizers, only as faithful as their options. Black women are
jealous lovers, capable of committing acts of violent retribution. This
marriage of love and violence carries an outlaw appeal for some even as it
underscores racist assumptions of black hyper-sexuality and criminality.

Nikki Redmond's case is an extreme example of something black men and women
act out every day. More than 30 years ago black feminist writer Toni Cade
Bambara noted that "it doesn't take any particular expertise to observe that
one of the most characteristic features of our community is the antagonism
between our men and our women." This tension manifests itself in a variety
of ways: disproportionate rates of domestic violence in black homes, overt
sexism within movements for racial justice, exploitation of women's bodies
in popular entertainment.

But black men and women's battle is not primarily with one another. Together
we face the mis-measure of black humanity brought on by the dehumanizing
effects of the criminal justice system and economic disenfranchisement, not
to mention the self-destructive tendencies within our own communities. In
her most recent book, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, bell hooks
argues compellingly that "[b]y considering the possibility that many black
males and females are in a state of arrested development, trapped by fantasy
bonding and allegiance to false selves, we cannot only understand better the
nature of conflict between us, we can begin to heal our wounds."

Healing black love wounds means nothing less than reconceiving our relation
to one another as men and women, and our relation together to a blackness
that encompasses rather than obscures our full selves. Why not begin by
acknowledging and emulating the successful black relationships ‹ not just
romantic, but parental and Platonic ‹ already among us?

Myth #2: "The Hip Hop Generation doesn't care about love."

When people talk about black love in crisis, they're invariably referring to
young black Americans ‹ the Hip Hop Generation. Even an insightful critic
like bell hooks seems to scapegoat young black people in general, and hip
hop culture in particular, for the "crisis of lovelessness" we face. But
while hip hop is undoubtedly conflicted when it comes to love, the story is
more complex than our elders credit.

You'll find no greater example of this complexity than The Love Below, André
3000's contribution to OutKast's Grammy-winning Album of the Year. Dre is
our hip hop Pablo Neruda, spitting love poems while singing the occasional
song of despair. He describes black love from breakups to makeups, exploring
with disarming honesty its gradations ‹ tenderness and longing, anger and
lust. It's hard to imagine this album being suited for mass consumption, so
far does it stray from the established conventions of commercial viability.
It may, in fact, be the least likely cross-over hit of all time: a rap album
with precious few raps; a pop album that, with the glaring exception the
hyper-kinetic, retro-futuristic "Hey Ya!," contains no radio-friendly
singles; a universal album that extols the particular promise of black
people in love. At a time when rap music continues to objectify women in
novel ways (witness BET Uncut) it is important to remember that this, too,
is hip hop. 

Far from disavowing love, rap artists are warming to it like never before.
While progressive MCs like OutKast, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Black Eyed Peas,
Lauryn Hill and Common have long made love a prominent theme in their
lyrics, love has only recently made it mainstream. A cynic might see the
prevalence of saccharine love songs by otherwise sugar-free rappers like
Chingy and G-Unit as purely market-driven. After all, young women are the
target consumers for the advertisers that keep both radio and music
television stations on the air. And those who program radio seem to think
that women have an insatiable appetite for hearing men rap and sing about
love. A more generous view, however, may be that hip hop, like so many of
its artists, is finally growing up ‹ and growing out ‹ to encompass the full
measure of a complex black humanity that includes, above all else, love.

Myth #3: "Black love is dying."

Once upon a time not long ago black intellectuals engaged in a serious
debate over whether black love could even exist. Some, like novelist Richard
Wright, argued that the legacy of slavery and the continuing effects of
white supremacy made it all but impossible for black people to love one
another. Others, like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, saw in black
Americans a particular capacity to love forged in part as a result of
suffering. 

For all the foreboding statistics suggesting a crisis in the romantic lives
of black Americans today, black love hasn't changed nearly as much as
America. The 1960s witnessed the convergence of three social upheavals that
would directly affect how black people love one another: the Civil Rights
Movement, the struggle for women's liberation, and the sexual revolution.
This perfect cultural storm brought about a measure of racial equality, at
least in the letter of the law; a rising number of white women joining black
and brown women in the workforce; and a growing public consciousness ‹ if
not acceptance ‹ of sexual diversity, premarital sex, and out-of-wedlock
births. As post-Civil Rights babies, black Americans today must negotiate a
newly-integrated, gender-recalibrated, sexually-liberated America.

Yes, black love as we've come to know it is dying, but a new love is taking
its place. Twenty-first century black love will undoubtedly defy our
parochial assumptions about race, gender and sexuality. Not only will the
new century witness an increasing number of interracial births (though
likely not the "beige-ing of America" predicted by some researchers a decade
ago), but it will also bring an increasing awareness and legitimization of
multiple categories for racial and sexual identity. Can black love contain
love between multi-racial individuals, or between black and white or black
and Latino, for that matter? Can it fully acknowledge the love of same-sex
couples? Whatever our answers, the conventional image of a heterosexual,
monoracial black couple is simply no longer the only black love we're
living. 

Black love matters in 2004 if only because in loving we exercise a freedom
for which our forbearers had to fight, one that we still must actively
claim. Near the end of Toni Morrison's Beloved, Paul D finally understands
what love means to Sethe ‹ "to get to a place where you could love anything
you chose ‹ not to need permission for desire ‹ well, now, that was
freedom." May we all find the same.

First published: March 26, 2004

About the Author
Adam Bradley teaches a course called "Black Love in Literature" at Dartmouth
College; this article is dedicated to his students. He may be reached at
adamfbradley at hotmail.com for comment.

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- EFFECTS OF PARENTAL SUPPORT DURING CHILDHOOD

Public release date: 21-Mar-2004
Contact: David Partenheimer
dpartenheimer at apa.org
202-336-5706
American Psychological Association

Lack of parental support during childhood is associated with poorer adult
mental & physical health

WASHINGTON -- People with abundant parental support during childhood are
likely to have relatively good health throughout adulthood, whereas people
with inadequate parental support while growing up are likely to have poorer
health as adults, suggests a new study involving a nationally representative
sample of nearly 3,000 adults. The findings are reported on in the March
issue of Psychology and Aging, a journal published by the American
Psychological Association (APA).

Research has long showed that children who receive abundant support from
their parents report fewer psychological and physical problems during
childhood than children who receive less parental support. Studies have also
found that adult psychological and physical health is influenced by the
amount of social support adults receive. Now, Benjamin A. Shaw, Ph.D.,
Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health, University at Albany and
colleagues from the University of Michigan investigated for the first time
whether the health effects of parental support received during childhood
persist throughout adulthood into old age.

The researchers analyzed responses from 2,905 adults, ages 25-74, who
participated in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United
States. The participants were asked about the availability of emotional
support from their mothers and fathers during the years they were growing
up, such as "how much could you confide in her or him about things that were
bothering you?" and "how much love and affection did she or he give you?"
Depressive symptoms, chronic health conditions and self-esteem were also
assessed through survey questions.

Results of the study indicate that adults' current mental and physical
health is influenced not only by current psychosocial conditions, but also
by earlier life psychosocial conditions dating back to childhood, including
parental support. The researchers found a lack of parental support during
childhood is associated with increased levels of depressive symptoms and
chronic health conditions (such as hypertension, arthritis and urinary
problems) in adulthood, and this association persists with increasing age
throughout adulthood into early old age. The association appears to be more
strongly linked to mental health than physical health problems, which may be
due to differences in how these problems develop over time, according to the
authors.

"These findings are important because they not only reveal a strong
association between early parental support and adult health status, but also
provide some preliminary insight into factors that link early social
conditions with adult health and well-being," says Dr. Shaw. "In this study,
we found that the association between early parental support and adult
health may be largely due to the long-term impact of parent-child
relationships on important psychosocial resources. Specifically, early
parental support appears to shape people's sense of personal control,
self-esteem and family relationships, which in turn affect adult depressive
symptoms and physical health."

If additional research supports these findings, the authors say the
implications may be far-reaching for predicting who is at elevated risk for
ill health in late life, and for improving the physical and mental health of
older adults. "Instead of only considering the impact that contemporaneous
psychosocial resources and experiences may have on the physical and mental
health of adults and older adults, health practitioners may need to cast a
much broader net that encompasses earlier life conditions dating as far back
as childhood."

### Article: "Emotional Support From Parents Early in Life, Aging, and
Health," Benjamin A. Shaw, University at Albany, State University of New
York, Neal Krause, Linda M. Chatters, Cathleen M Connell, and Berit
Ingersoll-Dayton, University of Michigan; Psychology and Aging, Vol. 19, No.
1.

Full text of the article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office or
at http://www.apa.org/journals/pag/press_releases/march_2004/pag1914.html

Lead author Benjamin Shaw can be reached at 518-402-0325 or by e-mail at
bashaw at albany.edu.

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