Being a Black Man - Dad's Redefined - 12/17/06

[Smartmarriages]

Here is the latest installment in the excellent Washington Post series
"Being A Black Man".  Click the links for the full MUST-READ article, for
the photo album, and to watch the "Fatherless" video.  It's a shame but I
don't see the sidebar that was in the print edition.  In any case, this is
one to print and keep.  Bring it with you to Denver. - diane
 


Dad, Redefined
He's Not There in the House. Will He Be There for His Son?
Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 17, 2006; Page A01

Take part in the discussion:
> What Does a Daddy Do?
> Some 48 percent of all black children live without their fathers, double the
> rate of any other ethnic group in America. Tim Wagoner, 27, grew up without
> his father, but says he'll be involved in his 4-month-old son Zyhir's life,
> despite not being married to Zyhir's mother.
> Monday, Dec. 18, at noon ET
> Series: Being a Black Man
> Post staffer Neely Tucker discusses his story about a young black man, his
> infant son and the increasing incidence of absentee black fathers, the latest
> installation of the "Being a Black Man" series.  Click on link to email your
> questions.
> 
When 19-year-old Donné McDaniel became pregnant last year, Tim Wagoner
didn't consider marrying her.

"Nah, man, it wasn't really discussed. We're just friends."
   
They'd dated a year. The pregnancy wasn't planned.

Now their son, Zyhir, is 4 months old. Zyhir stays here, stays there.

It's 11 a.m., a cold fall morning. A darkened rowhouse in Northwest
Washington, just off Georgia Avenue. "Cold Case Files," the television cop
show, is the only electric illumination in the room. Cries come from the
crib by the couch.

"You fussin', shorty? You don't want to be in there?"

A tattooed hand reaches down, pulls little Zyhir up to his lap. "The bottle?
This it?"

Wagoner is 27, handsome, neat moustache and goatee, the oldest of five kids.
Lean, muscular, not too tall. Maria, his mom's name, is tattooed on his
hand. He lives with her and his sisters, making $7.50 an hour working at a
teen recreation center in Brookland two days a week. He's studying for his
GED.

Wagoner is with his child part of the time, and part of the time he's not.
He and McDaniel share child-raising duties but there's no formal agreement,
and Wagoner pays no child support.

In many ways, this is a new norm. Single black mothers almost outnumber
black two-parent families, and absentee black fathers have become a staple
of conversations, sermons and stand-up comics. Some 48 percent of all black
children live without their fathers in the home, nearly double the rate of
any other ethnic group in the United States. On his block, Tim Wagoner knows
more guys his age who have been shot than who are married with kids.

Many single women make it work. But according to the census, children in
mother-only families, regardless of race, are more likely to live in
poverty, be arrested as juveniles or have children in their teenage years --
all things that lead to a lifetime of difficulty.

But what defines "absentee"? If you see your child once a month, does that
make you a nonexistent father? Once a week? . . . .

> Black Families Unraveling
> 
> In the 1890 Census, one generation after slavery, 80 percent of black
> households were mom, dad and kids. It stayed that way through the 1950s, when
> the census counted 77 percent of black families as united, compared to 85
> percent of white families.
> 
> This was remarkable, as the black family had been through slavery, the
> upheaval of emancipation, the segregation of Jim Crow. The black family
> survived the Great Migration, when millions of impoverished Southern blacks
> made the journey to Northern urban centers, often dividing families.
> 
> By the early 1970s, historians and sociologists say, the sexual revolution and
> shifting mores changed American views on marriage and child-rearing.
> 
> Among blacks, the marriage rate dropped by half between 1970 and 2000 -- far
> more than any other ethnic group, as relations between black men and women
> frayed. Black women had long been accustomed to working outside the home, by
> the pinch of economic necessity, and now found a new freedom to run their own
> households. Black men, however, found a harsher and rapidly changing work
> environment: Many urban, semiskilled jobs moved to the suburbs, or were
> eliminated by technology. Trade unions often locked black men out of
> better-paying positions. The result left men scrambling to provide for their
> families, or to keep pace with women's salaries.

> For poor families, welfare laws intended to stop fraud penalized a mother if a
> man was in her household; that had the unintended effect of driving men away,
> sociologists say. Rising homicide and incarceration rates among black men
> devastated entire neighborhoods -- almost one out of every two black men
> between 18 and 35 in the District is under court oversight, according to
> Bureau of Justice statistics and published criminal justice studies.
> 
> Today, federal statistics show that 69 percent of all black children are born
> to single mothers, more than twice the national average and almost triple the
> rate of whites. In Potomac Gardens, a public housing complex on Capitol Hill
> where virtually all residents are black, the president of the residents'
> association says that of the 208 families, 180 are headed by single moms. Some
> dads help out a lot, others not at all.
> 
> "There's become an almost hyper-masculine, hypersexual idea of black men that
> has been embraced," says Pulitzer-winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., whose
> book "Becoming Dad" examined black fatherhood. "It probably has something to
> do with why we leave our children in higher numbers. The thinking is, 'I can't
> lose the game if I refuse to play the game.' If I'm sure that I can't provide
> for my family and put food on table and clothes in the closet, then I can say,
> 'I didn't care in the first place.' "

For the full article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/16/AR2006121600
998.html

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