Collapse of family remains the key to persistent poverty?

[nickshepDEM]

This poll was inspired by a piece I read in the Detroit News yesterday.

From the Detroit News:

In his fascinating chronicle of growing up in Detroit, "Made in Detroit: A South of 8 Mile Memoir," Paul Clemens, a white Catholic from a working-class family, recalls how his black school chums in the 1980s would commonly ask, "Where you stay at?" Not where do you live, which would imply a sense of permanence and attachment, but where do you happen to be roosting at the moment?

In other words, an urban generation raised on the novel "Roots" was coming of age with no roots, other than a bed in a shifting variety of locations. That's no surprise: An estimated 80 percent of children in Detroit are born out of wedlock, a prescription for rootlessness. Nationally, the figure for black children is about 70 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

Among the pictures from New Orleans were lots of heart-rending shots of displaced mothers and children, but few of fathers and husbands. Liberal critics say Hurricane Katrina ripped aside the veil on America's extreme poverty. What it really ripped aside was the veil over the collapse of family, particularly among inner-city blacks, that lies at the heart of poverty.

The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Harvard sociologist turned Democratic U.S. senator from New York, tried to warn of the problem four decades ago. Things were looking good then for minorities and the poor: The economy had grown, unemployment and poverty had declined by record amounts, the major barriers to equal opportunity had been stripped away by Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act, and blacks had moved into the middle class.

Rest of the article:

http://www.detnews.com/2005/editorial/0509/21/A11-321594.htm

[phantom power]

1. Typical ass-backwards GOP "values-based" thinking

O! If only we could get back to the mythical days of Ward and June Cleaver, all our problems would be solved!

[Nederland]

2. True

Patrick Moynihan got this one right decades before the rest of the country did.

[moc]

8. See Wilson (1987) for a critical review of Moynihan

Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 3 specifically. Quote from p. 73:

"The weight of existing evidence suggests that the problems of male joblessness could be the single most important factor underlying the rise in unwed mothers among poor black women."

Poverty drives family structure, not vice versa.

[Nederland]

14. Question

Poverty drives family structure

How do you know this is true? Certainly there is a relationship between poverty and family structure, as huge amounts of evidence indicate that married people have a higher wages, longer lifespans and an over all standard of living that is higher than unmarried people. So there is a relationship, that we agree on.

The question becomes which, if either, causes the other? I would be curious to understand what test can be applied to determine which attribute is the cause and which is the effect. Does Wilson specify?

[moc]

18. Yes, Wilson goes into a detailed review of the literature.

I would refer you to him for a more complete explanation.

Not trying to be off putting, but I've only got another 30 minutes in the office and I've got to get some work done.

[Nederland]

19. You might want to read this

http://www.thepublicinterest.com/archives/2002spring/article1.html

The article explains why Wilson and others got it wrong. Much of the explanation comes from misinterpreting census data from the late 1800s, among other things.

As others on this thread have suggested, the true cause of single parenthood among African Americans is the history of slavery, not poverty. The simple proof comes from observing that other groups, such as Hispanics, have higher poverty rates than black Americans and yet have higher marriage rates. If poverty caused single parenting, you would expect the trend to be consistent across ethnic and culture lines. Since it doesn't, we must acknowledge that poverty is not the true cause.

[Bemis]

32. Should look up The Public Interest.....

The publisher is Irving Kristol and they get a majority of their funding from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.

Remember, when Right Wing foundations like theirs fund publications they are going to echo the Right Wing!

[undergroundpanther]

3. rich hoarding

has everything to do with poverty.

Family has nothing to do with poverty.

word origin of "family" once meant a band of slaves.
So family was a name for poverty and confimnement.

And if your family is dysfunctional like alot of them are That's what family IS to you.

Only rich people can afford to escape family without hardship.

Nuclear families themselves causes poverty because when all families are little islands in the suburbs there is no community.

[Nederland]

15. Question

If family has "nothing to do with poverty", how do you explain the correlation between standard of living and martial status?

[moc]

4. Sorry, this is off base. Macroeconomic factors drive poverty levels

not changes in family structure.

See Wilson, W. J. (1987). The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press for an excellent summary.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Poor families began "breaking" in large numbers when the

moralists screamed and hollered about women who were collecting AFDC even though they had a man in the house (probably their unemployed husband, whose factory job had disappeared). This occurred in the mid 1960s, IIRC.

Urged on by the moralists, social workers began making surprise inspections of AFDC recipients, and any woman who had a man living in the house, even if it was her lawfully wedded husband, lost her benefits.

So the men couldn't make a living wage, and the women couldn't collect welfare if the men lived with them. This made absentee fatherhood the only economically viable way for very poor people to live.

(By the way, it's not only a Black thing. There are plenty of single mothers among poor whites.)

Now personally, upon finding out that women were receiving benefits while living with unemployed men, I would have changed AFDC to a whole-family benefit that was available to two-parent families as long as one adult, either the father or the mother, was enrolled in a full-time degree or vocational program or job hunting. But that would have been too sensible.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Kindly remember

that the majority of poor people in this country live in rural areas and are white.

I live in one of the poorest counties in Arkansas. Though there is some "living together", what I see most is a family unit of mother, father, and children. I worked for a special needs daycare during the 90s, and the kids who were there paid for by the state all had both parents. There were some kids who paid for daycare, and, as I recall, there were one or two who were being raised by single parents.

One reason for persistant poverty in my rural area is simple-lack of jobs, and an unwillingness of the population to move elsewhere. And why? Because they have a network of relatives and neighbors who will help each other out in times of crisis. Better to scrape by in a place you know around people you know than to risk what security you have by moving away.

[Caution]

7. Such a crock. As if poverty hasn't been a persistent human condition

Heck more people lived in poverty when divorce was completely illegal. The only cure for poverty is education and job training being universally available.

[raccoon]

13. And living wage jobs once the training is completed. nt

[Igel]

9. Most of the impoverished are kids; the largest

single group are single moms. Add a partner that's a wage earner, and many of those would be out of poverty. They might be working poor, but many would rise above the poverty line. Point 1.

Point 2: all things being equal, for males, being married equates to greater lifetime income. Equal income, race, training ... those with families wind up earning more. Whether it's because they have a greater sense of responsibility, and work harder and keep their jobs; or because they retained their family because they have a greater sense of responsibility, I don't know.

Broken families aren't the sole domain of the poor; here I take 'broken families' to mean divorced or split up families, not relationships that produced kids but no two-parent family unit. 'Poverty --> broken families' holds true at about the same rate as 'middle class --> broken families'. A factor in an analysis that contributes nothing to explaining a phenomenon is hardly a factor.

I don't know if family stability is the "key" to resolving persistent poverty, but it can't hurt.

[Tomee450]

10. Just more right wing garbage.

Reminds me of the Republicans calling in to shows saying most of the people in NO were on welfare, when such was not the case. Many NO citizens had jobs and owned their own homes. Some even owned their own businesses. I saw a lot of men in those crowds. If a person is a racist they will see what they wish to see. I am tired of hearing about all of the out of wedlock babies that blacks supposedly have, as if only blacks have ow children. We don't even know if the stats are correct. A lot of blacks have their bills paid by Medicaid where the records are readily available. Whites have private insurance and can hide their pregnancy. I also read that white girls get pregnant often while they are engaged. They later get married and when their baby is born it is listed as legitimate. The black girl for various reasons may not be able to get married and so when her baby is born it is listed as illegitimate. Both were cases involving out of wedlock pregnancy but only the black girl's child is listed as out of wedlock.

I am so tired of hearing about the breakup of black families as if the problems one sees in the black community are nowhere to be seen in other communities. Two out of four marriages in this country end in divorce. There are a lot of families, black and white, headed by single women. Why the continued harping on black people? There was a recent study of a mostly white school which showed that many white girls in that school were getting pregnant. Some kept their children, others placed them for adoption. Those girls were not behaving any differently from black girls in urban centers. However, you won't hear too much about broken homes and out of wedlock births among whites, just a continuous harping on what is perceived as black pathology. The double standard is glaring.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Yes, I spent seven years in a nearly all-white town in Oregon

It was surprising to see how many teenagers had babies. You don't THINK of teenage parenthood as being a problem in a picturesque rural town that would probably vote 100% Republican if it weren't for the college employees, but in that case it was.

[Nederland]

21. The facts

The "harping", if one should really call it that, is simply a reaction the the facts. Yes, there are white unwed mothers. However the fact is that the rates of unwed mothers among blacks is twice that of other racial groups. As I have said elsewhere, I believe the cause of that statistic is the horrendous effects of slavery. However, ignoring the facts get us nowhere. The correct course of action is to acknowledge the truth, determine the causes, and devise a solution.

[Tomee450]

25. And I say baloney.

No African American in his right mind should believe statistics compiled by some of the same people who came from the population that has not looked favorably upon black people. People collect stats and people can make them suit their beliefs. Yes black out of wedlock rate can be higher than whites but not necessarily to the extent reported. I know many, many blacks who do not have out of wedlock children. I know whites who do have out of wedlock children. There are ways that people in the dominant population can hide their illegitimacy that is not available to black people. So if you wish to believe the stats, fine. I, a black person well acquainted with how so called stats are often twisted when it comes to blacks, will not accept those stats as absolutely true.

[Nederland]

26. Wow

I'm used to seeing people stick their heads in the sand on Repulican boards, but not here.

[Tomee450]

28. But unfortunately

there are a few people here who share the same views of black people as individuals at that other right wing site. They delight in repeating the same stereotypes.

[Nederland]

29. Facts

The issue here is one of facts. The fact is that the number of unwed mothers in the African American community is twice that of other racial groups. This fact is not denied by black academics such as Cornell West, nor by black politicians such as Jesse Jackson, neither of which could hardly be described as persons that have a habit of spreading racist propaganda.

Obviously you are entitled to your opinion, but I find it telling that your opinion seems to be based entirely upon the notion that anyone who has ever done studies or compiled statistics on unwed mothers is a racist, despite the fact that many of those people are themselves persons of color.

[Tomee450]

30. What you may consider to be facts

may very well not be. A lot of so called facts have been compiled about black people that simply were not true. It's a good idea to know who did the compiling, who paid for the study and for what purpose was it done. A lot of people bought Charles Murray's so called facts which were later soundly discredited.

I am sure that both Jesse Jackson and Cornell West have spoken about black out of wedlock births. So have other blacks such as Louis Farrakhan. They support the family unit of two parents and wish to encourage marriage. However, I would bet that none of those gentlemen believe that black women are any more sexually active than white women. There are difference in the way illegitimacy is recorded. White women have more access to birth control, often conceal their pregnancy, and are more likely to place a child for adoption. Many black women keep their children. So no, I will not accept as gospel statistics compiled about black people when I know what has been done with stats in the past if the issue involves the African American community.

[Seansky]

11. Your poll is way too simplistic . Education, birth control, planned

parenthood, environment....

[JDPriestly]

12. I note the focus on African-Americans in this anecdotal evidence.

Right-wing propaganda that criticizes the lack of family stability in the African-American community ignores the fact that slavery discouraged stable families.

[Nederland]

20. Agreed

The high numbers of unwed mothers certainly contributes to the high rates of poverty among African Americans, but slavery is the root cause of low marriage rates in that population segment. How odd that Republicans love to center on the symptoms of problems rather than digging deep to determine the root causes. Not.

[Yupster]

17. Obviously out of wedlock births

are too high and are not good for our children or ourr society. There would be few people that would in general disagree with that I would think.

Also, it's an obvious fact that it is a problem in every community, but the statistics are worse in the A-A community where the out of wedlock birthrate is reportedly around 70 %.

Who has solutions to solve this problem?

[Tomee450]

24. And exactly why should anyone

believe your quoted statistics? Who compiled them? Charles Murray compiled a lot of statistics too, in his effort to prove blacks inferior.

My friend who became employed at a suburban school was shocked to see so many white girls pregnant. One never hears about the illegitimacy rate among whites, just as very little is heard about the crime that exists in mostly white communities. I believe if there were honest studies, looking at as many records, public and private, one would find that there might be a lot more illegitimacy among the majority population than is reported. The black teenage pregnancy rate has declined over the past few years. Wonder why we never hear about that.

For years people have made their money and careers focusing on what they perceived as deep problems in the black community while ignoring those same problems(or hiding them) in their own back yard. I've lived and worked with whites and know that they have exactly the same problems in their community as do blacks: children in trouble with the law, domestic abuse,drug abuse, vandalism, teenage burglary ring (never reported in the news,)robberies;people going out of town having to hire house sitters out of fear of having nothing left when they returned home, young women afraid to walk alone for fear of being followed. All of this in neighborhood with few or no blacks people. Nothing has really changed in this country. The vilification of the black population continues.

[renie408]

22. Before I even opened the thread, I thought "That's backwards."n/t

[Lexingtonian]

23. Ignore that crap.

There are three or four serious roots to structural poverty.

The political one is caste barriers, which have been lowered a pretty large amount in the U.S. but still exist to varying degrees.

There is a psychological root, which involves cultural imperatives and/or group trauma. These are pretty big stuff in the present- the traumas of racist violence, inability to obtain work worth doing, and familial pressures (from agrarian circumstances of life) to have a lot of children at a young age rather than get a full education, etc.

Mental and physical disability or extreme trauma not recovered from, often undiagnosed or unrecognized or misunderstood, is the strongest one. Alcoholism, for example. When it's genetic or familially imposed stuff, or environmental in some other fashion, poverty is almost unavoidable and inescapable.

[tx_dem41]

27. Why is it anti-liberal to basically agree with this premise? n/t

[Mountainman]

31. Conservatives use this argunent to support their side of the cultural war.

If the conservatives agree with the statement then there must be something wrong with it.

To me it is like the guy banging a drum in the middle of Times Square telling folks he's keeping rogue elephants away. Since there are no rogue elephants in Times Square he must be doing a good job right?

[Humor_In_Cuneiform]

33. Let me see, an admin that gives tax cuts

to the very wealthy, that opposes unions, that makes bankruptcy harder to declare regardless of the cause, that lets credit card companies write their bankrupty law, that allows outsourcing that depends on unfair competion from abroad that doesn't comply with US wage and safety standards or worse, that allows no bid contracts over and over to their cronies, that operates in more secrecy than any prior administration, that has no empathy for others (ie Queen Babs: this housing of thousands in the Astrodome should work out well for those who never had much), that will not allow medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies, that would rather let people die than to stop being the last industrialized nation without universal healthcare, that doesn't mind in the least picking on the poorest and most vulnerable among us if it helps their aims, and that smugly doesn't give a fig about anything but themselves, their money, their power.

Hard to figure how poverty is getting worse since about January of 2001, ain't it?

:sarcasm: