Thank you Bob Herbert for explaining the PLIGHT of many black fathers.

[chimpymustgo]

Please read the article - a wealth of information and perspective. And maybe some of you will see why some of us were a little upset after Father's Day. Who are we to scold people who never had schools, or jobs, or a chance? The whole subject is so mired in racism, and bootstrappism, the un-justice system and coded messages. Let's just play fair.

*********
A Dubious Milestone

By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 21, 2008

-snip-

This is not a simple matter. Obviously, fathers should care for their children. But just wagging a finger and telling them sternly to step up to their responsibilities is about as effective as hollering at the wind.

Senator Obama touched on this when he talked about the need for certain policy changes to make it easier for young men to fulfill their parental obligations — for example, offering tax incentives and job training to those making a sincere effort.

“We should be making it easier for fathers who make responsible choices and harder for those who avoid them,” he said.

But a lot more is needed. One of the main reasons out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed in recent decades is because it has become so difficult for poor and poorly educated young men to earn enough to support a family.

There is no doubt that a lot of clowns have fathered babies when they shouldn’t have, and too many have irresponsibly taken a walk. But it’s also incredibly difficult for many of these young people to find the kind of employment that makes raising a family feasible.

The U.S. economy does not come close to providing decent employment — enough jobs — for everyone who wants to work. At the lowest end of the economic ladder the crisis in employment is reminiscent of the Great Depression in its intensity.

It is in this group of poor and educationally deprived young people that out-of-wedlock births are highest.

-snip-

Employment is the master key to the thriving families that Senator Obama talked about and that are supposed to be the American ideal. If we can’t achieve something close to full employment for the wider society, there is very little hope for those mired at the bottom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/opinion/21herbert.html?hp

*****

[cobalt1999]

1. You know condoms are less expensive than a baby.

Sorry, but owning up to your responsibilities is part of being a man, not just because it is easy. 50 years ago, black men sure weren't richer than they are now and even had less opportunities and job training, but many were much more responsible.

[MNDemNY]

4. Keeping it in your pants is free.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

[chimpymustgo]

5. Give them condoms in lieu of jobs? Please read the article and try to understand it.

[cobalt1999]

6. I did read the article.

I don't agree with his theory. Explain to me the difference male responsibility 50 years ago when poverty was more severe, discrimination was acceptable, and there was no job training?

[jwirr]

12. 50 years ago the economy was not all that bad. Also many were in

positions that could be enhanced by other forms of "income" like gardening. My oldest daughter is 50 this month - I and her father married because of her - divorced later with 3 children. We are white but in order to make it in this world he deserted us and failed to pay even 1/3 of the child support. Went on to build his own life. Don't kid yourself - this problem is not just a black problem and it is not just a today problem. Those 50-60s marriages did not last most of the time.

[cobalt1999]

14. To quote the article...

"In 2006, for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of all births to women under 30 — 50.4 percent — were out of wedlock. Nearly 80 percent of births among black women were out of wedlock.
By comparison, when John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, just 6 percent of all births were to unmarried women under 30."

No it is not just a black problem, but I don't know of any blacks that want to return to the 1950's either.

Here's where his argument falls down. If in the 1950's blacks only had a 6% unwed mother rate, and today it is 80%, while economically blacks in total have improved, then ergo economics are not the primary driving factor.

[SmileyRose]

19. Here's the deal as I see it

in the 50's and 60's when a girl got pregnant they managed to marry them up before the timer popped. so those kids were born to married women, even though they weren't married when she got pregnant. The majority of those marriages did not survive and many of those women ended up single mothers anyway - or a man would tough it out, have his affairs, and then bolt when the youngest turned 18.

Now, no one cares about the piece of paper. If she gets "knocked up" and isn't married then who really cares. Very few kids I know these days are being raised in a home with both the birth mother and birth father - and it doesn't mean the father is AWOL.

[cobalt1999]

21. Fine, but then the article is even more wrong.

It's not about economics, it's about the decline in the value of marriage. Maybe you should write his articles for him, you make more logical sense.

[SmileyRose]

22. Well

I think some make the mistake of seeing that a huge number of kids are born to single mothers and they wrongly make the assumption that Dad is AWOL. Black families get a harsher judgement IMHO when Dad doesn't live with his kids and Mom is working. It's just assumed he's a deadbeat because if he was paying Mom wouldn't have to work. That makes no sense. Even in homes with both parents living there, usually both parents work.

This said, there are way too many young men, of all races, who are AWOL. And yes, poverty is a factor. In the 50's the poor had legal ways of getting income under the radar. In the 50's if a man of low means wanted to paint houses on the side or fix leaky roofs, he didn't have to worry the IRS punishing him until he lost his home and died of a heart attack from the stress. In the 50's you could raise chickens in your small suburban back yard and sell the eggs. Now animal control throws you in jail if you refuse to get rid of the chicken that disturb your poor little delicate neighbors. -- basically, making money on the side has been criminalized a generation ago, and the poorer youngers of today, in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods have few legal options for making enough income to support a family. It often is wiser to be a deadbeat Dad so the kids will qualify for healthcare, food stamps, section 8 etc.

[EFerrari]

26. Statistics among black families weren't kept as well

because it didn't serve white politicians?

How much time do you have, exactly?

This culture is so gross. We do everything possible to exploit young black men for hundreds of years and then, we turn around and berate them for being bad people.

Good going! :sarcasm:

[boobooday]

8. It's hard to believe the response

I guess it is poor people's fault for wanting to have sex, the selfish pigs. They can't afford to have sex, so they should give it up.

[malaise]

10. My thoughts exactly n/t

[notesdev]

11. There's a reason poor people have lots of babies

When you're dirt poor, sex is one of the few sources of entertainment and enjoyment that you have.

Expecting the least educated among us to be dedicated safe sex practicioners is unrealistic, IMO. The safe sex agenda is really for middle class adolescents and young adults who don't want their education and career plans to be interrupted and derailed by unexpected parenthood.

[EFerrari]

27. People who live with high infant mortality rates have more babies.

Once the infant mortality rate settles down, so does the birth rate.

[Carnea]

32. No they shouldn't have kids... and honestly the woman need to stop dating deadbeats. nt

[EFerrari]

25. 50 years ago, poor black families weren't rewarded for being

headed by a single female.

[JVS]

31. Not if you can dodge child support

[msongs]

2. nice excuse making for people who can't stop having sex nt

[chimpymustgo]

9. "...people who can't stop having sex"??? Did you really SAY that? I think you've wandered into the

wrong discussion board.

[CBGLuthier]

17. Wow

What color is the sky in your world?

[notesdev]

3. Rather than offer them employment

... the powers that be decided it was easier just to import virtual slave labor from Mexico and points south.

There have been plenty of jobs, but too many have been held by people who don't belong here. And who suffers the worst? The poor and unskilled, among whom blacks are quite disproportionally represented.

[Spock_is_Skeptical]

7. yeah, some grains of truth but still

ignoring the "master key" of sex education and easy access to birth control and abortion. Seriously.

[jwirr]

13. Easy access to birth control is not true: both planned parenthood and

medical assistance programs offer FREE birth control.

[Spock_is_Skeptical]

16. sure they do, but not all areas in the US have easy access

especially with regards to abortion. Thank the anti-abortion terrorists for that.

[Carnea]

29. Yes but most Urban black areas do.

You certainly can't blame the high out of wedlock birth rates in Chicago or LA on a lack of Planned Parenthood clinics.

[flashl]

15. How do fathers trapped in an 'unjustice judical system' support their children?

A large number of those internationally recognized disgraceful American jail/prisons statistics are black males for non-violent crimes, e.g. child support payments.

Another fact missing from incarceration discussions, the individuals jailed for non-violent crimes languish upwards of ten-months in jail awaiting trial. The long waits in jails are due to the budgetary gutting of the public defender offices.

So, we have a system that jails fathers for missing support payments while knowing that there aren't jobs paying salaries to meet the mandated payments.

While incarcerated the child support payments continues to accumulate. When the fathers leaves jail they are faced with the additional debts and fines for missing child support payments while in jail.

The cycle starts over again, this cycle is perpetuated by broken U.S. systems.

[chimpymustgo]

18. Thank you for those supporting details. Some "liberals" around here are making my head

explode.

[Carnea]

30. What soes this have to do with marrying the mother of your children.

Or waiting till marriage to have children???

Married people do not have child support.

[flashl]

33. Reading the ENTIRE article indicates it about whether fathers should care for their children. nt

[Carnea]

20. I think he has cause and effect mixed up.

“The marriage rates of all native-born young males and young black males (22-32 years old) in the U.S. are strongly correlated with the annual earnings of these young men. The higher their annual earnings, the more likely they are to be married. Among native-born black males, those men with earnings over $60,000 were four times more likely to be married than their peers with annual earnings under $20,000."

Responsibility in relationships directly correlates in responsibility in other areas of life.... gee guys who have a bunch of babies mamas turn out to have trouble earning money and holding steady employment. Gee what a shock.

No offense but if women stop enabling these losers this wouldn't be the issue it is. (Speaking in generalities people. And this isn't a race issue cause white people who have out of wedlock babies tend to have poor employment and education.)

Not to sound like someones father but they tend not to apply themselves. If your a fuck-up in one part of life why is it a surprise the other areas also are not working out?

[Igel]

23. He may.

Untangling cause and effect's a bear.

The correlation is between marriage and higher income, two-parent family and greater academic success of the kids, lower drug usage rate among the kids, lower risk of crime among the kids, lower risk of out-of-wedlock kids among the kids. Even unhappy marriages, up to a certain point, produce better outcomes for the kids.

But educated parents also is correlated with most of these things, as is having wealthier parents. The cross-correlations get to be a problem, since the causality runs in all sorts of directions.

Don't get a good education when one's available (and in most places it's available, with the kids in the class making it difficult, not the teachers or the state of the walls or the textbooks), you'll probably get a lousy job and won't care about your kids' education as much.

Use hard drugs or commit crimes, you have a lower chance of graduating high school and going to college, or getting/keeping a good job.


But since it's hard to untangle the correlations, people rely on instinct. Usually they claim that being married provides motivation; but it can't be ruled out that those who commit to marriage also commit to jobs and school. Educated parents focus on their kids' education, that seems reasonable; single parents have a harder time monitoring their kids, so that's reasonable.

Even those reasonable explanations provoke outcries of rage and anecdotalism. "Why, I'm a single mother who's used drugs and hooked my entire life, with 3 kids from any of 500 men, and look at my middle kid--he's a PhD in something I can't pronounce," as though that matters. Heard one single mother in a teacher's ed program go ballistic when research was presented showing that having parents read to and with their kids, and make sure the kids do their homework, is more important than income or quality of school or race: "I work 30 hours a week, I take classes and have homework, I pick up my kids, get home and cook dinner, then clean up; I do housework ... dammit, I need my quiet time alone at night, and you tell me I'm being a bad mother because I'm not sacrificing my time by myself? You don't even have kids, I bet!" Some teacher she probably made.

The point: It's personal for people who can't separate statistics about a large set of individuals from the properties of individuals.

Personally, I think the writer of this article was backwards, but I also think it's difficult to prove. For some, the self-discipline is there before job and marriage. For others, it's provided from outside--wife, kids, and societal pressure--and works, as long as alibis and excuses aren't too readily available and considered the best possible out.

[EFerrari]

24. No, you have cause and effect mixed up.

If the economy rewards single black mothers, guess what you'll get?

If the economy punishes young black men, guess what you'll get?

That's been American history since after the Civil War.

I trust you have a grasp of what happened to black families before the Civil War.

[ulysses]

28. he's right about the economics, but no way do we ever achieve full employment.

Wages go up with no ready pool of the unemployed, and that's Not Allowed.