Download or read book The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans written by M. Belinda Tucker and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1995-07-13 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time when the American family has undergone dramatic evolution, change among African Americans has been particularly rapid and acute. African Americans now marry later than any other major ethnic group, and while in earlier decades nearly 95 percent of black women eventually married, today 30 percent are expected to remain single. The black divorcee rate has increased nearly five-fold over the last thirty years, and is double the rate of the general population. The result, according to The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans, is a greater share of family responsibilities being borne by women, an increased vulnerability to poverty and violence, and an erosion of community ties. The original, often controversial, research presented in this book links marital decline to a pivotal drop in the pool of marriageable black males. Increased joblessness has robbed many black men of their economic viability, rendering them not only less desirable as mates, but also less inclined to take on the responsibility of marriage. Higher death rates resulting from disease, poor health care, and violent crime, as well as evergrowing incarceration rates, have further depleted the male population. Editors M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and the contributors take a hard look at the effects of chronic economic instability and cultural attitudes toward the male role as family provider. Their cogent historical analyses suggest that the influence of external circumstances over marriage preferences stems in large part from the profoundly damaging experience of slavery. This book firmly positions declining marriage within an ominous cycle of economic and social erosion. The authors propose policies for relieving the problems associated the changing marital behavior, focusing on support for single parent families, public education, and increased employment for African American men.

Download or read book Is Marriage for White People written by Ralph Richard Banks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinguished Stanford law professor examines the steep decline in marriage rates among the African American middle class, and offers a paradoxical-nearly incendiary-solution. Black women are three times as likely as white women to never marry. That sobering statistic reflects a broader reality: African Americans are the most unmarried people in our nation, and contrary to public perception the racial gap in marriage is not confined to women or the poor. Black men, particularly the most successful and affluent, are less likely to marry than their white counterparts. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white peers never to marry. Is Marriage for White People? is the first book to illuminate the many facets of the African American marriage decline and its implications for American society. The book explains the social and economic forces that have undermined marriage for African Americans and that shape everyone's lives. It distills the best available research to trace the black marriage decline's far reaching consequences, including the disproportionate likelihood of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single parenthood, same sex relationships, polygamous relationships, and celibacy among black women. This book centers on the experiences not of men or of the poor but of those black women who have surged ahead, even as black men have fallen behind. Theirs is a story that has not been told. Empirical evidence documents its social significance, but its meaning emerges through stories drawn from the lives of women across the nation. Is Marriage for White People? frames the stark predicament that millions of black women now face: marry down or marry out. At the core of the inquiry is a paradox substantiated by evidence and experience alike: If more black women married white men, then more black men and women would marry each other. This book not only sits at the intersection of two large and well- established markets-race and marriage-it responds to yearnings that are widespread and deep in American society. The African American marriage decline is a secret in plain view about which people want to know more, intertwining as it does two of the most vexing issues in contemporary society. The fact that the most prominent family in our nation is now an African American couple only intensifies the interest, and the market. A book that entertains as it informs, Is Marriage for White People? will be the definitive guide to one of the most monumental social developments of the past half century.

Download or read book The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans written by M. Belinda Tucker and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1995-06-22 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time when the American family has undergone dramatic evolution, change among African Americans has been particularly rapid and acute. African Americans now marry later than any other major ethnic group, and while in earlier decades nearly 95 percent of black women eventually married, today 30 percent are expected to remain single. The black divorcee rate has increased nearly five-fold over the last thirty years, and is double the rate of the general population. The result, according to The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans, is a greater share of family responsibilities being borne by women, an increased vulnerability to poverty and violence, and an erosion of community ties. The original, often controversial, research presented in this book links marital decline to a pivotal drop in the pool of marriageable black males. Increased joblessness has robbed many black men of their economic viability, rendering them not only less desirable as mates, but also less inclined to take on the responsibility of marriage. Higher death rates resulting from disease, poor health care, and violent crime, as well as evergrowing incarceration rates, have further depleted the male population. Editors M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and the contributors take a hard look at the effects of chronic economic instability and cultural attitudes toward the male role as family provider. Their cogent historical analyses suggest that the influence of external circumstances over marriage preferences stems in large part from the profoundly damaging experience of slavery. This book firmly positions declining marriage within an ominous cycle of economic and social erosion. The authors propose policies for relieving the problems associated the changing marital behavior, focusing on support for single parent families, public education, and increased employment for African American men.

Download or read book Marriage in Black written by Katrina Bell McDonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the messages we hear from social scientists, policymakers, and the media, black Americans do in fact get married—and many of these marriages last for decades. Marriage in Black offers a progressive perspective on black marriage that rejects talk of black relationship "pathology" in order to provide an understanding of enduring black marriage that is richly lived. The authors offer an in-depth investigation of details and contexts of black married life, and seek to empower black married couples whose intimate relationships run contrary to common—but often inaccurate—stereotypes. Considering historical influences from Antebellum slavery onward, this book investigates contemporary married life among more than 60 couples born after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Husbands and wives tell their stories, from how they met, to how they decided to marry, to what their life is like five years after the wedding and beyond. Their stories reveal the experiences of the American-born and of black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, with explorations of the "ideal" marriage, parenting, finances, work, conflict, the criminal justice system, religion, and race. These couples show us that black family life has richness that belies common stereotypes, with substantial variation in couples’ experiences based on social class, country of origin, gender, religiosity, and family characteristics.

Download or read book Black Women Black Love written by Dianne M. Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this analysis of social history, examine the complex lineage of America's oppression of Black companionship.According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis.Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.Prodigiously researched and deeply felt, Black Women, Black Love reveals how white supremacy has systematically broken the heart of Black America, and it proposes strategies for dismantling the structural forces that have plagued Black love and marriage for centuries.

Download or read book Out of Wedlock written by Larry Wu and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2001-07-12 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, one third of all American babies are born to unmarried mothers—a startling statistic that has prompted national concern about the consequences for women, children, and society. Indeed, the debate about welfare and the overhaul of the federal welfare program for single mothers was partially motivated by the desire to reduce out of wedlock births. Although the proportion of births to unwed mothers has stopped climbing for the first time since the 1960s, it has not decreased, and recent trends are too complex to attribute solely to policy interventions. What are these trends and how do they differ across groups? Are they peculiar to the United States, or rooted in more widespread social forces? Do children of unmarried mothers face greater life challenges, and if so what can be done to help them? Out of Wedlock investigates these questions, marshalling sociologists, demographers, and economists to review the state of current research and to provide both empirical information and critical analyses. The conflicting data on nonmarital fertility give rise to a host of vexing theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues, some of which researchers are only beginning to address. Out of Wedlock breaks important new ground, bringing clarity to the data and examining policies that may benefit these particularly vulnerable children.

Download or read book Unmarried Couples with Children written by Paula England and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, a third of American children are born outside of marriage, up from one child in twenty in the 1950s, and rates are even higher among low-income Americans. Many herald this trend as one of the most troubling of our time. But the decline in marriage does not necessarily signal the demise of the two parent family—over 80 percent of unmarried couples are still romantically involved when their child is born and nearly half are living together. Most claim they plan to marry eventually. Yet half have broken up by their child's third birthday. What keeps some couples together and what tears others apart? After a breakup, how do fathers so often disappear from their children's lives? An intimate portrait of the challenges of partnering and parenting in these families, Unmarried Couples with Children presents a variety of unique findings. Most of the pregnancies were not explicitly planned, but some couples feel having a child is the natural course of a serious relationship. Many of the parents are living with their child plus the mother's child from a previous relationship. When the father also has children from a previous relationship, his visits to see them at their mother's house often cause his current partner to be jealous. Breakups are more often driven by sexual infidelity or conflict than economic problems. After couples break up, many fathers complain they are shut out, especially when the mother has a new partner. For their part, mothers claim to limit dads' access to their children because of their involvement with crime, drugs, or other dangers. For couples living together with their child several years after the birth, marriage remains an aspiration, but something couples are resolutely unwilling to enter without the financial stability they see as a sine qua non of marriage. They also hold marriage to a high relational standard, and not enough emotional attention from their partners is women's number one complaint. Unmarried Couples with Children is a landmark study of the family lives of nearly fifty American children born outside of a marital union at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Based on personal narratives gathered from both mothers and fathers over the first four years of their children's lives, and told partly in the couples' own words, the story begins before the child is conceived, takes the reader through the tumultuous months of pregnancy to the moment of birth, and on through the child's fourth birthday. It captures in rich detail the complex relationship dynamics and powerful social forces that derail the plans of so many unmarried parents. The volume injects some much-needed reality into the national discussion about family values, and reveals that the issues are more complex than our political discourse suggests.

Download or read book Where Did Our Love Go written by Gil Robertson and published by Agate Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where Did Our Love Go?, an anthology of essays written by many major public figures and celebrities, will explore the substantive issues related to marital problem in the African-American community. From the "my baby's mama" syndrome to the more serious implications of what a generation of single-parent households will mean to future generations, this comprehensive collection will provide an in-depth discourse on the trends and issues that have caused the problematic behaviors within African-American relationships to persist with little sign of relief. The book will consist of a total of 40 essays divided equally into 4 lifestyle categories (single, married, divorced, and widowed), to present a wide cross section of perspectives on this subject. Marriage plays an essential role in maintaining the vitality and character of a community, so it is deeply unsettling for many African Americans to find that the value of this institution has lost its allure. While marriage among African Americans has always fallen below the average of other population segments, the gap today has grown so pronounced that the subject has sparked an intense national dialogue. A 2006 Washington Post article, “Is Marriage for White People,” created waves of controversy on the issue. In 2010, Nightline dedicated an entire broadcast to this growing crisis. The marriage gap in Black America has become such an open secret that it’s now the source of endless bad jokes and prime time reality shows. The statistics even back this up, as according to the U.S. Census, 43.3% of black men and 41.9% of black women in America have never been married, and the rate of decline is nearly twice the national average. Marriage is a rite of passage that is fundamental to every culture, which underscores the tremendous need for an active dialogue to take place that will lay a foundation for discovery. With essays from 50 Cent, Viola Davis, Jabari Asim, Darnell Williams, Faith Evans, Mara Brock Akil, and more, Where Did Our Love Go? will ignite the fight for that conversation to begin.

Download or read book The Negro Family written by United States. Department of Labor. Office of Policy Planning and Research and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life and times of the thirty-second President who was reelected four times.

Download or read book Marriage and Family written by H. Elizabeth Peters and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-16 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family life has been radically transformed over the past three decades. Half of all households are unmarried, while only a quarter of all married households have kids. A third of the nation's births are to unwed mothers, and a third of America's married men earn less than their wives. With half of all women cohabitating before they turn thirty and gay and lesbian couples settling down with increasing visibility, there couldn't be a better time for a book that tracks new conceptions of marriage and family as they are being formed. The editors of this volume explore the motivation to marry and the role of matrimony in a diverse group of men and women. They compare empirical data from several emerging family types (single, co-parent, gay and lesbian, among others) to studies of traditional nuclear families, and they consider the effect of public policy and recent economic developments on the practice of marriage and the stabilization or destabilization of family. Approaching this topic from a variety of perspectives, including historical, cross-cultural, gendered, demographic, socio-biological, and social-psychological viewpoints, the editors highlight the complexity of the modern American family and the growing indeterminacy of its boundaries. Refusing to adhere to any one position, the editors provide an unbiased account of contemporary marriage and family.

Download or read book Race Mixing written by Renee C. Romano and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marriage between blacks and whites is a longstanding and deeply ingrained taboo in American culture. On the eve of World War II, mixed-race marriage was illegal in most states. Yet, sixty years later, black-white marriage is no longer illegal or a divisive political issue, and the number of such couples and their mixed-race children has risen dramatically. Renee Romano explains how and why such marriages have gained acceptance, and what this tells us about race relations in contemporary America. The history of interracial marriage helps us understand the extent to which America has overcome its racist past, and how much further we must go to achieve meaningful racial equality.

Download or read book The Marriage Go Round written by Andrew J. Cherlin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-04-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marriage-Go-Round illuminates the shifting nature of America's most cherished social institution and explains its striking differences from marriage in other Western countries. Andrew J. Cherlin's three decades of study have shown him that marriage in America is a social and political battlefield in a way that it isn’t in other developed countries. Americans marry and divorce more often and have more live-in partners than Europeans, and gay Americans have more interest in legalizing same-sex marriage. The difference comes from Americans’ embrace of two contradictory cultural ideals: marriage, a formal commitment to share one's life with another; and individualism, which emphasizes personal choice and self-development. Religion and law in America reinforce both of these behavioral poles, fueling turmoil in our family life and heated debate in our public life. Cherlin’s incisive diagnosis is an important contribution to the debate and points the way to slowing down the partnership merry-go-round. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Download or read book The All or Nothing Marriage written by Eli J. Finkel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “After years of debate and inquiry, the key to a great marriage remained shrouded in mystery. Until now...”—Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Eli J. Finkel's insightful and ground-breaking investigation of marriage clearly shows that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras. Indeed, they are the best marriages the world has ever known. He presents his findings here for the first time in this lucid, inspiring guide to modern marital bliss. The All-or-Nothing Marriage reverse engineers fulfilling marriages—from the “traditional” to the utterly nontraditional—and shows how any marriage can be better. The primary function of marriage from 1620 to 1850 was food, shelter, and protection from violence; from 1850 to 1965, the purpose revolved around love and companionship. But today, a new kind of marriage has emerged, one oriented toward self-discover, self-esteem, and personal growth. Finkel combines cutting-edge scientific research with practical advice; he considers paths to better communication and responsiveness; he offers guidance on when to recalibrate our expectations; and he even introduces a set of must-try “lovehacks.” This is a book for the newlywed to the empty nester, for those thinking about getting married or remarried, and for anyone looking for illuminating advice that will make a real difference to getting the most out of marriage today.

Download or read book The Marriage Problem written by James Q. Wilson and published by Harper Paperbacks. This book was released on 2003-03-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are two Americas. One boasts solid families, well-paying jobs, safe homes, and good education. The other has children raised by one parent, poor neighborhoods, crime, and low-paying jobs. What has caused the divide? In this penetrating study, James Q. Wilson argues that the answer lies in the importance of marriage and the devastating effects of divorce and cohabitation. Wilson's meticulous research shows how the erosion of family life has damaged children's futures, leading to school dropouts, teenage pregnancy, and a greater likelihood of emotional problems, drug use, and criminal activity. With precision and persuasiveness, he reveals the sources of today's crisis -- from the glittering ideals of the Enlightenment to the shameful practice of American slavery -- while also offering bold solutions. Incisive, intelligent, and thought-provoking, The Marriage Problem is a clarion call to rebuild the family, and society, by returning a solid marital structure to its core.

Download or read book The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans written by and published by . This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study estimates that marriage typically brings a host of important benefits to African American men, women, and children. On average, married African Americans are wealthier, happier, and choose healthier behaviors than their unmarried peers, and their children typically fare better in lifedifferences that indeed seem to stem largely from marriage itself. At the same time, however, African American women tend to benefit from marriage less than Whites and men. These are among the key findings presented in The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans, a first-of-its-kind report based on reviews of 125 social science articles and a statistical analysis of national survey data.

Download or read book Marriage and Caste in America written by Kay S. Hymowitz and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2006 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the widening gap in America's social structure, revealing how lower-class children are being separated from their middle-class peers by single parenthood and a lack of strong male role models.

Download or read book Getting Real About Race written by Stephanie M. McClure and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Getting Real About Race is an edited collection of short essays that address the most common stereotypes and misconceptions about race held by students, and by many in the United States, in general.