Daniel Patrick Moynihan published his landmark report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” 60 years ago this month. His warnings in 1965 about the collapse of the traditional black family now seem prescient. In response, one of the country’s most prominent historically black colleges and universities is working to revive the culture of marriage and family that prevailed from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights era.
Known today as the “Moynihan Report,” the document was written during Moynihan’s time as assistant labor secretary under President Lyndon Johnson. Moynihan feared that civil rights victories alone would not lead to full social equality. He argued that racism would remain a barrier to black progress for at least another generation. But he also pointed to a deeper challenge: the breakdown of married, two-parent black families in urban communities. In his view, that collapse posed an even more significant obstacle to upward mobility.
The new norms established in the 1960s enabled Uncle Sam to play ‘daddy’ to millions of women.
Moynihan had good reason to be concerned, but the family statistics that alarmed him in 1965 would look like progress by today’s standards. Nearly one in four black children in 1965 were born to unmarried parents at a time when the black poverty rate was roughly 40%.
Today, the black poverty rate has dropped by half, but the rate of nonmarital births has surged to 70% — far higher than the 27% among white children and 13% among Asian children. Similarly, while about 25% of all American children live in single-parent households, that figure rises to 50% for black children.
From ‘big brother’ to ‘big daddy’
Sobering statistics like these brought scholars, pastors, elected officials, and community leaders to Hampton University’s Virginia campus for the 43rd annual Conference on the Black Family. The university’s National Center for Black Family Life hosted the three-day event, which covered topics ranging from marriage rates to mental health.
I led a session titled “The Black Family Blueprint: Restoring Marriage and Rebuilding the Home.” Speaking to a room of students, I addressed the current state of the black family and how, in just three generations, the idea of “marriage before carriage” has shifted from being the norm to the exception.
My presentation unpacked the perfect storm of government policy and shifting cultural norms in the 1960s that destabilized the family structure in black America. The expansion of the welfare state made the government the de facto husband and father in millions of homes. In 1950, total federal expenditures on public aid programs totaled $1.1 billion. By 1975, it increased to $27 billion and topped $60 billion by 1985.
The rise of second-wave feminism encouraged women to see marriage as oppressive and children as a burden. Black feminists wanted to see women pursuing higher education and filling the roles they believed were needed to wage a revolution. One contributor to the “Black Women’s Manifesto” wrote that black women “sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
The new norms established in the 1960s divided the home by disrupting the relationship between the sexes and enabling Uncle Sam to play “daddy” to millions of women.
One welfare rights activist wrote an essay in Ms. magazine that underscored the nature of this relationship: “Welfare is like a super-sexist marriage. You trade in a man for the man. But you can’t divorce him if he treats you bad.”
If a 25% nonmarital birth rate in the 1960s caused Moynihan to sound the alarm in the federal government, a 70% rate should be the top priority for every institution that claims to serve the black community.
Media outlets like Essence, Ebony, the Root, and TheGrio should be running stories about the future of the black family if these trends continue. Other historically black colleges and universities should be devoting resources to strengthening black families. Civil rights organizations and black churches should take the same energy they have for boycotting Target and apply it to a national boycott on broken homes.
What can be done?
Hampton’s most renowned graduate, Booker T. Washington, is a conservative figure celebrated for his embrace of self-reliance and community empowerment. His ethos is needed now more than ever, particularly as progressive social commentators appear increasingly dismissive of individual agency and slavishly committed to outsourcing racial uplift. They seem to think bigger government and better white people are viable strategies for addressing every social ill. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Rebuilding the black family requires a new call for national action, but unlike 1965, it will only happen if black leaders — not white liberals — make this a national priority.
