(ThyBlackMan.com) African-American dads have been long characterized as unloving and uncaring towards their children, as such they are not given the benefit of a doubt, a few bad apples have destroyed the tree it seems, and black dads have been called unworthy fathers, but this writer begs to differ after delving into some interesting irrefutable research. Columnist Charles M. Blow states, “It has always seemed that black fathers are pathologically prone to desertion of their offspring and therefore largely responsible for black community dysfunction” in a recent article, Blow articulates how black dads are leading the pack with regard to a new trend toward “being an involved dad.” He also said there is an astounding amount of mythology loaded into the non-caring Black dad stereotype, one that echoes a history of efforts to rob black masculinity of honor and fidelity, which has a reverberating ring of truth to it even within the Blacks community at large.
There are quite a number of tenable reasons as to why there is an appraisal of this belief. There are a growing number of people who cohabit, that is, they move together after a pregnancy, instead of actually getting married, according to a forthcoming paper from the National Centre for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as extracted from Blow’s article. Some of these men also have children from other women, and it is only possible to be in one home at a time.
Forbes Magazine, reflecting on the fallout of the death of a Black male; Mike Brown, at the hands of Darrin Wilson, a white policeman in Ferguson Missouri, that half of the African-American men are missing from that community. In April, the New York Times extended this line of reasoning, by pointing out that nationally; there are 1.5 million men missing in action; stating incarceration and early deaths as the major reasons for the wide gap.
Ordinarily and logically every parent has a very deep sense of love for their child which is understandable, one can only imagine. Some even love them prior to conception, they daydream about how they’ll nurture, train and give them things they weren’t fortunate enough to have and show more love than they were ever shown. Every parent wants the next generation to be more successful than they, hence, we all try not to make the same mistakes we suffered by our parents.
Consequently, it’s a well-known fact that in time past, black men struggled with expressing love and affection towards their children, it was alien to them, their heads were buried in their livelihood and conditions, leaving the mothers to provide for their spiritual, intellectual and emotional needs. According to reliable data; within the last decade, the situation has changed dramatically, which has been supported by the statistics obtained from records published by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the role that American fathers play in parenting their children. The data shown below totally debunks the stereotypical myth that “black fatherhood” is associated with crisis in the Urban Centers of America.
The Pew Research Center has also tracked these records for years, and has found no significant difference between ‘nurturing” white and black fathers. Pew estimates that 67 percent of black dads who don’t live with their kids see them at least once a month, compared to the 59 percent of white dads and just 32 percent of Hispanic dads.
The resistance to the research in the field may speak to the fact that racially-motivated stereotypes are particularly hard to break. Specifically with respect to incidents such as the tragedy of nine lives lost at the hands of a crazed racist lunatic, Dillon Roof at a church in Charleston, S. C.
Let’s be real… The bad news is; African Americans as a group are still miles away from perfecting our act with regards to perfect parenthood, the good news here is that I am ecstatic as a Black man to see that the African American male is leading the way, for a change, with this very vital and positive conversation on what it takes to be an involved dad.
Staff Writer; Stanley G. Buford
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