Absentee Fathers and Black Families (The Conversation)

I have always heard it said that the reason why black fathers have a hard time staying around for their kids has to a lot to do with how slave owners would sell and trade the male slaves off shortly after a child was born to them, and while I don’t doubt that this is true after reading the first chapter “The Conversation” by Hill Harper something else stood out to me as an epic turn of events for families in America. It was called the “Man-in-the-House Rule”

Basically to sum everything up the Social Security act of 1935 created the “Aid to Families of Dependent Children” (AFDC) program. This program gave support (read: welfare) to single parent families where that single parent was unemployed. The problem with this was that for the first 33 years that this program existed there was a rule in place that denied families assistance if there was a “man-in-the-house”. This was basically defined as if the mother was living with or having relations with, any single or married able bodied male, that man was considered to be the substitute father, even if the man wasn’t supporting the child.

Now I see two problems that come from this. First off it basically told families that were struggling and the father was working but the mother was home taking care of the kids, that it would be better for the man to leave so that they could receive the extra benefits. I mean think about it today if someone told most people that as long as their wasn’t a man living with them and that the government couldn’t prove that she was having relations with anyone for some extra money even families that had both parents there may opt to send the father away to bring in a little extra income.

The Second problem I see from this is that people took the easier way out, a way that would continue thru this day… I mean the government was giving away free money. I believe that it was around this time that many people started to condition themselves on thinking, “how can I qualify for this free money”, and they stopped thinking how can I create more money. On this second point I even find myself doing it from time to time with the military, thinking well if I do this then I get a little bit extra in my check.

I think that these two problems are what started to break apart the black community, because instead of doing things to make us all stronger and wealthier we started taking steps backwards to fit into programs to get this free money.

As far as fathers are concerned they may have thought that what they were doing was the right thing at the time, the issue is that their children were watching, and you can’t say enough for how much a child learns thru what they observe. I believe that young girls sat around watching their mother struggle thru the day to day issues of raising a whole family, which has made women a lot stronger and smarter thru the years because I am sure these girls were thinking at a very young age, I don’t want to have to struggle like that. Boys on the other hand looked at their absentee fathers and probably started thinking a man’s main job is to come and create children, its not his place to raise them only to help create them.

Now some may say that is male bashing but I want you to think of it on natures terms, there are many species in the wild where the males impregnate the female’ and then they leave to impregnate other females once mating season is over they spend the rest of the year doing things to make themselves more attractive for the next mating season. Now tell me this isn’t what happens nearly on a weekly basis, and if you frequent the clubs you can see the mating ritual in progress. It didn’t make sense to me before but I used to work in the clubs and it was always the same men and women coming in every week, you could almost narrate it like it was a series on the discovery channel.

I am no where close to being done with this so stay tuned as I read and rant more. I am really enjoying this book, it has re-sparked my desire to blog and discuss how we can go about rebuilding the black community.

You can pick up The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships
thru this link at Amazon.com and it puts a couple dollars into my pocket, I guess I just feel like I should be honest about that but if your gonna get the book anyway why not send a couple cents my way… LOL