The black family structure was very damaged by slavery. Imagine your children, your wife, your husband being sold at public auction. The freed slaves seemed to recover from that somewhat over time, but when the segregation laws were struck down and the more stable, successful, middle class black families moved out of places like Harlem. in, I believe, the 1950's, things started to go downhill again. I saw a PBS documentary on black communities, and in the first half of the 20th century they seemed stronger and healthier. There is a belief in parts of this community that the U.S. government made a deliberate attempt to get everyone hooked on heroin.
The phenomenon of poor young teenaged girls moving out of very unhappy homes and starting their own families is not limited to blacks. In western Europe, as laws changed and welfare benefits were made available to this group, the same thing happened. I think it is function of poverty and perceived lack of opportunity more than anything else. Middle class, college bound teenaged girls know they have a lot to look forward to, and that child rearing is a long way down the road. If you did not benefit from a good education and do not have college graduate role models to emulate, there is much less incentive not to start a family as soon as possible, made even more enticing by being able to escape the unhappy home of your childhood, all funded by the state. |
