Caring about Black boys and men quickly reveals there is no community that has been harder hit by dad-deprivation than the African-American community.
While the Moynihan Report identified the quarter of black children born outside marriage as a crisis in 1965, the government’s counterproductive solution—giving moms money for not being married to dads—has contributed to almost a tripling of unmarried births among blacks (from 25 to 72 percent) and an expansion of the problem to white and Hispanic communities.
But this rise of father absence often leaves single moms overwhelmed; dads depressed with neither purpose nor love; children more likely to be damaged in over 50 developmental areas; and pockets of fatherlessness that become pockets of crime.
Both Dad-deprived boys and girls suffer in fifty-plus areas of development, but a Dad-deprived boy is likely to suffer more intensely—by emotional withdrawal, depression, obesity, ADHD, imprisonment, and addiction to video games, porn, alcohol, drugs, and death by opioids.
If we are to be genuine in our caring about Black lives, we will be as outspoken at telling boys of every race that we will view them as heroes not only when they protect us by killing and being killed in wars away from home, but also when they become great fathers by loving and being loved in the peace they help to create at home.
