Pages: 1 2
Furthermore, Goldberg intentionally ignored a major fact in the single-parenting argument: President Obama, who was raised by a single mother, declared in his June 15, 2008 Father’s Day message that “more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we [older black Americans] were children,” and that black fathers “don’t realize responsibility does not end at conception.” The president added that these men “are acting like boys instead of men.”
President Obama’s remarks are backed by authoritative data disproving Goldberg’s claims. The United States Census Bureau reports that by 1994, 66% of unwed American mothers were black women, three times as high as the percentage for white women. The Census Bureau further states that black “non-marital births” were 60% of all out-of-wedlock births in 1993. The figures indicate white non-marital births are also on the rise, reasons conservative presidential candidates like Bachmann signed the Marriage Vow: single American women are getting pregnant in rising numbers and raising fatherless children.
As far as single-parent children “turning out okay,” Child Trend Bank reports that children born and raised by unwed mothers “are more likely to grow up in a single-parent household,” and facing “instability in living arrangements, [they] live in poverty, and have socio-emotional problems.” Also, single-parented children are more likely to become criminals.
Goldberg herself may have “turned out okay,” and Obama may have become president of the United States, but data provides evidence that not all single-parented children turn out okay.
This is not a race or anti-single mother issue. Obama’s comments, specifically about the American black family, are correct and further confirmed by the site Politifact, which states that prior to President Obama’s 1960 birth, only 22% of black children were raised in single-parent homes. By 1968, after President Johnson enacted his Utopian Great Society, that figure rose to 31.4%. By 2006, it rose another 56% with “91.4 percent of single parents of black children” being mothers. Even liberal-minded Democratic Senator Patrick J. Moynihan, himself raised by a single mother, wrote in his 1965 Moynihan Report that black out-of-wedlock births rose 23.6% from 1950 to 1963. Moynihan prophetically warned that children raised in single-parent homes were less likely to succeed in life—a warning that went unheeded.
According to economist Walter E. Williams, only about 30% of American black children today live in a two-parent home. Backing up the Marriage Vow’s original statement, Williams wrote:
Historically, from 1870s on up to about 1940s, and depending on the city, 75 to 90 percent of black kids lived in two parent families. [Today, the] illegitimacy rate is 70 percent among blacks where that is unprecedented in our history.
It is about time the Left faced facts: Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty not only gave massive support to single mothers, it encouraged mother-only families by making black male breadwinners irrelevant and their economic roles replaceable by government. Enabled by government programs, this system has destroyed the black American family, wrecking countless American children’s lives.
Michele Bachmann and GOP candidates did not sign an anti-black/anti-single mother document. The document defends simple facts: marriage is a fundamental part of American society and politics, the family is the core of American society, and teaching these values keeps this nation and our future generations stable. Without two-parent households raising children, children risk living dysfunctional lives that lead to poverty and crime.
Pages: 1 2




















