Father? Where Are You?
By: Sanaiya Moore
Relation to the Past
Since the days of slavery, African American families have faced the seemingly perpetual issue of fathers being absent within homes. This began as slave families married even though they had different masters and lived on different plantations.
During slavery, if a couple chose to reproduce, and their offspring survived, then their child would live with their mother. The mother of the child had to continue their labor while either carrying their child, strapping them onto their back, leaving them at the edge of the field, or leaving them with an elderly or sick adult. The child’s father had the option to visit during the evenings, but this was not often possible if he did not complete his labor or if his master wasn’t in good spirits. As a result, African American women had the characteristics of being a single mother even though they weren't.
Present Day Suffering
By the 21st Century, those characteristics became a reality. Adopted qualities from the past had now transformed into present day single-woman led households. The large amount of these existing households within the Black community corresponds with adaptive survival behaviors that African Americans have developed over time. In relation, a condition called Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome supports that this issue has been instilled into African Americans, whom specifically coped by singly raising their children. P.T.S.S. is a result of the multigenerational oppression that Africans face as a result of centuries of slavery. Not only has it prevented fathers from their duties as a parent, but it has also led to the death and imprisonment of African American fathers. From then to now, the mistreatment and murders of our Black people and men reveal the origin of absent fathers and the reasoning for its continuation.
In addition, having only one parent visible can damage a child from stages of childhood all the way up to adulthood. Around preschool, children often begin to question why their fathers aren't present in their lives. They notice that their family looks unlike some of their peers and blame themselves for such abandonment. Statistics show that children living without biological, step, or adoptive fathers are more likely to face poverty, teen pregnancy, behavioral problems, abuse and neglect, infant mortality, substance abuse, obesity, and commit a crime and drop out of high school. In correspondence to the statistics, most mothers strive to provide for their children, resulting in a remodel of family structure. By this I mean that while mothers are figuring out ways to provide for their homes, extended family members, family friends, and play cousins often step in to assist raising the children. The combination of father-absence and feelings of an unavailable present parent increases the probability of a child becoming a statistic.
Media Portrayal
To make matters worse, the media negatively represents African American families. A non-profit civil rights advocacy group, Color of Change and Family Story, conducted a study of the representation of families, by race, throughout different media platforms. They concluded that African Americans are often depicted as poor, welfare dependent families whose mothers make bad decisions about whom to conceive with and who are heavily linked to crime. In contrast, White families are painted as a sources of social stability in society. In the media, African American families are displayed as 59% of the poor, in comparison to the 17% of White families represented. In actuality, African American families make up 27% of the poor of the general population, whereas White families make up 66% of the poor across the country. This data shows that the medias representation of African American families is false, and as a whole, these inaccuracies promote White families to be at the top of the racial hierarchy and denotes African American families to be at the bottom.