Chapter 4: A New Plan to Revive Marriage and Rebuild the Traditional Family
One of the most important differences between the case for national action that Daniel Patrick Moynihan made and the revival movement needed today is identifying the stakeholders responsible for leading it. In 1965, Moynihan recommended that the federal government direct its efforts toward “enhancing the stability and resources of the Negro American family.” His call placed elected officials and unelected bureaucrats—virtually all white at the time—in the role of moral agents, while relegating blacks to the role of clients of a beneficent welfare state.REF Today, however, any campaign, initiative, or movement to rebuild the traditional black family must be spearheaded by African American leaders and institutions. There is no reason why white liberals—or conservatives—should be expected to prioritize the state of the black family more than the people who will be most directly affected by a revival movement.
The blueprint for reviving marriage and the traditional black family has several key elements, including correctly framing the issue, recruiting the institutions needed to restore a culture of marriage, identifying the types of policies, programs, and projects needed to strengthen families, and overcoming “allies” who stand in the way of progress.
Reframing the Issue. One important step that black leaders can take to begin restoring the black home is to think of family revival as a civil rights issue driven by two truths. The first is that all children have a right to the affection and protection of the man and woman who created them. The second is that the ideal environment for this right to be exercised is in a loving and stable home with married biological parents. When it comes to the family, the default in American culture today is to prioritize the desires of adults over the needs of children. That moral framework is completely inverted. Parents have a duty to make sacrifices to provide for the welfare of their children. No child has a duty to sacrifice his well-being for the sake of his parents. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to the children of unwed parents who are deprived of the benefits that come with having their mother and father under the same roof.
Fathers and mothers have an obligation to their children because creation and stewardship go hand in hand. Those duties are best carried out in a loving, monogamous marriage. A movement to rebuild the black family that is centered around the rights of children restores order to the household. It also puts the responsibility for the provision, moral instruction, and emotional development of children back where it belongs—with their parents. The top priority for anyone who claims to care about improving social and economic outcomes for black Americans should be promoting a culture where men and women commit to one another and the families they build together, not creating fatherless (or motherless) children for the sake of adult fulfillment or convenience.
No one would suggest starting a national movement to address the home lives of a few thousand children scattered across the country. But when fractured families become a widespread issue hurting millions of children, it should be seen as the systemic issue that it is. The fact that most black children do not have the benefit of living under the same roof with their married parents is an injustice that a new civil rights movement must rectify. If 70 percent of black children were born with a serious health condition that affected less than 30 percent of white children, every racial justice activist would make addressing that disparity a national priority. Progressive leaders would not rest until they found individuals and institutions to hold accountable. They would do everything in their power to remove the barriers blocking precious black children from reaching their full potential. They would undoubtedly attach their new fight to the civil rights struggles of the past, giving their movement a historical connection to previous battles for racial uplift.
The same activists and organizations need to fight with as much passion for the family as they do against racial disparities. If they truly desire black social progress, then reviving marriage and intact families in Southeast DC should be as important to them today as voting rights were in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s. Previous generations were willing to risk their lives to secure civil and political rights for those who came after them. Today’s fight for justice simply requires a man and women coming together as husband and wife to start a new life together. That one decision, combined with the commitment to stay together through hard times, will do more to improve the lives of black children than any new government welfare program or social justice campaign.
Parents have a duty to make sacrifices to provide for the welfare of their children. No child has a duty to sacrifice his well-being for the sake of his parents.
Achieving such a radical shift in family dynamics will not be easy. In fact, marriage revival will not be successful unless it is the top priority for black leaders for at least 10 years. Unfortunately, there is much to be gained by pushing black oppression and victimhood. Liberal politicians run on fixing racial disparities. Corporations commit to racial justice causes to stay in the good graces of progressives in media and politics. Disparities in household wealth, K–12 education, and incarceration rates are used to justify everything from racial preferences in college admissions to abolishing the police.
Black leaders—and their white allies—have much to lose by prioritizing the tangible goals of increasing marriage rates and rebuilding the family over vague plans to end racism and rid the world of all oppression. Perpetually chasing and redefining the latter goal has certainly enriched certain black elites, but experience has proven that it has not improved the lives of the ordinary people they claim to represent.
Using Key Institutions to Create a Culture of Marriage. Of all the institutions needed to truly restore the black family, the church is by far the most important. The black church, however, is facing challenges in both the pulpit and pews. Thirty percent of black Americans under the age of 40 are religiously unaffiliated.REF This loss of religious observance is consistent with broader cultural trends. It is particularly alarming, however, because of the church’s outsized role in black civic and political life for well over a century.The most important thing that black religious institutions can do today to rebuild the home is to boldly declare the goodness of God’s design for the human body, sex, marriage, and the family.This includes pastors publicly affirming that there are only two sexes—male and female—and that the biblical definition of marriage consists of one man and one woman. They, of all people, must acknowledge that true revival is only possible through righting the relationship between men, women, and the God who created the institution of marriage.
Churches should see a revival movement as an opportunity to reach couples through their family ministries. Some may also offer fellowship opportunities for singles, pre-marital classes for couples who are seriously dating, and workshops for married couples looking to improve their relationships.
Pastors should also be willing to nudge couples to move from “shacking up” to settling down. In fact, one of the most important roles the church can play in a revival movement is being willing to shape, guide, regulate, and police the behavior of individuals and institutions. This requires promoting values that lead to human flourishing, specifically encouraging men and women to marry before having children. It also means finding ways to discourage people from disregarding the ideal sequence for forming a family.
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are also crucial players in efforts to strengthen the black family. Hampton University has been a leader in this area, evidenced by the school’s annual conference on the black family that started in the 1980s. Hampton should serve as a model for any HBCU that wants to host events bringing together scholars, pastors, counselors, entertainers, and other stakeholders working to increase the number of stable marriages and intact families in the black community.Family-focused HBCUs can do much more than host conferences on marriage, however. They should be at the forefront of research on how men and women view relationships, gender roles, marriage, and family.
Schools can also cultivate a local marriage culture by enlisting faculty and graduate students in the appropriate disciplines to offer pre-marital education and counseling services to couples in their surrounding communities. Another idea involves allowing campus grounds and facilities to be used for weddings, with deep discounts for couples that give schools permission to use their wedding photos for on-campus marriage marketing campaigns. Student groups may also be interested in hosting events on relationships that include married couples—especially alumni who met on campus.
None of these ideas, in isolation, can rebuild the black family. Taken together, however, they can plant the seeds of marriage and family life in the minds of students and create the “ring by spring” culture that is associated with many conservative and religious colleges. Black colleges and universities are important institutions that play a significant role in cultivating future lawyers, doctors, and engineers. There is no reason they cannot invest in marriage and family work that also produces future husbands and wives.
A movement to rebuild the home will never reach its full potential unless black cultural capital—expressed through art, entertainment, and media—is used to promote positive images of marriage and family. The creators of the website Black and Married with Kids (BMWK), Lamar and Ronnie Tyler, are a perfect example of how this can be done. Their work has been featured in a variety of media outlets, including Ebony, Essence, Jet, and The Washington Post.In addition to creating a site for articles and resources about relationships, parenting, and faith, the Tylers produced several documentaries on topics such as marriage, manhood, and wealth. They also hosted several marriage cruises that brought couples from across the country together to help them build loving relationships and strong families.
A movement to rebuild the home will never reach its full potential unless black cultural capital—expressed through art, entertainment, and media—is used to promote positive images of marriage and family.
The Tylers are following in the footsteps of black leaders who understood media and entertainment are powerful vehicles for shaping how men and women see themselves, the opposite sex, and relationships. In fact, C. Delores Tucker’s crusade against rap music in the early 1990s was driven by her belief that artists were poisoning their communities with lyrics that degraded women. Tucker specifically pointed to the release of Snoop Doggy Dogg’s debut album Doggystyle and called its artwork “pornographic smut.” Tucker was ahead of her time when she sounded the alarm about “continuously exposing our youth to negative media that distorts their images of male-female relationships, that undermines the stability of our families, communities and nation by encouraging violence, abuse and sexism as acceptable behaviors, and perpetuates the cycle of low self-esteem of African American youth.”REF Tucker clearly understood that it is impossible for some of the most influential members of a group to use their talents to degrade women without it having an effect on the people who identified most with the artists.
The idea that “representation matters” is also one reason The Cosby Show was such an iconic television series. Bill Cosby brought in Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Alvin Poussaint as a consultant for the hit sitcom. Both men wanted the show to include positive images of a black family, including a loving relationship between Cliff and Claire Huxtable, the show’s fictional husband and wife.REF Cosby and Poussaint also wanted the show to exist in a black cultural context, evidenced by the African artwork, jazz, and references to HBCUs that were a staple in the family’s home.REF
The two men, like C. Delores Tucker, knew that the value of entertainment extended far beyond making money. That lesson still holds today. A movement to revive the family will never reach its full potential if black cultural capital is used to promote images of division, dysfunction, degeneracy, and destruction. Harnessing the power of media will require honest conversations about what, if any, responsibility black artists and entertainers have for the real-world impact of the content they create. It will also require honest self-reflection on the part of black consumers who support artists producing content and promoting values that sow seeds of self-hate, not “black love.”
It is easy to see the roles that the church house, schoolhouse, and art house would play in a revival movement. But the statehouse can also contribute to a culture of marriage and strong families. One example is the controversial public information campaign that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg launched in 2013 to reduce teen pregnancy. The mayor and his administration posted bus and subway ads depicting distressed toddlers paired with slogans like, “Honestly, Mom, chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” and “Dad, you’ll be paying to support me for the next 20 years.”REF The campaign was immediately met with criticism for stigmatizing teen mothers. His detractors failed to note that one of the ads gave teens the three-step plan—“finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children”—that would give them a 98 percent chance of avoiding poverty.REF
Regardless of what people feel about the execution, the ad campaign was a concrete example of how elected officials can use their bully pulpit to influence public sentiment about marriage and family formation. Any municipal government in the country could do the same today and direct city funding toward pro-marriage public awareness campaigns with simple messages, such as “In this city we believe marriage comes before the baby carriage.” Some people will inevitably claim that these messages stigmatize parents who do not meet the ideals expressed in the ads, but neutral observers would see them as inspirational and aspirational. Elected officials and other government leaders can also use their platforms and influence to speak the hard truth that a child’s life outcomes depend far more on her home environment than a politician’s policy agenda. These statements do not require any new laws or collaboration with another branch of government. All they require is an acknowledgement of the family’s importance, an honest assessment of the government’s limitations, courage, and political will.
One idea that combines all these elements would be a marriage “bootcamp” for cohabiting couples with children. Recruitment could be done through local nonprofits that work with families as well as radio, transit, and social media advertisements. The federal government has earmarked grant funds for marriage education programs in the past, including $35 million for one initiative called Helping Every Area of Relationships Thrive–Adults (HEART).REF A local church could use this type of grant to run a program that covers important topics like communication, money management, blended families, fidelity, and conflict resolution. Successful completion of the program would mean that couples are ready to walk down the aisle at a communal wedding by the end of the bootcamp. The bride and groom would also be matched with a mentor couple who could help them to navigate the highs and lows of married life.
The most innovative aspect of this program, however, would be to add a monetary incentive for couples to get—and stay—married. For example, each couple that completes the program could receive a wedding bonus of up to $5,000 on their wedding day to be paid through foundations or private donors, not government funds. There would be provisions to discourage bad actors and sham marriages, such as structuring the funds as a loan that is fully forgiven after a certain number of years, and much would depend on proper vetting and recruiting of program participants. Grant recipients could be financially incentivized based on their rate of marriage success, which is a simple way to create an incentive structure geared toward the outcomes conservatives say they desire. Tangible and measurable goals are one strength of a program like this, but conservatives will also have to wrestle with the fundamental reality that creating a culture of marriage in neighborhoods where intact families are rare is going to look different than in communities with college-educated and middle-class couples who grew up in two-parent homes.
The pushback from progressives would sound a bit different. Government spending is typically not a problem for liberals, but a program that promotes traditional marriage certainly would be. My earlier reference to the program that gave $10,800 to low-income mothers is proof that progressive family strengthening initiatives are generally focused on the immediate physical needs of mothers and their children, not the type of long-term community transformation that requires a culture of marriage to take root. A marriage bootcamp for couples who already share a home and at least one child would address the relationship and planning skills needed for working-class families to flourish. It would also help to establish new norms in communities where most children do not see men and women living together as husband and wife.
Anticipating Resistance from “Allies.” One of the tragic ironies of the rise and fall of Black Lives Matter (BLM) is the reality that the most influential movement claiming to fight for the rights of black people since the 1960s was openly hostile to the traditional family. The organization said so in its “Black Villages” principle: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”REF
Few, if any, journalists asked BLM co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors why a movement claiming to fight for racial uplift believes there are too many intact families in the black community. It likely never occurred to anyone to do so because the black family has been sacrificed on the altar of progressive politics for decades. Anyone who is serious about reviving marriage and rebuilding the home must know that opposition will come from the same groups that were part of BLM’s coalition: feminists, abortionists, LGBT activists, antiracists, paternalists, and functional atheists. While they are all connected under the umbrella of progressivism, the criticism from each one will sound slightly different based on which part of the traditional family model they reject.
Feminists will claim that an emphasis on marriage and family is rooted in sexism. The opposition from abortion supporters will come from their knowledge that marriage revival is a threat to an industry where close to 90 percent of women seeking abortions are unmarried.REF LGBT activists will attack the movement because they do not believe the traditional family structure is inclusive enough for the 21st century. Functional atheists who support the biblical blueprint for the family but do not want to impose their views on others will publicly criticize a revival movement while agreeing with it privately. Antiracists will push back on efforts to rebuild the family because they believe racial progress is only possible by “eradicating white supremacy.” There will also be opposition from paternalists who believe that the black family would be better served by more government programs for low-income mothers and their children than by a renewed focus on marriage. These six groups all present themselves as “pro-black” and claim to care about racial equality, but they would be among the loudest critics if revivalists launched a “Black Wives Matter” campaign that promoted the necessity of marriage and goodness of family life today. That is because progressives today care far more about their ideological commitments than fighting for what’s best for black families. In fact, part of what makes this coalition so powerful is the interconnectedness of each group. The co-founders of BLM showed that it was possible to combine several different progressive priorities into a single organization. This united force wrapped its pro-abortion, LGBT, feminist activism in a thin veil of pro-black antiracism so effectively that black churches and politicians ended up promoting self-professed Marxists.REF
Resistance to a revival movement will be driven by identity as well as ideology. For example, white liberals who have all their children within marriage will attempt to lecture revivalists about why black families need more government welfare programs to get ahead. Civil rights organizations will dismiss the black families that would benefit from a renewed commitment to marriage to appease the mostly white LGBT community and Pride activists who believe that pastors promoting biblical teaching on sex and sexuality is bigoted and hateful. When it comes to today’s political arena, it is clear that the Democratic Party is more invested in promoting the political priorities of white progressives than rebuilding the black family.
