Stereotypes of black women as angry or bitter are pervasive. They are also more accurate than many people would like to acknowledge: many black women have perfectly good reasons to be angry or bitter.
Black women are the most unpartnered group of people in our nation, a dubious distinction reflected in their low rate of marriage. More than 2 out of every 3 black women are unmarried, and most unmarried black women do not have a committed partner. It’s not only economically disadvantaged black women who find themselves alone. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white counterparts to be unmarried.
This low marriage rate translates into a high rate of single-parent black families. Roughly 7 in 10 black children are born to unmarried parents. Although many of these unmarried parents are in a relationship, or even living together, at the time of their child’s birth, most of these relationships dissolve within a year or two.
Typically, the mother ends up raising the child. Although many fathers may hope and attempt to remain involved in their child’s life, all too often fathers who don’t live with their children eventually become distant, leaving the mothers to make it on their own. Raising a child can be a challenge with two parents; with one, it can be overwhelming.
The marriage decline not only burdens black women who have children. When confronted with an unplanned pregnancy, single women are more likely than married women to abort. Because black women are so much more likely to be single, they are also more likely to have abortions.
Black women can also become dispirited because they confront a relationship market with too few black men who are stable and employed. Unprecedented numbers of black men spend some portion of their young adulthood incarcerated. More than 1 in 10 black men in their 20s or early 30s is behind bars; a black man’s lifetime likelihood of losing his freedom is 1 in 4. And however much they understand the social circumstances that lead black men to criminal activity, most black women, like women of all races, don’t want an ex-convict as a husband.
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