Happy Father’s Day!
How are you feeling today?
For many it can be bittersweet.
Maybe you’ve lost your father or the father figure in your life.
Maybe you have a tumultuous relationship with your father.
Maybe he wasn’t around.
Or maybe you have or had the best dad in the world.
There are many possibilities when it comes to dads or moms for that matter.
I’m currently producing a show. I can’t give the details about it, but it’s making me reflect on a few things on this Father’s Day.
There is a common theme.
The deadbeat dad and they happen to be men of color.
That breaks my heart.
One of the men, a Black man, says to another Black man, “I didn’t think much about not being around for my son, because my father wasn’t around either and growing up, I never knew any of my friends that had fathers around.”
He’s a Gen Xer like me. And it made me think about my friends in Catholic grammar school. My best friend in grammar school was really the only person I knew at that school that had their father at home.
I wasn’t up in everybody’s business in school, but kids talk, and I remember thinking she was the only one.
An anomaly.
I was raised by my mom and her side of the family. I knew my biological father but at an early age, I also knew, that I should not be raised by him. No one ever said that. I just instinctively knew but got more confirmation as I got older.
My father was an artist and musician, but he had mental health issues.
That’s him pictured doing pottery.
Though I didn’t know and still don’t know specifically what was going on with him mentally, I knew something wasn’t right. He tried to get me involved with his mental health care when I was a teen, but my mom also had a mental illness. They actually met in a psychiatrist office. Another story for another time.
When I was a teen, it was just too much to digest to have it on both sides. I wanted to be a teen as much as I could because I had been dealing with too much adult stuff already by the age of ten.
My maternal side of the family decided to say know your dad but keep it limited and it was the best decision.
I always thought the “broken Black family home” stemmed from slavery. There’s a book “Slavery, Fatherhood & Paternal Duty” by Libra R. Hilde and she debunks that theory.
I don’t completely buy that, because yes, the tearing families apart in slavery had a drastic impact, but according to her, because of that, Black men did whatever they could to keep their families together.
It was also a sign of rebellion. ‘We’re not going to let white people destroy our homes.’ There were strong family bonds of the ones that were able to stay together. This continued through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras. My own household even reflects that.
I was raised in a really big apartment in Chicago’s Garfield Park area with my maternal great-grandparents who were born in the late 1800s and my grandparents who were born in the 1910s.
A shift happened.
Though, some Black dads were at home, there were many going through social, economic and mental crisis. When you’re going through that, drugs and alcohol come into play. Not to mention the horrible welfare system that ended up breaking up two-parent homes.
In the words of Harvard’s Paul Peterson, “some programs actively discouraged marriage,” because “welfare assistance went to mothers so long as no male was boarding in the household… Marriage to an employed male, even one earning the minimum wage, placed at risk a mother’s economic well-being.” Infamous “man in the house” rules meant that welfare workers would randomly appear in homes to check and see if the mother was accurately reporting her family-status.
Institute For Family Studies “Family Breakdown and America’s Welfare System,” October 7, 2019
This scene from Claudine with Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones illustrates this well.
Claudine is still one of my favorite movies and the soundtrack, by Gladys Knight & The Pips, is in my top five of movie soundtracks.
The previous article continued to say…
The benefits available were extremely generous. According to Peterson, it was “estimated that in 1975 a household head would have to earn $20,000 a year to have more resources than what could be obtained from Great Society programs.” In today’s dollars, that’s over $90,000 per year in earnings.
That may be a reason why, in 1964, only 7% of American children were born out of wedlock, compared to 40% today. As Jason Riley has noted, “the government paid mothers to keep fathers out of the home—and paid them well.”
Identifying welfare as a contributor—along with shifts in the labor market and de-industrialization—explains why fatherlessness has spread as it has.5 For example, racial differences in marriage rates may be largely due to racial income disparities, which lead to stiffer marriage penalties for black adults.6 And today, many means-tested programs7 reach into the working class and lower-middle-class, which corresponds with a decline in marriage among these groups.8
Institute For Family Studies “Family Breakdown and America’s Welfare System,” October 7, 2019
It was a trickle down effect.
Some kids when they became adults either continued the pattern because that’s what they saw and some said I’m never going to be like my dad and will be there for my families.
Some never got the answers from their dads until they were much older of why they weren’t there. And the damage had already been done for the next generation down the line.
But some have been able to get answers and heal from the past. Creating incredible bonds with their children.
I know many of my male friends and peers who are fathers are doing their best to break the stereotype. They are there, involved and present.
There are a handful that have had very difficult relationships with their kids. Some had the old belief that their kids were better off without them but unlike me, their kids don’t know what their why was.
All I can say, if you’re in that portion, give them the gift of the why.
Like the cast member I mentioned earlier, he recognized his mistakes. He talked to his son and talked to his father. The healing has began for them.
And if you’re reading this, maybe you can take the step in healing too?
What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments.
And don’t forget, for my paid subscribers, we have a monthly zoom call the last Saturday of the month to discuss history.
This month, it will be Saturday, June 29th at 11am (pst) – Noon (pst). We can touch on anything I’ve touch on thus far, or chat about something new.
I will send out a zoom link the week before.
Looking forward to chopping it up with you all!
Best,
Danita