This Father’s Day, Let’s Shatter the Myth About the Absent Black Father

By Kirsten West Savali, theRoot

Fact: More young black fathers are raising their children at home than are not. If you’re surprised, keep reading.

Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children.

Black men are present and engaged fathers who love their children.

I needed to write that twice, in hopes that it cuts through the racist and patently false narrative amplified by mainstream media that the majority of black fathers are scurrilous beings who are locked up and tuned out, low on education and high on weed—too busy getting busy to get a business of their own…

“People think they don’t care, but we know they do,” said Joseph Jones, president of the Center for Urban Families, an organization that works to support African-American fathers, to the Los Angeles Times. “We see how dads are fighting against the odds to be engaged in the lives of their children.”

In 2013 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study that I’ve cited often over the years, “Fathers’ Involvement With Their Children: United States, 2006-2010” (pdf). It does a great job shattering some pervasive myths about African-American fathers. The findings include the fact that more African-American fathers live with their children (2.5 million) than live apart from their children (1.7 million).

Of African-American fathers surveyed who live with their children,

• 78.2 percent fed or ate meals with their children daily, compared with 73.9 percent of white fathers;
• 70.4 percent bathed, diapered or dressed their children daily, compared with 60.0 percent of white fathers;
• 82.2 percent played with their children daily, compared with 82.7 percent of white fathers;
• 34.9 percent read to their children daily, compared with 24.9 percent of white fathers;
• 40.6 percent helped their children with their homework or checked to make sure that they finished it daily, compared with 29.3 percent of white fathers.

* Of the fathers who live away from their children, African-American fathers outperformed white and Latino fathers on nearly all measures surveyed, including reading to their children daily, helping them with homework and changing their diapers.

Read the full article here.

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