Social Structure and Black Family Life

Many changes have occurred in this country since 1954, covering a wide array of personalities, values, and institutions and bringing about a marked change in the functioning of society as a whole. These changes have been most dramatic within the institution of the family, where the most telling effect is on our personal lives. We are all, to some degree, affected by increasing sexual permissiveness, changes in sexrole expectations, a declining fertility rate, altered attitudes toward childbearing and rearing, a continuing increase in the divorce rate, and the like. One would not expect Black families to be immune to the forces modifying our family forms. There is ample evidence that they are not. At the same time, their special status as a racial minority, with a singular history, continues to give Black marital and family patterns a unique character. Despite what many allege to be the positive gains of the sixties and seventies, the problems of poverty and racial oppression continue to plague large numbers of Afro-Americans. Black Americans are still spatially segregated from the majority of the more affluent white citizenry and certain cultural values distinguish their family life in form and content from the middle-class, white Anglo-Saxon model.