Children of Incarcerated Parents

causality, researchers have found a
consistent relationship between the
current African American family
structure and poverty, education, and
pregnancy. According to C. Eric Lincoln,
the Negro family's "enduring sickness" is
the absent father from the African-
American family structure. C. Eric
Lincoln also suggests that the implied
American idea that poverty, teen
pregnancy, and poor education
performance has been the struggle for
the African-American community is due
to the absent African-American father.
According to the Moynihan Report, the
failure of a male dominated subculture,
which only exist in the African-American
culture, and reliance on the matriarchal
control has been greatly present in the
African-American family structure for the
past three centuries. This absence of
the father, or "mistreatment", has
resulted in the African-American crime
rate being higher than the National
average, African-American drug
addiction being higher than whites, and
rates of illegitimacy being at least 25%
or higher than whites. A family needs
the presence of both parents for the
youth to "learn the values and
expectations of society."
Poverty
Black single-parent homes headed by
women still demonstrate how relevant
the feminization of poverty is. Black
women often work in low-paying and
female-dominated occupations. Black
women also make up a large
percentage of poverty-afflicted
people. Additionally, the racialization of
poverty in combination with its
feminization creates further hindrances
for youth growing up Black, in singleparent
homes, and in poverty. For
married couple families in 2007, there
was a 5.8% poverty rate.
This number, however, varied when
considering race so that 5.4% of all
white people, 9.7% of black people, and
14.9% of all Hispanic people lived in
poverty. These numbers increased for
single-parent homes, with 26.6% of all
single-parent families living in
poverty, 22.5% of all white single-parent
people, 44.0% of all single-parent black
people, and 33.4% of all single-parent
Hispanic people living in poverty.
While majority opinion tends to center
on the increase in poverty as a result of
single-parent homes, research has
shown that this is not always the case.
In one study examining the effects of
single-parent homes on parental stress
and practices, the researchers found
that family structure and marital status
were not as big a factor as poverty and
the experiences the mothers had while
growing up. Furthermore, the authors
found little parental dysfunction
in parenting styles and efficacy for
single-mothers, suggesting that twoparent
homes are not always the only
type of successful family structures. The
authors suggest that focus should also
be placed on the poverty that African
Americans face as a whole, rather than
just those who live in single-parent
homes and those who are of the typical
African American family structure.
Educational Performance
There is consensus in the literature
about the negative consequences of
growing up in single-parent homes on
educational attainment and
success. Children growing up in singleparent
homes are more likely to not
Page 20 of 109