Attitudes Of African American Women Toward Marriage Related Issues

This study presents results from a survey of 108 African American women. Survey questions covered attitudes towards marriage, qualities of an ideal spouse, and opinions of African American men in general.

There is an escalating trend towards the decrease in marriage rates in the African-American community. However, previous research on this trend has focused largely on the perspectives of lower-income and less educated African-Americans. The perspectives of middle-income and educated African Americans have remained untapped in much of the marriage and divorce literature. Educational and economic disparities and a sex ratio balance between African-American men and women have been identified as factors that impact marital attitudes and behaviors in the African-American community. However, research has not examined the impact of these factors on the highly educated population of African Americans. This study utilized a survey method to measure the impact of these identified factors on the marital attitudes of 340 African Americans (263 females, 77 males) enrolled in graduate, law, or medical programs across the country. Analyses of variance and correlations were conducted to better understand the relationships between attitudes toward marriage and childhood family structure, gender, and marital considerations

In a time when the American family has undergone dramatic evolution, change among African Americans has been particularly rapid and acute. African Americans now marry later than any other major ethnic group, and while in earlier decades nearly 95 percent of black women eventually married, today 30 percent are expected to remain single. The black divorcee rate has increased nearly five-fold over the last thirty years, and is double the rate of the general population. The result, according to The Decline in Marriage Among African Americans, is a greater share of family responsibilities being borne by women, an increased vulnerability to poverty and violence, and an erosion of community ties. The original, often controversial, research presented in this book links marital decline to a pivotal drop in the pool of marriageable black males. Increased joblessness has robbed many black men of their economic viability, rendering them not only less desirable as mates, but also less inclined to take on the responsibility of marriage. Higher death rates resulting from disease, poor health care, and violent crime, as well as evergrowing incarceration rates, have further depleted the male population. Editors M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan and the contributors take a hard look at the effects of chronic economic instability and cultural attitudes toward the male role as family provider. Their cogent historical analyses suggest that the influence of external circumstances over marriage preferences stems in large part from the profoundly damaging experience of slavery. This book firmly positions declining marriage within an ominous cycle of economic and social erosion. The authors propose policies for relieving the problems associated the changing marital behavior, focusing on support for single parent families, public education, and increased employment for African American men.