Was Moynihan Right? What Happens to Children of Unmarried Mothers

Autor/inn/en	McLanahan, Sara; Jencks, Christopher
Titel	Was Moynihan Right? What Happens to Children of Unmarried Mothers
Quelle	In: Education Next, 15 (2015) 2, S.14-20 (7 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1539-9664
Schlagwörter	Unwed Mothers; Fatherless Family; African American Family; African American Children; Educationally Disadvantaged; Poverty; Racial Differences; Educational Attainment; Whites; Hispanic Americans; One Parent Family + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Unverheiratete Mutter; African Americans; Child; Children; Afroamerikaner; Kind; Kinder; Armut; Rassenunterschied; Bildungsabschluss; Bildungsgut; White; Weißer; Hispanic; Hispanoamerikaner; Single parent family; Ein-Eltern-Familie
Abstract	In his 1965 report on the black family, Daniel Patrick Moynihan highlighted the rising fraction of black children growing up in households headed by unmarried mothers. He attributed the increase largely to the precarious economic position of black men, many of whom were no longer able to play their traditional role as their family's primary breadwinner. Moynihan argued that growing up in homes without a male breadwinner reduced black children's chances of climbing out of poverty, and that the spread of such families would make it hard for blacks to take advantage of the legal and institutional changes flowing from the civil rights revolution. Moynihan's claim that growing up in a fatherless family reduced a child's chances of educational and economic success was furiously denounced when the report appeared in 1965, with many critics calling Moynihan a racist. For the next two decades few scholars chose to investigate the effects of father absence, lest they too be demonized if their findings supported Moynihan's argument. Fortunately, America's best-known black sociologist, William Julius Wilson, broke this taboo in 1987, providing a candid assessment of the black family and its problems in "The Truly Disadvantaged." Since then, social scientists have accumulated a lot more evidence on the effects of family structure. This article will offer some educated guesses about what that evidence means. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Hoover Institution. Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. Tel: 800-935-2882; Fax: 650-723-8626; e-mail: educationnext@hoover.stanford.edu; Web site: http://educationnext.org/journal/
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01