The Vanishing Black Family: How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable

Today, 70 percent of black children are born to unmarried parents and close to half grow up without a father at home. Both figures are significantly higher than the national average. Yet progressives-especially black leaders in the church, politics, academia, and the media-are silent. In The Vanishing Black Family, Delano Squires confronts racial justice advocates with the question they can no longer avoid: how can you dismiss the collapse of marriage and decline in two-parent homes that is widening the gaps in income, education, and incarceration you claim to care about?

Deeply researched and unafraid to tell hard truths, this book traces black family life from American chattel slavery to the present. Its most uncomfortable revelation is that most black children are no longer born to -- and raised by -- married parents because of welfare policies and feminist activism in the 1960s. But Squires is not content to complain about the problem. He calls for a new civil rights movement led by black pastors, HBCUs, and other key institutions to ensure more children grow up in a loving home with a married mother and father. Anticipating inevitable challenges, he prepares marriage advocates for opposition from progressives who reject family revival for ideological reasons.

Equal parts cultural critique and call to action, The Vanishing Black Family promises to be the most consequential book on race in recent memory.