Family Values, Race, Feminism and Public Policy
By Twila L. Perry1
I. Introduction
In recent years, the term "family values" has become a rallying cry against the increase in nontraditional families in this country. Much of the recent public discourse about women who bear children outside of marriage seems to reflect an underlying assumption that appropriate values are something these women simply do not have. An alleged decline in values, often represented in the media by families headed by single mothers, and especially black single mothers, has been blamed for a myriad of social problems, including unemployment, poor health, school drop-out rates and an increase in juvenile crime.
2 Since the blame for these problems has been placed on "the breakdown of the traditional family," it is not surprising that many people have concluded that the logical solution to the problem is the reunification of the traditional family structure.
3 It is assumed that this will return the country to an earlier era, the "good old days," in which values were presumably different and better. Consistent with such thinking, recent years have seen an increase in governmental programs and policy proposals at both the local and national levels aimed at bolstering the traditional family structure, or otherwise encouraging what are presumed to be "family values."
4
As part of this symposium on "Ethics, Public Policy and the Future of the Family," this article will explore the role of race in the current family values rhetoric. The premise of this article is that attitudes toward the structure, value and function of families do not exist in a vacuum but are a reflection of context, perspective, and power. Race plays a role in each of these factors. Because the role of black mothers is central to any discussion of public policy and the black family, this article also analyzes the intersection of racism and sexism in the current rhetoric.
This article begins with an exploration of the way in which values about family as well as the value of families themselves have often, in this country, been affected by the factor of race.
5 Then, the discussion goes behind the rhetoric of "family values" to expose some of the specific ways in which this discourse is influenced by both racism and sexism.
6 The next part of this article, comprised of three sections, provides a specific critique of the family values rhetoric. The first section explores some of the problems with focusing on private family values as a solution to public problems.
7 The second section illustrates the subjective nature of the values touted in the family values rhetoric by showing how one of the prime issues in that rhetoric -- the value of work -- is constructed in accordance with racial and gender hierarchies.
8 The last section of this part discusses the way in which blacks as a subordinate group must often use independent judgment about majoritarian values, and create and pass on to their children values that are alternatives to, or even in opposition to, those of the larger society.
9
In building on the themes of family, race, gender and values, the final part of this article discusses some of the challenges for feminists who seek a larger role for women in shaping public policy towards the family.
10 These challenges include clarifying the relationship between family and patriarchy, deciding what values about family structure they wish to pass on to the next generation, and thinking more about the intersection of patriarchy, class and race.
The discussion in this article offers neither a specific theory nor a blueprint for a solution to the challenges of public policy this country must confront as the demographics of family life undergo rapid change. The goal is a more limited one -- to expose some of the hypocrisy behind the current family values rhetoric and to stimulate thinking about ways to reconstruct our attitude toward family structure.
II. Public Policy, Black Families and Family Structures
Although traditional formal marriage and the ideal of the nuclear family is promoted in the rhetoric of family values, historically, the extent to which this society has valued formal marriage has not been governed by some consistent standard that has equally supported the nuclear family structure throughout society. In the history of this country, formal public policies and institutionalized racism have acted in tandem to force many black families to develop alternatives to the traditional nuclear family structure.
During slavery, the government condoned and/or promoted a system in which marriage and family among slaves had no legal status.
11 Slave parents had no recognized authority over the children to whom they gave birth; slave children were subject to sale by their owners.
12 Indeed, as Professor Orlando Patterson has noted, all slavery involves what he calls "natal alienation," the deprivation of rights or claims of birth, of claims on or obligations to parents, and of connection to living blood relations, ancestors or descendants.
13
As one judge in North Carolina in 1853 described the legal status of marriage between slaves:
[O]ur law requires no solemnity or form in regard to the marriage of slaves, and whether they "take up" with each other by express permission of their owners, or from a mere impulse of nature, in obedience to the command "multiply and replenish the earth" cannot, in the contemplation of the law, make any sort of difference. . . .14
During slavery, the idea of what constitutes a family was manipulated through race to serve the slavemasters' economic interests. Thus, the legal principle was developed that the status of a slave child followed that of the mother. By such a rule, slaveowners owned as slaves their own children whom they had conceived through black slavewomen.
15
The choice of whether to accord any respect to a slave marriage was a matter of individual discretion for the slaveowner. Ironically, some slaveowners did encourage marriage among their slaves and chose to respect the integrity of those marriages. However, when this was done it was often not a question of morality, but one of practicality. Respecting the marriages of slaves by not separating husbands from wives or parents from children often functioned effectively as a method of social control. The threat of sale of a spouse or children could be used to discourage a slave from running away or engaging in other rebellious behavior.
16
The institution of slavery had a profound effect on the structure of black families. One consequence was the development of the single mother family.
17 The origin of such families was in white male sexual exploitation of female slaves, and the breakup of slave families by the sale of the husband and father.
18 During the decades after slavery, single mother families continued to be formed as a result of a variety of factors, including hard economic times, husbands who died or were killed, and men and women moving from place to place in search of work.
19 Between 1880 and 1915, between twenty-five and thirty percent of urban black families were headed by females.
20
Specific government policies during different periods encouraged the breakup of black families. For example, until the late 1960's, "man-in-the-house" welfare rules denied aid to a mother who was associating with a man, especially if the man lived in her home.
21 Although today black families have the same formal status under the law as other families, the persistence of racism often leaves black families subject to many of the same pressures they were forced to cope with in slavery. Race-based economic injustice, as well as changes in the marketplace and technological developments, have had a widespread effect on employment opportunities and a disproportionate effect on black men
22, preventing many of them from being able to earn a living sufficient to support a family.
23 Sociological research has demonstrated the relationship between male employment and family formation.
24 The bleak employment situation of black males has been compounded by a higher number of women than men in every age group over fifteen, and the fact that the number of black men that would have otherwise been available for marriage has been decimated by drugs, violent crime, and incarceration.
25 The result has been a decline in the rate of marriage between black men and women.
Thus, black families are continuing to adapt through the structure of female-headed families.
26 Through the years, in the eyes of the larger society, this adaptation has often been construed as a failure of values and morality. Thus, the black family has been described as a "tangle of pathology"
27 and black women have been described as matriarchs
28, a term generally not used to describe white single mothers or white wives who earn more than their husbands.
Rather than the country considering it an ethical and moral imperative to develop public policies to address the systemic societal conditions responsible for the circumstances of black families, black families have been blamed for their own condition and have been made the scapegoat for problems plaguing the black community. Indeed, programs which have the potential to increase black economic empowerment, such as affirmative action, and programs providing educational opportunity or job training are being slashed rather than enhanced. In light of current economic and political realities, the possibility that the black family will return in large number to the traditional structure seems increasingly remote.
III. Racism and Sexism in the Family Values Controversy
One of the main reasons for the current attack on single mother families is the belief that these families are responsible for dramatic increases in the costs of welfare, and in particular, the costs of the AFDC Program.
29 There also seems to be a growing belief that when people resort to AFDC it is not a temporary status, but instead leads to generations of welfare dependency, crime, and low academic achievement.
30 In other words, there is a view currently in vogue that families on AFDC, by their very structure, are a drain on society and are incapable of passing on good family values.
Some of these perceptions can be addressed briefly because they are based on clear factual misconceptions. Contrary to a common perception, the AFDC program represents only a tiny percentage of the federal budget.
31 Similarly, the link of AFDC to nonmarital mothers is overstated. Divorced mothers constitute nearly half of those on welfare.
32 Most mothers receiving welfare are not teenagers, and the average family on welfare has two children or fewer.
33 Also ignored in the attack on mothers on welfare are the extensive governmental subsidies given to middle-class families such as tax benefits, mortgage interest deductions, and educational loan assistance programs.
34
The alleged loss of family values, of which the single mother family has become a symbol, is posed as an issue of ethics and to some extent, economics. However, it is clear that the current rhetoric also has strong roots in two major structures of subordination in this society -- racism and sexism.
Racism is implicated in a number of ways in the family values debate. Although the phrase "family values" is often used to decry an alleged loss of values in society generally, the phrase also has a lurking racial subtext. The term "family values," linked as it often is with welfare and single motherhood, easily becomes a code word for race just as "welfare dependency," "inner city," and "the urban underclass," have.
35 There is an implication that black families, especially those headed by single mothers, do not share the values of the rest of society and do not pass on to their children the kinds of values that most Americans believe are important.
Racism is implicated in the family values rhetoric in other ways. One frequent phenomenon in American society is that a situation is often redefined as a problem or given more attention as a problem when it affects white people. This has been true in areas ranging from drug abuse to the problems faced by working mothers. One of the reasons for the recent intense focus on black people on welfare is that it is becoming clear that many of the consequences of poverty often associated with single mother families can no longer be internalized within the black community.
Although welfare is clearly a necessity for some people in order to ensure their very survival, it is clearly a system upon which most people, including those who are on it, would prefer not to be dependent. Welfare provides subsistence, but it does not empower people to maximize and be rewarded for their potential. When fewer persons were on welfare, there was little concern in the larger society that these clearly disempowered individuals were not fulfilling their potential, and were not participating in many of the opportunities and benefits society has to offer.
But the issue of welfare has now taken center stage. Although there has been long-standing resentment against black women dependent upon public assistance,
36 the hostility has clearly reached a new level. Many in society now fear for their pocketbooks, not in the usual sense of fear that they may be snatched in the street, but in the sense of fear that their hard-earned tax dollars will be snatched by the Government in order to support welfare recipients.
37 The factor of race adds another dimension and intensity to this perception. There is concern about an increasing birth rate among blacks, with children being born who are not likely to become well-educated members of society. Some proponents of family values rhetoric may see the potential for a situation they would deem entirely unacceptable: working every day, at jobs that are increasingly stressful and insecure, to support a black "underclass" of able-bodied people who do not work. This is a very bizarre and ironic twist in a nation with a history of black slavery.
38
There is also increased concern about welfare and single mothers because the phenomenon of single motherhood has spread beyond the black community. More and more white women are now engaging in a behavior that this society typically associates with black women. The well-known conservative Charles Murray is explicit about the concern that so many white women are now having children outside of marriage. He said, "[T]he brutal truth is that American society as a whole could survive when illegitimacy became epidemic within a comparatively small ethnic minority. It cannot survive the same epidemic among whites."
39
There are other aspects of the "family values" rhetoric that implicate both gender and race. The formation of single mother families challenges the notion of the centrality of men to the family. The male has historically been considered the head of the family, a status which was, until recently, affirmed in the law through a whole host of legal rules.
40 Moreover, the idea of the male as the head of the family is not simply a function of the law -- it is also deeply ingrained in our culture. It is a part of the pervasive nature of patriarchy that both men and women have been socialized to think of men as indispensable to the definition of family.
In challenging the centrality of men to the family, single motherhood challenges a fundamental and long-standing social pattern: the control of men over women. This challenge is presented across the class spectrum. A single mother on welfare may not have a great deal of power over her life, but in a sense she has more power than a woman who has no access to any money other than through a husband. Thus, one consequence of the availability of public assistance is that poor women can obtain at least a small measure of economic independence from men. This can enable them to decide to have children without husbands or to leave husbands who are physically or emotionally abusive.?
The Murphy Brown controversy provides an illustration of the issues of centrality and control at the middle and upper-middle class level.
41 Murphy, a fictional television sitcom character who was obviously well-educated, professional and economically self-sufficient, decided to bear a child outside of marriage. Obviously, she was unlikely to become an AFDC recipient. Why did her decision become the subject of national attention and the focus of remarks by the Vice President of the United States?
The answer seems clear. Murphy Brown's decision to have a child outside of marriage represented a threat to remove middle-class men from centrality and control in the family. Murphy Brown was essentially saying, "I can support a child financially, and I can nurture a child without dependence on a man." She became a dangerous symbol because she posed the possibility that an attractive, affluent woman could choose to reject a powerful societal norm, decide to have a child without a man, and suffer no apparent adverse consequences.
The specific concern about the displacement of men from the center of the family implicit in the family values cry has implications for all men, but also has a specific racial dimension. The black single mother family has a long history in this country.
42 While out-of-wedlock births have been traditionally associated with blacks, the fact today is that the fastest growing group of single mothers is among white women.
43 As a result, a different group of men is now being affected by the growth in the number of single mothers. While black female-headed families have long been condemned as matriarchies, little was done to address the structures that prevented black men from playing the traditional role of breadwinner. The possible psychological impact on black men of the inability to play the traditional role was obviously not considered a problem. However, now that it is white men who are threatened with displacement from their expected roles in the family, there is a different level of concern. This is another illustration of the way in which the family values rhetoric is both racist and hypocritical. It also illustrates once again the way in which issues are redefined or given a different priority when they are no longer limited to the black community.
