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The article presents the author's comments on the research paper "Marital Stability and Patterns of Status," by Bernard Jessie. The author starts analysis by saying that this is an ingenious and imaginative paper but the method used by the researcher is somewhat disturbing. First, although the writer explains at the outset that census-related definition of a stable marriage is hedged with cautions, and then proceeds in the rest of the paper, to talk incautiously about marriage stability. More questions about the analysis are related to the writer's comments on trends concerning the "tendency" for Whites and Non-Whites to become increasingly similar in "marriage stability" as they go up the educational-occupational scale. This tendency would seem, in actuality, to be quite slight. The author concludes that cultural differences between African Americans and Causacians in the U.S. undoubtedly do play a part in the higher rates of negro family instability. However, other probable factors mentioned in the paper are the greater stress that African American families are likely to suffer from the manifold pressures of prejudice as they operate in reference to housing, recreation, social acceptance, ghettoization, employment discrimination, intimidation, and so on.

This study will utilize the data in the 1967 SEO to present evidence on the size, composition, and concentration of net wealth accumulation among black families compared to white families. The final section presents and tests a simple econometric model of the estimated relationship between income and wealth for black and white families. In preparing this paper it is well understood that survey data are notoriously unreliable on assets and liabilities. Larger samples do not remove the errors if there is a tendency for a distinct subgroup to misreport its assets or liabilities. A rather extensive literature has evolved concerning the errors in survey data on assets and liabilities and is noted. At various stages of the analysis the findings from the SEO are compared to results from the comprehensive Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the reaction of neighborhood housing prices to racial integration. What to property values when one or more African American families move into a previously all-white neighborhood? The answer arrived at in the analysis based on a study in scholar Ann Arbor. The data are analyzed in two different ways. First is an analysis is carried out on houses that sold at least two times-once before and once after neighborhood integration. For purposes of comparison, data on similarly-priced houses in all white areas are also included. However, it may be that integration affects property values some years after the first African American family moves into the neighborhood. Houses which sold twice at least five years subsequent to Negro entry are studied in an attempt to investigate any longer run effect of integration on property values. The second method uses assessed valuations of properties. Comparisons are made over time the basis of a ratio of market to assessed value for different neighborhoods and for different sections within a neighborhood. Trends established by these ratios over a number of years are examined to see if property values do react to integration and if so in what way.

Andrew Billingsley in Black Families in White America has criticized much of the previous research on the black family, saying that social scientists have ignored the structural variation among families and have focused on a very limited number of family functions. To correct what he believes to be a distorted picture of the black family, he has suggested a typology of family structures and a large number of family functions which should be taken into consideration. This paper, based upon data collected from 321 black households, uses Billingsley's typology to examine the association between family structures and functions. It is concluded that a few modifications of the typology would expand its utility, that more detailed information about family structure does reduce the chances of distortion and contribute to greater understanding, and that Billingsley may have overemphasized the capacity of many black families to deal with their functional problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper was stimulated by the controversy that has developed over the Moynihan Report and the question of the extent to which the Negro family represents an institutionalization of culturally "deviant" norms. In order to probe this question further, an attempt was made to determine some of the concomitants of discrepancies between the subjectively perceived actual and ideal family role behavior of a sample of Negro males. The results indicate that such discrepancies in family role performance are related to relatively low evaluations of one's own achievements and probability of success in goal striving, as well as relatively higher discrepancies between achievement and aspiration. These findings point to the fact that discrepancies in family role performance of the Negro male are part of a more encompassing perception of failure in the larger arena of goal-striving behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the findings of research in Nigeria, Kenya, and Britain-with a side glance at the debate on the Negro family in America to suggest that people's conception of family relationships adapts really enough to economic circumstances and does not itself inhibit change. Whether the adaptation encourages individualistic achievement may depend more on how people perceive the opportunity structure, and the need for mutual protection, than the family traditions of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper concerned with the cultural factors involved in the life and death struggle of the Afro-American family to maintain itself as a socio-economic unit in an urban area of economic blight. The anthropological concept of culture has provided the sociologist with valuable insights and opened up a rich field of investigation. Consequently it was decided to use the cultural approach to a deeper understanding of the social problems of the present group. It is the writer's opinion, based on field experience with both immigrant and Afro-American groups, that many of the findings on cultural disorganization of the immigrant apply as well to particular Afro-American groups in the large city, but as yet there has been little systematic application of this knowledge to the problems of these groups. Both the recent or new immigrants and the Afro-Americans migrating from the South, were for the most part rural people forced to adjust to the complex life of the modern city. Both were forced by economic pressure and ethnocentric prejudice to settle in the transitional areas of the city.

This study examined the relationship between labor force participation by more than one family member and the socioeconomic status of the family, as measured by the Census SES score. The data were derived from a special tabulation of the 1960 Census five percent sample tape. In general, labor force participation by more than one family member was associated with higher SES scores in both white and Negro families. Multiple wage earners in white families were associated with "above the middle" level scores, whereas in Negro families multiple wage earners appear to contribute to barely or almost attaining middle level scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper aggregate data are used to derive transition probability matrices for both black and white families. These describe the probability that a family in one income class will move to another in a single year. The average time for a family to move from one income class to another is then calculated from the probability estimates. The results indicate that, in addition to having a greater proportion of families in the lowest income classes, black families have a relative disadvantage in their chances of advancing to a higher income class. In particular, Iow-income black families have a smaller probability than whites of increasing their income, while middle- and high-income black families have a greater chance of a decline in income. The results indicate that the distribution of income for black families does not merely lag behind that of white families. Rather, it would appear that, ceteris paribus, the existing disparities will become even greater.
The results also show that the proportion of families in the lowest income class is steadily declining for both races, although the estimated average time for either a black or white family to escape from the under-$3000 level is very long. The average black family with income below $3000 can expect to spend twenty-one years at this income level before rising to a higher level, while a similarly situated white family can expect about nineteen additional years with income below $3000. These times are subject to considerable variability, however, and therefore individual families will spend a much longer or shorter time at the below-$3000 level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent events have reactivated controversy concerning two questions: (1) Is the low-income American Negro family showing "rapid deterioration" or continuance of low-standing patterns? (2) Are its patterns mainly rooted in the legacy of slavery? This analysis sees a long-standing picture rather than drastic change and relates family pattern primarily to postslavery conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment of the author on his paper related to some readjustments of the Negro family in 1944 and 1970. The nature of the reconsideration is obviously based upon the changes that have occurred in American race relations since the work was first published. The passage of time has not only allowed for a change of mind, but has compelled it. Therefore, his purpose here is to state succinctly how he viewed Negro family readjustment in the first instance and how he views it now. The advantage that he has in taking this approach is that an occasion for readjustment, as it existed then, also exists now. In 1944, his general concern was with the degree and manner in which an institution accommodates to new circumstances imposed upon it by the external environment in which it is enmeshed. Somehow he had the feeling that the methodological implications of the Spencerian organismic analogy could not be absolutely ignored. He felt that, like forms of organic life, an institution has a vital quality that facilitates its structural rearrangements when faced by an external condition that threatens its internal stability.

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An empirical test is made of the idea that marital instability among present day blacks is importantly related to a family history of instability. Data from a sample of urban, northern blacks indicate that for the total sample the association between parental family instability and respondent's marital disruption is quite small. The correlation is higher in the middle class, and for middle class females the effect is particularly strong when the family break occurred early in life. However, parental family instability generally explains very little of the variance. The nature of the post-break living arrangements and the cause of the break are not importantly related to later marital instability, but there is evidence that the toss of the parent of the same sex through death has a stronger effect than the loss of the parent of the opposite sex. It is suggested that pre-marital traits are not highly correlated with marital stability and that parental family instability is particularly weak because it is tenuously tied to the intervening variables between it and respondent's marital stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of Negro housing in Toledo, Ohio tested some common assumptions about race and housing and discovered a post-war transition from renter to owner status for the Negro. The study explored the means by which Negro families had financed purchases of homes, the quality of the homes, comparative prices, and the economic status of the Negro families concerned. Some implications of these findings are noted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of the black family structure in seven Ohio Valley cities is an effort to fill the void in historical literature on the origins of the present-day urban black family, especially the phenomenon of the lower-class "black matriarchy." Based on the manuscript census, all male- and female-headed families are compared with such demographic data as the age, sex, and family structures; size and number of children; and socioeconomic data of real estate ownership and occupations. The basic conclusions are twofold: (1) the urban black family structure during the nineteenth century was basically a two-parent, male-headed family that showed little evidence of retaining structural characteristics of the slave family, and (2) despite the increasing trend towards residential segregation, the only sign of a lessening of the two-parent family is a rise in the proportion of female-headed extended families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an attempt to compare and explain the differences in extended family cohesion of black and white families. The black family is not approached as deviant or pathological, but from the view of a separate subculture within a pluralistic society. Comparisons were made in terms of both intensity and extensity of interaction of black and white families with their extended kin. Specific comparisons were made of contact and help patterns, number of kin living in the household, and salience of kin. It is shown that the extended kin network is a more salient structure for black families than it is for white families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt was made to isolate the effects of social class, child-rearing attitudes, and advice on Negro parents' decision to institutionalize their retarded children. Negro families who had formal plans to institutionalize and others who planned to keep their children at home were interviewed. Similar groups of white families were used for comparisons. Social class, domestic placement of the child, and child-rearing attitudes all failed to explain planning. Advice to institutionalize did differentiate in the expected direction especially for Negroes. This tendency of Negro parents to follow advice might be based on the Negro's history in the society, which may lead to a compliance with advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A New Orleans sample of families are studied from a structural and developmental point of view. The significant differences between Negroes and white: in the distribution of family types in the sample is largely accounted for by the number of Negro families which begin with the birth of an illegitimate child. Various associations between race, class, age, and living with relatives a: the origin of the family are explored. The sequences of family types in which women lived following the birth of an illegitimate child are gives in detail. Age at pregnancy affects this sequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the poverty in the U.S. during the mid-sixties. In 1962, one-fifth of the 47 million families in the country had totaled incomes below $3,000. More than 50 percent of these families had annual money incomes below $2,000 while half of the Negro and Indian families have incomes below the poverty line. Also, there is high incidence of poverty among domestic workers, farm laborers, and service workers brought by several factors such as discrimination, low bargaining power, and exclusion from minimum wage coverage. However, employment opportunities are abundant for those people who have high educational achievement.

This article presents information related to the processes of cultural assimilation as revealed in the experiences of four generations of a North Carolina Negro family. The study begins with the generation that grew up in the cultural isolation of slavery and stretches down to the present generation of young students in North Carolina colleges. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the slave Negro family was its enforced instability. This is not surprising, for it was practically impossible under the circumstances for slave families to develop stable patterns of organization and a strong tradition. Slave fathers developed tendencies of family irresponsibility and indifference. The result was the emergence of the maternal Negro family type. The slave home, like the slave family, was dominated by the institution of slavery. Homes of the field hands, who constituted the bulk of the slave population, were crude, box-like frame structures, with only the rudest furniture and utensils. The consequence of these practices was the dwarfing and inhibiting of those economic attitudes, values and habits which constitute one foundation of the stable family.

Permanent homes must be found for the eighty thousand homeless black children in this country. Social work's solution has been. biracial adoption. The author points up the dangers of such an approach both to the black child and the white adoptive parents. Although he does not advocate total abandonment of biracial adopt ion, he concludes that in this society only black families can assure environment in which there is optimal opportunity for growth, development, and identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a study on medical care costs of white and Negro households in the southern rural areas of the United States. It was found that many southern rural families do without any medical care. This is attributed to the indifference of doctors. Most doctors are urban-oriented, accept patients by appointment only, and tend to bypass distant rural home calls. Further compounding the issue are the meager incomes of southern ruralities, the distances they live from available medical help, and charges of town physicians for remote home calls. The data shows that Negroes, largely because of poverty, neglect their health more than whites. They tend to be oriented to traditional and personal values rather than to professional, scientific, and rationalistic values of organized medicine. Southern rural poor whites and poor Negroes have most economic problems in common, including those of medical care. In gross numbers, however, poor white families outnumber poor Negro families in a ratio of three to one, at least in the 27 counties surveyed.

The values of income quintiles, for black and white families separately, for the period 1947-68 are analyzed within the framework of a growth-unemployment model. Some principal results of the analysis are: (1) In all segments of the income distribution, growth rates of income are higher among black families than among white families when the unemployment rate is low. (2) In the middle range of income distribution, rising unemployment is more disadvantageous to black families than to white families. (3) At a stable 3.5 percent unemployment rate, equality of incomes could be achieved in about 25 years. (4) If unemployment rises to a stable 4.5 percent rate as a result of federal anti-inflationary actions, black families bear a social cost that can be measured in terms of the additional time required to achieve equality--another 25 years. (5) During a period when incomes of black families are growing more rapidly than those of white families, the absolute differences, or gap, will increase to a maximum and then decline. Thus an apparent paradox observed previously in the data can be explained by the growth-unemployment model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]