Black Families at the Crossroads: Challenges and Prospects

407 Pages·2004·2.209 MB·English

by  Leanor Boulin Johnson, Robert Staples

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Black Families
at the Crossroads
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Leanor Boulin Johnson
Robert Staples
Foreword by Robert B. Hill
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Black Families at
the Crossroads
Challenges and Prospects
Revised Edition
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Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Leanor Boulin, date
Black families at the crossroads : Challenges and prospects /
Leanor Boulin Johnson, Robert Staples.—Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Black families at the crossroads / Robert
Staples, Leanor Boulin Johnson. 1st ed. c1993.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7879-7222-3 (alk. paper)
1. African American families. I. Staples, Robert.
II. Staples, Robert.
Black families at the crossroads. III. Title.
E185.86.S698 2004
306.85’089’96073—dc22 2004010951
Printed in the United States of America
SECONDEDITION
PB Printing10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Contents
Foreword ix
Robert B. Hill
Preface to the Revised Edition xvii
Preface to the First Edition xxi
Acknowledgments xxvii
1 History as Fact and Fiction 1
2 Studying Black Families 31
3 Work and Money: The Struggle 59
4 Patterns of Sexual Intimacy 93
5 Singlehood and Partner Selection 125
6 Gender Roles and Male Sexism 155
7 Marital Patterns and Interactions 177
8 The Challenges of Parenting 213
9 Kinship and Community Support 245
10 Social Change, Challenges, and Prospects 277
Selected Readings 311
References 313
About the Authors 357
Name Index 359
Subject Index 369
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Foreword
Once again, Leanor Johnson and Robert Staples, who combine
more than sixty years of writing and research as family sociologists,
have produced a work that greatly enhances the understanding of
the complexity and diversity in the functioning of Black families
today. This revised edition provides rare insights regarding how the
cultural values, attitudes, and aspirations of African American fam-
ilies interact with structural conditions and social policies to pro-
duce a wide range of positive and negative outcomes. Thus, this
work makes many important contributions to our knowledge about
external and internal forces that affect African American families.
First and foremost, this is a book about the institution of the
Black family. There is a widespread tendency to misrepresent many
works that concentrate on problems, such as unemployment, pov-
erty, and adolescent pregnancy, as studies of Black families when
actually the individual or community is the focus of study. It is for
this reason that research in which Black families are the primary
unit of analysis, as in this book, continues to comprise only a tiny
fraction of the studies of African Americans.
Second, a historical perspective is incorporated throughout this
work. A major deficiency in most other studies of Black families is
their ahistorical approach. Over a century ago, W.E.B. Du Bois ar-
gued that researchers could not adequately study Black people with-
out placing their work within a historical and cultural context.
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