Sorry, Harvard, fathers still matter — including Black fathers

The culture wars over family structure that raged in the 20th century — wars over single parenthood, marriage, and the importance of fathers — seemed to have ended in the early 21st century. From academia to the policy world, most sensible people acknowledged the importance of strong and stable families for kids. Hailing from the Ivory Tower in 2015, scholars from Brookings and Princeton reported on the new scientific consensus: “most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes.” 

In the public square, the consensus view about the importance of fathers was best articulated by Barack Obama, in speeches at churches and colleges across the country. He underlined the value of fathers for kids and his own dedication to breaking the cycle of fatherlessness he experienced as a boy. “And so my whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father was not for my mother and me,” he told the graduates of Morehouse College in 2013. “I want to break that cycle where a father is not at home — where a father is not helping to raise that son or daughter. I want to be a better father, a better husband, a better man.” No one could doubt that President Obama understood how much fathers mattered for their kids. 

The 'Myth' of the Two-Parent Home 

But now, progressives are calling into question even the kids-benefit-from-fathers argument Obama made so powerfully and poignantly. This month, for instance, The Harvard Gazette ran an article entitled, “Why living in a two-parent home isn’t a cure-all for Black students.” Written by Harvard sociologist Christina Cross, it spotlights her research showing that poor Black kids with two parents do not do better on a few educational outcomes compared to their peers with single parents. 

Cross’ article echoed themes from an earlier article, “The Myth of the Two-Parent Home,” that she published in The New York Times that claimed “living apart from a biological parent does not carry the same cost for black youths as for their white peers.” 

This Harvard research is part and parcel of a larger effort to call into question the idea that married, two-parent families matter not just for Black children but, indeed, all children. In an Atlantic article celebrating family diversity, the sociologist Pamela Braboy Jackson said, “All of our research points to the fact that it’s the quality of the relationship that matters, and the handling of communication and conflict, and the number of people in the household is not really the key” for the welfare of our kids.

There’s only one problem with this revisionist effort that relies on cherry picking a few findings to fit its narrative: it obscures the full truth from the sciences about the importance of two-parent families for kids. 

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A new report from the Institute for Family Studies co-authored by us with sociologist Wendy Wang finds large differences between Black kids raised by their own two parents, compared to their peers raised by single parents (primarily single mothers). Black children raised by single parents are three times more likely to be poor, compared to Black children raised by their own married parents. Black boys are almost half as likely to end up incarcerated (14% for intact; 23% for single parent) and twice as likely to go on and graduate from college (21% for intact; 12% for single parent) if they are raised in a home with their two parents, compared to boys raised by just one parent. Parallel patterns obtain for girls. Equally striking, we also find that Black children from stable two-parent homes do better than white children from single-parent homes when it comes to their risk of poverty or prison, and their odds of graduating from college. Young white men from single-parent families, for instance, are more likely to end up in prison than young Black men from intact, two-parent homes. 

Ironically, the work of another scholar just across the Harvard campus from Cross, Raj Chetty, also refutes the idea that Black fathers don’t matter. Chetty and his colleagues set out to determine the most powerful neighborhood factors behind the gap in economic mobility for poor Black and white boys. The biggest factor? The “fraction of low-income Black fathers present” in a neighborhood. In other words, poor black boys in neighborhoods with lots of Black fathers were significantly more likely to realize the American Dream. 

The value of stable families; fathers 

Research like this has kept some influential thinkers and journalists on the left defending the scientific consensus about marriage, fatherhood, and family. “I think that my half of the political spectrum — the left half — too often dismisses the importance of family structure,” noted New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, responding to another of Chetty’s studies. “Partly out of a worthy desire to celebrate the heroism of single parents, progressives too often downplay family structure. Social science is usually messy, with correlation and causation difficult to separate. But the evidence, when viewed objectively, points strongly to the value of two-parent households.”

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So the next time you come across a study from Harvard or some other ivory tower academic trying to cast shade on the idea that fathers matter for kids, you’d be better off just reprising the wisdom articulated by our 44th president on this matter for Father’s Day in 2008, which is as relevant for Father’s Day in 2021: 

 “Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important… We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime… They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.” 

Ian Rowe is the founder and CEO of Vertex Partnership Academies. Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, is a senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Follow them on Twitter: @bradwilcoxIFS and @IanVRowe