Capital Times

HEADLINE: IN PAST, MOST BLACK KIDS HAD 2 PARENTS Thursday, February 17, 1994 Section: Nation/World Edition: All Page: 7E BYLINE: Mineapolis Star Tribune TEXT: A study that compares census data from today with data from the past 130 years is offering new insights into the debate over the explosion of single-parent households, particularly among blacks. For 80 years, from 1880 to 1960, the proportion of black children living with a single parent held steady around 30 percent, according to the new research by the University of Minnesota.

During the same time, the proportion of white children living with only one parent stayed at about 10 percent. But in recent years, those figures have climbed - to 63 percent for black children and 19 percent for white. The new study by Steven Ruggles, a Minnesota history professor, is one of the first generated by a university project that allows scholars to compare census data back to the 1860s. ``The key categories of black household structure - single parent and extended - were remarkably stable, at least through 1960,'' the study said. ``This supports recent studies which have argued that the distinctive features of the African-American family have deep historical roots.'' But black children historically were still two to three times as likely to live with just one parent as were white children, Ruggles said. And in all census years, white households were less fragmentary or extended than black households. Theories on why have been the subject of much debate, and include the ravages of slavery on black families and other economic or cultural factors. ``The analysis confirms the findings of recent studies that the high incidence of single parenthood and children residing without parents among blacks is not a recent phenomenon,'' Ruggles concludes. The issue of race and single-parent families has been the subject of enormous controversy. A disproportionate number of black children have been raised by single parents, a trend that can lead to family instability, poverty and welfare use. Is that because there's something in the culture and values of black families that encourages single parenthood? Or have economic opportunities, racism and the legacy of segregation stifled family formation? And what about the majority of black families led by two parents over the past century, in spite of tremendous odds? Isn't that a sign of strength, not weakness? Those are among the questions typically raised by smaller studies on this issue. Ruggles doesn't answer most of those questions in his study, which is more concerned with illustrating the differences in black and white households in the past century. The study showed that: Starting around 1940, black children were increasingly likely to live in a home without a father. In 1940, for example, 19 percent of black children between the ages of 10 and 14 were living with their mothers only, a figure that jumped to nearly 47 percent in 1990. In white households, 8 percent of the children between 10 and 14 lived with their mothers only in 1940, compared with 15 percent in 1990. The extended black family, often considered a source of strength and stability, has declined steadily since 1940, as has the white extended family. The study doesn't explain the enormous leap in black single-parent households in the 1960s. But many scholars trace the roots of the trend to the migration of Southern blacks to Northern cities, where families often were separated.

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