Using a sample of the largest 100 cities, multivariate analysis of black, single femaleheaded families tests hypotheses derived from competing political paradigmatic explanations of marital disruption. Results show sex-ratio, black male and female employment, and access to AFDC predict the likelihood of black, single female-headed family formation. The conclusion explores public policy implications.In 1965 Daniel Moynihan suggested that a "tangle of pathology" had arisen in the black ghettos of major cities as the direct result of a matriarchal black family structure. As proof he cited the disproportionate number of single female-headed households in black communities and the supposed associated social ills (e.g., juvenile delinquency, alienation) (Moynihan 1965). Since Moynihan's study, black female-headed families have increased from about a quarter of all black families to over 40%. Poverty has become more concentrated among them and some even implicate them in the formation of a black urban underclass (see Auletta 1982). Additionally, some now claim that government has supplanted the matriarchal structure as the source of black familial ills (Kilson 1981). In particular, they point to welfare and its putative association with black, single femaleheaded family formation (Honig 1974).In response, other researchers have attempted to demonstrate that demographic and economic changes within the black community ultimately shape the black, single femaleheaded family, namely, the imbalanced sex-ratio and the male employment rate (e.g., Wilson 1987). This structuralist perspective, as termed here, suggests that economic and demographic changes with deleterious effect upon black men's post-World War I1 employment and morbidity have directly created the growth in such families.In the public policy and political arenas these contrasting explanations have tended to reflect ideological positions. That is, a number of neoconservative writers (Gilder 198 1 ; Murray 1984) emphasize the link between AFDC and black, single female-headed families, while structuralist proponents predominantly come from liberal black quarters (Center for the Study
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