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OPINION
They're Dragging Out the 'Absent Black Fathers' Myth Again. Can We Give it a Rest? | Opinion
JOSH LEVS ON 6/05/20 AT 4:02 PM EDT

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OPINION GEORGE FLOYD RACISM PARENTING PROTESTS
As protests fill streets across the United States, some people looking to deny systemic racism are resurfacing a false, pernicious myth—one that places blame for the biggest problems facing the black community on black men. It's the myth that most black dads are absent from their children's lives.

Perhaps most prominently, the focus on allegedly absent black fathers was offered up again this week by the right-wing PragerU in a video by radio host Larry Elder, who did what so many other people who believe this myth do: conflate marriage statistics with fatherlessness. (No hyperlink here; I generally do not link to misleading data.)
In writing my book All In, I looked into a wide range of statistics about fatherhood and explored the methodologies behind them to see whether they were presenting an accurate picture. Unfortunately, all sorts of statistics about fathers that are often cited by people across the political spectrum are false.
When it comes to black dads specifically, most, in fact, live with their children. A CDC study found that about 2.5 million black fathers were living with their children, and about 1.7 million were officially living apart from them.
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Counting by the number of children, rather than the number of fathers, presents a different picture. The Census Bureau reports that slightly more than half of black children live in homes headed by one parent—which is usually, but not always, the mother. This is explained, in part, by "non-coresidential" fathers having more children. It's also true that black children are more likely than others to be born out of wedlock.
But neither of these things make children fatherless.
Millions of kids live with their fathers half the time, or at least part of the time, through joint custody arrangements. But children generally have one legal address, which is particularly important for purposes of determining school districts. Most often, the legal address is the mother's. This is a major reason that fatherlessness statistics in general are overblown. Fathers' homes all too often are not counted officially as being "homes with children." (Also, some unmarried couples live together, making the marriage statistics even more misleading.)
Meanwhile, among fathers who live with their children, black dads are in many ways the most involved in their kids' lives. "Black fathers (70 percent) were most likely to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day compared with white (60 percent) and Hispanic fathers (45 percent)," the CDC study found. Also, more black fathers than white fathers took their children to or from activities every day and helped their kids with homework every day.