There is a quiet crisis unfolding in homes across America, and it is hitting the Black community especially hard. Fewer couples are marrying, more children are growing up without their fathers at home, and the beautiful design God gave us for family is being pushed to the edges.
I want to share a recent CBN News report with you, because it names the problem honestly and points to the only lasting answer: a return to God’s design for marriage and family. Please watch it, and then let’s walk through it together with an open Bible and an open heart.
Five Things We Will Learn
- What the numbers really say about marriage and the Black family, from the 1960s until today.
- Why author Delano Squires believes economics is not the primary driver, and how welfare policy displaced fathers.
- How the enemy has always targeted fathers and sons, from Pharaoh to Herod.
- Why God hates divorce and what He is seeking: godly offspring.
- How pastors, churches and families can lead a renewal of marriage for God’s sake and the children’s sake.
What the Numbers Tell Us
In her report for CBN News, Charlene Aaron notes that marriage rates in the United States have been falling for decades, especially in the Black community. In the 1960s, 61 percent of Black Americans were married. Today, that number has dropped by more than half, with recent census data showing about 36 percent for Black men and 29 percent for Black women.
Delano Squires, who leads the Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, explores this in his new book, The Vanishing Black Family. He told CBN that about 70 percent of Black children today are born to unmarried parents, and about half live with a single parent, typically a single mom. As he put it, a Black child raised by his or her married biological parents through their 18th birthday “is now the exception, not the norm.”
Those are not just statistics. Every one of those numbers is a child who longs for a father’s blessing and a mother’s peace in the same home.
More Than Economics
Many point to money as the reason couples are not marrying. Squires disagrees. He says, “Economics is not the primary driver of why black family formation patterns look the way they do today.”
Instead, he points to the welfare policies of the 1960s, especially President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. In his view, a program once meant for widows and women whose husbands could not work became an open-ended cash transfer. “What that did in effect was displace men,” he said, “from their rightful God-given role as providers for their home.” That set in motion a decades-long pattern that moved men out of their primary callings as husband and father.
From the very beginning, God gave the man a place and a purpose in the home.
Genesis 2:24 (NIV)
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When a man is moved out of that place, the whole family feels the loss. This is one of the reasons I have spent so much time teaching through Marriage: For God’s Sake & the Children’s Sake. Marriage was never only about two people. It was always about the generations that follow.
The Enemy Has Always Targeted Fathers and Sons
Bishop Michael Smith of New Bethel House of Prayer in Baltimore made a striking comparison in the report. He likened these trends to the attempts in Scripture to kill off the males. “We saw that during Moses’s time. We saw that during Jesus’s time,” he said. “I got a feeling that’s just a trick of the enemy.”
Exodus 1:22 (NIV)
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Matthew 2:16 (NIV)
Read Matthew 2:16 in the NIV on BibleGateway
Pharaoh and Herod both understood something the church sometimes forgets. If you can remove the men, you can weaken a people for generations. Bishop Smith believes there are things done intentionally “so that the man has to try to figure out what’s his role, what’s his place.”
Bishop Smith has been married for more than 35 years to his wife, Toya Dailey-Smith. His desire, he said, is “for more and more people to see certainly the value in marriage, to understand that it was God’s design and it’s God’s plan.” It brings tremendous benefit to the individual and to the community at large.
Called to Leadership and Accountability
Squires also contends that marriage is no longer seen as valuable, desirable or indispensable for starting a family. He believes many political leaders avoid the subject because talking about the breakdown of the family “feels too much like airing dirty laundry.” In his words, “It’s high time that they be called to account.”
We can pray for our leaders, and we should. But we cannot wait on them. God has already given His people everything we need to build strong homes.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (NIV)
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Fathers and mothers who talk about God’s ways at the table, on the road and at bedtime are building something no government program can replace.
A Call for Renewal
Squires is calling for a new civil rights movement, led by Black pastors along with groups such as historically Black colleges and universities, so that more children grow up in a loving home with a married mother and father. “Pastors should be the loudest voices declaring that God’s design for man and woman is good,” he said. “God’s design for marriage is good and His design for the family is good.”
He also encourages us to reframe the issue around the needs and rights of children, a right he says is best exercised “in a loving, safe, secure, low-conflict home with a married mom and dad.”
I say amen. Husbands, love your wives the way Christ loves the church.
Ephesians 5:25 (NIV)
Read Ephesians 5:25 in the NIV on BibleGateway
And for those who feel alone, God has not forgotten you. He places the lonely in families, and His church is meant to be that family.
Psalm 68:6 (NIV)
Read Psalm 68:6 in the NIV on BibleGateway
If you have walked through a broken home, you may find hope in When Trust Is Betrayed: God’s Design for Marriage and a Mother’s Courage, and in The Loneliness Epidemic and the Church Jesus Designed.
Why God Hates Divorce: He Is Seeking Godly Offspring
When the report returned to the studio, the host gave a hearty amen. You can point to many causes, from families torn apart on slave auction blocks, to Jim Crow laws, to the Great Society. But the better path, he said, is to point to a future that will be incredible for your grandchildren.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob works through generations. Malachi tells us plainly why God cares so deeply about marriage. He is seeking godly offspring.
Malachi 2:15-16 (NIV)
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Children are a heritage from the Lord.
Psalm 127:3 (NIV)
Read Psalm 127:3 in the NIV on BibleGateway
Two-parent, low-conflict homes, where a husband and wife love each other and pour that love into their children, carry blessing from one generation to the next. That is the heart of everything we teach in Marriage: For God’s Sake & the Children’s Sake.
Is There Hope? Absolutely.
Bishop Smith closed with words I want to leave with you. “Is there hope? Absolutely. I think as long as we have breath in our bodies, we can make a difference.”
Whatever your story, whether you are married, single, divorced, or raising children on your own, God can redeem it. Start where you are. Honor your covenant. Bless your children. Open your home to those who need a family. And let’s be the church that shows the world God’s design is good.
Father, thank You for Your design for marriage and family. Heal our homes, restore fathers to their children and children to their fathers, and raise up a generation of godly offspring. Let Your church lead the way. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Begin Your Journey Today
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Related Reading
Marriage: For God’s Sake & the Children’s Sake
Marriage: For God’s Sake & the Children’s Sake, Metanoia (Part 20)
When Trust Is Betrayed: God’s Design for Marriage and a Mother’s Courage
Caught Between His Father’s Rage and His Mother’s Faith
AI, Work, and Manhood: Don’t Let the Tool Take the Man
The Loneliness Epidemic and the Church Jesus Designed: From Isolation Back to Family
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