Black Family Structure and Primary Relations

Abstract

BLACK AMERICANS are sharply overrepresented among impoverished and socially disadvantaged. However, statistics relating to problem hardly warrant equating problem with the black family or lower-class family as has so often been done in literature. Indeed, about 75 percent of all black families are stable and perhaps as many as 90 percent are self-supporting.1 In general, study of black families as part of a framework incorporating American family patterns has been neglected. When such studies have been undertaken, they have shown that black families do not deviate necessarily from their counterparts in white society, particularly in middle class.2 In present exploratory inquiry, we will be concerned with primary relations of relatively stable lower, working, and middle-class black couples. Our focus will be on very close friends spouses share as well as those they maintain apart from each other. In addition, data will be presented on friendship relations as these relate to kin who are primary. The role of male in family structure, particularly as this role emerged historically, has been interpreted as being especially critical for understanding development and maintenance of primary relations in black family. Most descriptions and analyses of black American family structure portray male as a marginal member. His main ties to his family of orientation are to his mother and other women. Such ties are not firm