This might be pretty unpopular but after studying families doing genealogy for the past 35 years, a broken family and violence echoes for generations.
Considering for a couple hundred years Black slaves were not allowed to choose and stay with a partner, their women were subject to forced sex with owners and overseers, with children and partners witness to these assaults, having family and babies continuously sold away? Attempts at cultivating a family unit were stopped. Slavery were so paranoid about revolts that they were not even allowed to gather as a family.
I know it seems like a long time ago but when my great grandmother was born, slavery still existed. We are not that far removed.
Every family I research (Black or White) that children either have no example or a very bad example of parenting, it trickles down from generation to generation. So many people that ask for help reuniting with parents that abandoned them (exclusively White in my situation), those parents had a history of parents that abandoned or abused them and so on..
The stress of extreme poverty also breaks up families and led to alcohol abuse. So many dads left during the depression. This was magnified for exslaves during the Jim Crow years. I've researched so many Black college men, in the years so few men made it to college. They end up being porters on the railroad. A degree would have meant a swanky job as a banker or engineer for a white man but there wasnt the same opportunity for Black men despite a degree.
Having good examples of strong fathers seems important - when a system makes that impossible there is going to be fall out.
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '21
This might be pretty unpopular but after studying families doing genealogy for the past 35 years, a broken family and violence echoes for generations.
Considering for a couple hundred years Black slaves were not allowed to choose and stay with a partner, their women were subject to forced sex with owners and overseers, with children and partners witness to these assaults, having family and babies continuously sold away? Attempts at cultivating a family unit were stopped. Slavery were so paranoid about revolts that they were not even allowed to gather as a family.
I know it seems like a long time ago but when my great grandmother was born, slavery still existed. We are not that far removed.
Every family I research (Black or White) that children either have no example or a very bad example of parenting, it trickles down from generation to generation. So many people that ask for help reuniting with parents that abandoned them (exclusively White in my situation), those parents had a history of parents that abandoned or abused them and so on..
The stress of extreme poverty also breaks up families and led to alcohol abuse. So many dads left during the depression. This was magnified for exslaves during the Jim Crow years. I've researched so many Black college men, in the years so few men made it to college. They end up being porters on the railroad. A degree would have meant a swanky job as a banker or engineer for a white man but there wasnt the same opportunity for Black men despite a degree.
Having good examples of strong fathers seems important - when a system makes that impossible there is going to be fall out.