Monica Potts says the “No Wedding, No Womb” campaign makes a classic mistake: shaming women for their sexuality instead of asking how to improve outcomes for children of single-parent households.
Like most stories about the African American community picked up by the national media, this is a story about something that’s “wrong.” Certainly, there are real social problems plaguing the African American community. Black women are more likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy (69 percent of pregnancies are unintended). In addition to being more likely to be born to a single mother, black children are more likely to experience poverty, do poorly in school, drop out of school, and later be incarcerated when they reach young adulthood. The high rates of incarceration among black men might have something to do with the shrinking dating pool, and certainly children of incarcerated parents have to struggle much harder than those with both parents at home. All of these issues by themselves are of concern. The problem is uniting them under the solution of marriage.