Lately, I have been researching why the black community is struggling to find happiness, success, and financial security within our communities. If you have been following along with my weekly posts, then you will understand that I believe a healthy community begins with healthy children. The data we have available supports the notion that children raised in a two parent household, preferably with married parents who stay married, are more likely to reach benchmarks at every life stage than those without 2 parents. This is true across all economic, racial, and parental educational backgrounds.
As black women are the highest percentage of single mothers in America, the question remains, Why are black women less likely to be married and stay married?
Black women have a negative outlook on marriage
According to a survey conducted by the National Institute of Health, 3 out of 10 black women reported having a negative perception of marriage. There can be several reasons that attribute to the negative perception of marriage, but in this article we are going to focus on education, financial security, and the lack of quality partners.
Are black men less educated than black women?
To give a proper introduction into this topic, let’s first define “Educate”. According to Merriam Webster, the term educate can be defined as follows:
to provide schooling for, to develop mentally or morally and to persuade or condition to feel, believe or act in a desired way (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/educating).
The overall perception of “educated” almost always refers to a degree though this is not the complete definition. Black women do earn more degrees than black men with 38% percent of black women earning degrees compared to 26% of black men according to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Another study conducted by Pew Research states that black women earn degrees at a rate that is 12 points higher than black men.
With these statistics in mind, we must observe that black men may be behind on earning degrees but this does not write black men who have not attained degrees as uneducated by definition. I have my Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a minor in Entrepreneurship. My husband graduated with an associates degree in automotive painting. By comparison, I would be considered more educated than my husband based on our level of degree attainment. In reality, my husband is extremely educated mentally, morally, and financially as he is the one who taught me about debt payoff, Dave Ramsey, and my own undesirable personality traits. This may rattle some but believe it or not, you do need other people to call you out on your bad behavior as you may have a distorted self-perception.
The narrative that black men are less educated than black woman has to be dismissed as black men can and will attain education in conventional and unconventional ways allowing them to contribute to stimulating conversations that black women desire and a traditional sense of the family structure.
Do black women out earn black men?
Another response as to why black women are unmarried is they are out earning their black counterpart. This consensus draws black women to the conclusion that they bring in more financial security than a black man therefore, the black man is not a necessary or useful tool in the construction of marriage.
To be clear, it is very simple to research the average income of a black women at any educational attainment level. The black man’s earnings were a lot more difficult to locate and required heavy research to put base numbers together. Due to the lack of research I was able to conduct on the totality of the American black man’s income, I will only use the entry level pay for each education attainment level below from PEW Research and The National Center for Education Statistics:
- No GED or high school education
- Black women=$21,600 Black Men=$21,400
- High school diploma or GED
- Black women= $28,329 Black men= $27,800
- Associates Degree
- Black women= $36,751 Black men=$30,400
- Bachelor’s or Higher
- Black women=$50,991 Black men= $49,400
Black women do earn more pay than black men on average based on the figures above but not by a drastic amount with the exception of the associate degree holder. Though the stats are there to show the difference in pay between black men and women based on educational attainment, it is not quite enough to reach a consensus that the black man can bring nothing in terms of financial stability. In addition, only 6% of the Black American population bring in 100K annually with the majority being marital households. The chances of increasing financially security is enhanced through the means of marriage. Once you are married, there is no separation of financial assets as both incomes contribute to the overall health of the household revenue.
Is there a lack of quality black men?
More often than not you have heard the phrase, “The dating pool has pee in it”.
American progress (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-economic-status-of-single-mothers/) reported that in 2023, 29% of black women were single mothers while 19.1% of black men were single fathers. We can draw the conclusion that black women are having children with black men, they are just not marrying or staying married to them. There are random reasons that come to mind solely opinion based such as, they didn’t determine if the guy was capable of being a husband, they had uninhibited lust without protection, they were not taught about the importance and weight of being a mother without a father. All of these could be completely wrong or close to fact.
What I can see is that black women are choosing to have children with men they don’t spend their life with. This can make it more challenging to date as a mother’s priority is no longer about the search for companionship but the attendance to the needs of her child. From what I have observed, single mothers go into survival mode working extremely hard to provide for their child and deal with a complicated relationship if the father is halfway in thus causing issues in building romantic relationships outside of the child’s parental units. Within the same study, research shows that black single mothers are more likely to work harder and live at a lower income level than all other races of American women. This statistic is also backed up by the United States Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/05/opportunities-for-marriage-partnership-shape-womens-family-incomes.html.
Do Black men only wed non-Black women?
In 2023, the Pew Research Center published a study that 36% of black men wed while 29% of black women wed https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/23/key-facts-about-black-americans/#:~:text=Black%20Americans%20are%20less%20likely,for%20single%2Drace%20Black%20households.
According to this study, 21% of black men married women who were not considered black while 13% of black women did the same. What we can safely conclude from the data is less than half of black men marry non-Black women and to take it a step further, we can confirm that over half of black married men are married to black women.
Black women and divorce
Though black women are the least likely to marry, Black marriages have the highest divorce rates in the country. Research disclosed by Black Statistics states that black marriages end in divorce at a rate of 48% amongst other American racial groups https://blackstatistics.info/8-important-black-marriage-and-divorce-metrics/.
blackdemographics.com (https://blackdemographics.com/households/marriage-in-black-america/) suggests that black women are divorced at about 13% while black men are divorced at 10%. These statistics guide us to the understanding that black women aren’t solely responsible for the divorce rate, but they aren’t free from blame either. The question that presents itself is why are black marriages ending in divorce at high rates.
The National Healthy Marriage Resource Center research report conducted by Paul R. Amato PhD concluded that there are two factors scientifically acceptable to explain the cause of divorce among black families; A partner who grew up without two parents at age 14 and household income. (https://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2613.pdf).
sciencedirect.com https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0190740923004231 clearly outlines the correlation between married parents, their relationship behaviors, and how this is observed and reproduced by children who later develop into adults in their own marriages. The science states that children who grow up in a dual parent household have a better tendency of being able to operate in a healthy relationship.
A Gallup study conducted for the Institute of Family Studies, observed that married people reported being happier than those who had never been married. In addition, married people report higher levels of thriving in part due to their joint income. Though black marriages have the highest rate of divorce, they also have the highest rate of second marriage success with only 33% ending in divorce.
How do black women get married and stay married?
My purpose in writing this article is to shift your mind into a different way of thinking. I too once believed that if a man cannot provide everything on his own financially, then he was of no use to me. What I failed to realize is that life is about much more than money and building a family is much deeper than a degree.
Men offer much more than a paycheck. They do offer financial stability, but they also provide fatherhood to your children, motherhood to your womb, a home, a life, a purpose under The Most High God. We have to consider that the world has been feeding us a lie about the power and beauty of the man and understand that they aren’t us. They won’t think like us, move like us, feel like us, learn like us, or earn like us.
What they will do is love us in ways we never thought imaginable, they will guide the household in ways we hadn’t considered, they will show emotions in ways that deeply touch the soul, they will move with us through life’s challenges, and they will bring financial assistance to our lives. Please note that I am not speaking about the local dude hangin’ out on the corner but the man working to support himself and his future wife. I’m speaking about the man of good character who is putting himself in the world each day and coming out victorious. The man who will be blessed to find you as his wife.
Matthew 19:6
So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
With Love,
Mother Ocia