There exists a large disparity within the black community of the ratio between men and women.  Higher rates of substance abuse, incarceration, and mortality make the pool of available black men less than it otherwise would be.  Less educated individuals also tend to marry less than those with more education for black individuals.  This has been found to be a unique circumstance in the black community as low education individuals of other racial groups are not less likely than their more educated counterparts to get married.

Augustana College (IL)

African American couples have been shown to content with more individual and structural stressors that effect the efficacy of their relationship stability and propensity towards marriage 

- Cohabitation 
- Mate Availability 
- Children born outside of marriage 
- Interpersonal Manifestations of the Sociological Constraints


SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS: STRESSFUL EVENTS

Chambers, A. L., & Kravitz, A. (2011). Understanding the disproportionately low marriage rate among African Americans: An amalgam of sociological and psychological constraints. Family Relations, 60(5), 648-660.

Understanding the disproportionately low marriage rate among African Americans: An amalgam of sociological and psychological constraints.

Now seen as a normative stage for nearly all relationships including African Americans.  However, there are preferential differences for why certain couples enter into cohabitation.  Caucasian women chose to cohabitate with a partner as a precursor to marriage whereas African American women found it as an alternative to singlehood.  White women were also less likely to conceive while cohabitating compared to their African American counterparts. Level of education also impacts the rate at which cohabitating couples’ transition into marriage.  As minority males’ lower aggregate levels of educational achievement has been linked to men choosing more often not to marry with their cohabiting partner as much.  Societal value of men as partaking in the “provider” role and the link between education and income explain some of this hesitation to marry a cohabiting partner.  




Cohabitation

Mate Availability

Persistent social and economic discrimination has produced a social environment that has produced space for the existence of many different family structures, of which, single households remain the highest within the African American community.  Coupled with fewer marriage opportunities, single motherhood becomes more normalized and hence, single parents feel less pressure to marry, and children born into single households normalize those experiences as well.  Studies have found that men are less likely to marry women with children from another relationship, and that single mothers are less likely to marry men who are not economically self-sufficient.  Although 80% of unwed parents express a desire to marry, only 15% of those households do get married to the parent partner.  As having children is a natural stressor as children are demanding, unwed couples who do have children outside of marriage tend to stay unmarried as the natural stressor of having children decreases relationship satisfaction as it does in most all relationships in general.  

Children outside of marriage

Social and economic factors within the black community create unique outcomes and circumstances regarding individual attitude and behavior towards relationships and marriage.  For example, African American women out earn and are more educated on average than black men, and this affects the negotiation of financial decision making and household/child rearing duties. Black women who are financially self-sufficient feel less pressure to marry out of economic necessity, and so delay or forgo marriage.   Exacerbation of role confusion and creates a maladaptive environment for sorting out interpersonal differences, and leads to less stable relationships, decreasing the likelihood of a transition into marriage.

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