I’ve observed a trend in certain interracial relationship circles on Facebook, where a lot of talk has centered around black women interracially dating and producing children without marriage. The response to this trend has ranged from a “live and let live” perspective, to utter outrage that black women are taking their “low standards” over the fence, thus potentially making it more difficult for the black women who want traditional marriage.

Take a look at this meme:

Yeah; we can joke all we want about this, but the same black men raised in fractured families and not valuing marriage are the also occupied by black women too. I’ll let that sink in for a minute. The cavalier attitude about having babies and  almost visceral fear of marriage is not always gender specific.

Part of the reason I advocate interracial relationship is because of my utter disgust of the astronomical out-of-wedlock rate in the black community. More choices of men means more power over your womb. So I must admit I get a little disappointed when I see black women on my page bragging about their non-black boyfriends, and how much he’s dedicated to their love child, but that marriage isn’t important, it’s just a piece of paper, blah blah blah. I recently observed a black woman who said this very thing, and mentioned that her boyfriend has suggested several times that they marry, but she declined. Honestly, I’ll never understand how it is so much easier for some people to produce children, but be utterly terrified about a “piece of paper.” Because deep down, they KNOW it’s more than a piece of paper. That’s just some denial B.S. they tell themselves to minimize the situation. I’ll even venture to say that the boyfriend suggesting they marry is doing so because he comes from a family culture that VALUES marriage and children born in wedlock. The whole “baby mama” thing is probably totally foreign to him. Now that’s not to say that white people are popping out out-of-wedlock babies, but their numbers are at about 40%, while our is upwards of 72% and nearly 100% in certain neighborhoods. It’s not even a close comparison, so if anyone comes into the comments section saying, “white people have out-of-wedlock babies too!!!” know that you’re being untruthful. Comparing 40% to 72-100% is like comparing apples to elephants.

One fan’s quote about this issue really stood out to me, and I want to share it with you:

Now this post is not a condemnation of women seeking relationships who are broken because of the fractured families they came from. They had absolutely no power over how they entered the world. It’s very difficult to model an intact family if you’ve never seen one. I get it.

But I also think that women like this need to seek mentors–women in our space that can counsel them, advise them, assuage their fears and manage expectations. This is much easier to do these days, considering social media facilitates the ability to network with people you never have to meet in person. For example, it would be awesome if someone would create a Facebook group teaching black women from broken families to be exposed to women who have created happy families with marriage. It might even be an interesting category to add to our forum.