An office party goes on without her, across town in an affluent world vastly different from the one where Mariana Chilton now finds herself. Her husband’s tried calling. Twice.
And still she sits in dress slacks and stocking feet, gray suede shoes tossed aside, on the drab carpet of a row house in the Philadelphia projects, playing with someone else’s children while her own three kids wait for Mom to come home.
A mouse scurries by, but Chilton doesn’t flinch.
She is listening, for the umpteenth time, as another mother speaks about what it means to be poor and hungry in America.
Every time I read one of these stories I feel like breaking my computer screen. When do we get to address the core issue: the collapse of the black family? Once you move away from urban centers the same dynamic is found in all other social settings. When the family is not intact, it’s the women and children who pay the price. There is where we should be providing our leverage, ministry, and hope; offering effective tools and support for the family.
I’m real glad my church (the ELCA) will spend the summer at yet another national assembly debating and voting on gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex unions. I mean, God forbid we should talk about something that impacts someone other than that particular special interest group. Grrr ….
Thanks, Brian of Maryland. This line struck me: “But she [a young child] is underweight and malnourished, often fed chips and sugary drinks instead of milk and formula.” Fifty-five years ago, my mom taught night classes to mostly black women on nutritional cooking on a tight budget. In a city away from rural sources of healthy food (the garden), many of these women simply didn’t know how to provide the healthiest possible menus on their limited funds. And this was before the collapse of the black family! It’s a fact that the vast majority of children in poverty in the U.S. are being raised without their fathers in the home. The food programs, the welfare, the food banks to which we all contribute when able, are a band-aid which insufficiently covers the wounds caused by the failure of marriage.
The sexual revolution has been great (in a worldly sense) for men; it has been a disaster for women and children. I don’t recall the statistic on what percentage of single women and children living in single-parent households (read “households without a father in them”) live in poverty, but it is a horribly high number.
I am so grateful that Mom and Dad were together for my sister and I during the Depression of the 1920’s-1930’S. I can remember only one time when my Dad was so discouraged he was ready to call it quits. Then he heard a little boy (me) softly crying. My Mom and Dad agreed to try the road together one more time. Something wonderful happened and they were together until Death did part them. I pray to see them in God’s kingdom as well as a little 2-year old I haven’t seen in 50 years. Praise Jesus I know they are waiting for me.
#3 Montanan, I just read today that the number of single parent families is something on the order of 73% for black families and 38% for whites.
Certainly, the Church has a role to play. Wish we could get on the ball, though!