Morgan, 33, who has two sons, ages 6 and 4, lives in Southeast next door to a close friend who only sees his child once a week.
“I just couldn’t live peacefully without being active in my sons’ lives,” said Morgan, a medical assistant. “It’s in the inner-cities, all over the news, Black men abandon their children or Black women have to struggle alone. That’s just not me, though,” he said.
A 2012 federal government survey revealed that 15 million American children live in households without fathers; a stark increase over a 1960 study that showed just 11 percent lived in homes without a dad.
However, by most measures, Black fathers have proven to be just as involved with their children as other dads in similar living conditions – or more so – according to the latest study released in July by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics in Atlanta.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials looked at the role that American fathers play in parenting their children. Much of the CDC’s previous research on family life, which the agency explores as an important contributor to public health and child development, has focused exclusively on mothers.