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Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacies of African-American Families

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i wish they had other shipping options available because it took a little long for my book to come, but it came in brand new, like the description said, very satisfied! and i will be ordering from them again.

At the time he wrote this 1992 book, Andrew Billingsley was Professor and Chair, Department of Family and Community Development at the University of Maryland."

He wrote in the Introduction, "But to say that black families are alive is not to say that they are all faring well... But there is another side to the story. And we argue in this book that this other side---enduring, positive, and powerful--is more important because it is more generative. It can continually renew and sustain this vital sector of American society in the years ahead."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"It is perhaps the height of irony that while social scientists were describing black families as being characterized by a tendency toward female-headed families with children born out of wedlock, they were also assuring the public that blacks rejected these children. At the very same time the transracial adoption movement was being championed as a solution to the problem, blood relatives accepted a majority of these children into their families. This is still the case today." (Pg. 29)
"In short, the common misconception that African-American families are characterized by single-parent, female-headed structures is as misleading as is the widespread assumption that they got that way because of factors internal to their culture." (Pg. 35)
"Consequently, we argued that by changing the structure of social institutions so that they would function as well for blacks as they do for whites, and as well for female-headed families as they do for male-headed families, and as well for poor families as they do for more priviliged families, both family stability and more effective family functioning would follow." (Pg. 79)
"(T)he African-American family. It is characterized now as then by its marticentrism, its extended families, and its remarkable flexibility, adaptability, and resilience." (Pg. 107)
"Why, then, do more black men cross this racial line than black women? ... It is difficult to avoid the suggestions that white men are the major obstacles to intermarriage. Their attitudes are changing, however, though they have changed more slowly than those of white women." (Pg. 254-255)