Marriage rates in the US have been on the decline for decades, especially in the black community.
In the 1960s, 61% of black Americans were married. In 2026, that number has dropped by more than half, with recent U.S. Census data showing about 36% for black men and 29% for black women.
Many point to financial issues as one of the reasons for not getting married.
“Economics is not the primary driver of why black family formation patterns look the way they do today,” Delano Squires, who leads the Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing, told CBN News. In his new book, The Vanishing Black Family, Squires highlights reasons beyond the economics problem.
“Today in America, about 70% of black children are born to unmarried parents and about half live with a single parent, typically a single mom,” Squires explained. “So, what we have is a family structure where to be a black child who was born to and raised by your married biological parents through your 18th birthday is now the exception and not the norm.”
In examining why most black children are no longer raised by married parents, Squires blames the welfare policies of the 1960s, especially President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.
“What you saw is a program that previously was meant for widows or women whose husbands could not work for one reason or the other, transform into an open-ended cash transfer program that just existed in perpetuity,” Squires said.
“That was the only way, generally speaking, that you could get access to welfare. So, what that did in effect was displace men and, in this case, black men from their rightful God-given role as providers for their home. And that set into motion a decades-long sort of pattern of family formation that moved men out of their primary vocations as husband and father and moved the government both through elected officials and unelected bureaucrats into that role as a substitute head of household,” he said.
Bishop Michael Smith of Baltimore’s New Bethel House of Prayer compares these societal statistics to the biblical attempts to kill off males.
“We saw that during Moses’s time,” Smith said in an interview. “We saw that during Jesus’ time. And I got a feeling that’s just the trick of the enemy. I do believe that there is an agenda to try to break up the black families. There are things I think that are intentionally done so that the man has to try to figure out what’s his role, what’s his place.”
Smith, who has been married for more than 35 years to his wife, Toya Dailey-Smith, uses biblical principles to make the case for blacks to embrace holy matrimony.
“My desire is for more and more people to see certainly the value in marriage, to understand that it was God’s design and it’s God’s plan,” said Smith. “It just brings tremendous benefits to the lives of the individual as well as the community at large.”
Squires also contends that marriage is no longer seen as valuable, desirable, or indispensable for starting a family. He believes progressive political leaders avoid discussing black family structure because it can’t be blamed on systemic racism.
“Addressing this issue would require them taking some sense of accountability and responsibility for repairing the damage that’s been done over the last 60 years of bad policy and anti-family values,” Squires commented.
“I think they would rather ignore this issue because too many of them talking about the decline in marriage and the breakdown of the black family feels too much like talking about private matters in public. It’s high time that they be called to account and be called to explain why family structure is the one area of racial disparity that they will not touch,” he said.
It is for those reasons Squires is calling for a new civil rights movement – one led by black pastors along with groups such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) to ensure strong households so more children grow up in a loving home with a married mother and father.
“Pastors should be the loudest voices declaring that God’s design for man and woman is good. God’s design for marriage is good, and his design for the family is good. We need to reframe this issue to focus on the needs and rights of children… that right is best exercised in a loving, safe, secure, low-conflict home with a married mom and dad,” said Squires.
Meanwhile, Smith is hopeful for a brighter future for traditional marriage in the black community and beyond.
“I know we got some challenges here because there’s a number of reasons why those numbers are the way that they are, but is there hope? Absolutely. I think as long as we have breath in our bodies, we can have an influence.”
