Van Lathan accidentally makes the case for ‘Black Wives Matter’

Van Lathan is a popular social and political commentator who recently came out in favor of what he called the “gay agenda.” His reasoning was straightforward: Gay people exist and have relationships, so media companies should intentionally promote same-sex storylines to young viewers.

He is right that media is a powerful tool for shaping norms and values. But like many people who comment on modern family dynamics, Lathan focused on adults’ desires rather than children’s needs. Applied consistently, however, his case for using media to shape culture points toward promoting the relationships that bring more children into the world and bind mothers and fathers to them.

These efforts would help restore a culture of strong families in neighborhoods where some black boys grow up believing that ‘marriage is for white people.’

Nearly 40% of U.S. births in 2024 were to unmarried women. In 2019, almost one-quarter of U.S. children under 18 lived with a single parent and no other adult. The share of married adults has fallen since 1970, while the typical age at first marriage has risen. Marriage is increasingly treated as optional to forming a family. Given the association between family structure and child outcomes, that should concern policymakers, pastors, pundits, and parents alike.

Given his frequent commentary on racial inequality, Van Lathan and other progressives should be the loudest advocates of a “Black Wives Matter” campaign that promotes marriage and strong families.

In 2023, 69.3% of births to non-Hispanic black women occurred outside marriage, a share significantly higher than the 40% national figure. The numbers in some cities were even starker. New York City reported that an estimated 65% of births to non-Hispanic black women were to mothers who were not married. The comparable figures were 77% in Washington, D.C., and 83% in Baltimore.

State-level data was also stark: 71% in Georgia, 79% in Alabama, and about 82% in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Family structure is among the most consequential examples of racial disparity in American social life, yet civil rights organizations and racial justice advocates on the political left largely ignore it. Progressives apply an equity lens to every structure except family structure.

Changing this reality will require black leaders and influencers like Van Lathan to promote and prioritize an agenda that restores marriage as the foundation of family life. My book, “The Vanishing Black Family,” gives them a blueprint for turning words into action and building a social movement to increase the number of black children growing up in a loving home with a married mother and father.

That could mean churches in the Deep South offering marriage counseling to young co-habiting couples; historically black colleges and universities producing new research on attitudes about marriage and family life; and cities running ads about what researchers call the “success sequence”: finish high school, get a full-time job, and marry before having children. Adults who complete those steps have far lower poverty rates; an Institute for Family Studies analysis reports that 97% were not poor in their 30s.

This movement will also need a media environment that normalizes loving relationships between men and women, a drastic change from the gender-war content that dominates online discourse today.

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These efforts would help restore a culture of strong families in neighborhoods where some black boys grow up believing that “marriage is for white people.” That belief is not simply the product of cartoons and movies. It reflects a steadily declining marriage rate and leaders who have been too busy advancing movements that once openly called for disrupting the nuclear family and prioritizing what adults want over what children need.

The decline of stable, married-parent homes is concerning because family structure has a clear and consistent association with positive child outcomes. On average, children raised by their married biological parents have lower poverty and incarceration rates and higher college completion rates. Family structure is not the only cause of those differences, but it is not incidental either.

Those outcomes in the schoolhouse and courthouse receive most of the attention, but the importance of married parents goes beyond measurable indicators. Family also bears on the deeper questions of identity everyone asks at some point: “Who am I?” and “Whose am I?”

The answers reflect the reality that every child is the living embodiment of the relationship between his or her mother and father. The greatest gift parents can give their children is the safety and security of a loving home where Mom and Dad are committed to each other in marriage. That is the only agenda I am interested in promoting.