Single Parents in Black America A Study in Culture and Legitimacy

The most comprehensive study of an extremely controversial field of research, Barnes has brought to her special skills in research methodology with her passion for the subject together in a most provocative and empathetic study. Combining the scholar and the humanist, Barnes has shown the reader the life of the single parent in Black America with both data-base precision and humanism. No study to-date comes close to this in-depth analysis. It is the third monograph in a series by Barnes which includes The Middle Class Black Family and Black Woman."This book", says Dr. Barnes, "is about urban, black, single mothers and fathers in two low rent housing developments in Tidewater Virginia. The aim of this study is to describe relationships important to black single mothers and fathers through their own eyes and what they would do, if they could start life over. Also, this work seeks to test Malinowski's Principle of Legitimacy, relate the Culture of Poverty model to our findings about urban, poor, black, single parent families, determine whether the model needs to be broadened, and ascertain whether the data indicate a self-correcting poverty model and pregnancy prevention models. Because of the longitudinal nature of our fieldwork on single parents, use of the oral history method, supplemented by interview and observation data, and the similarity in the questions asked in each study as well as new questions not asked in previous studies, we are able to provide a date-based assessment of the poverty model, the self-perpetuating poverty corollary, the legitimacy principle, and other questions raised in this study".Barnes, Annie S. is the author of 'Single Parents in Black America A Study in Culture and Legitimacy' with ISBN 9781556050244 and ISBN 1556050240.