Keen On

“Second wave feminism taught women that femininity was weak, masculinity was toxic, marriage was oppressive, the home was a prison, and children are a burden.” — Delano Squires Sixty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan published The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, which was immediately attacked by the left as victim-blaming and by the right as an admission of state responsibility. In 1965, 25% of black children were born to unmarried parents. Today the figure is 70%. So is the black American family vanishing? Delano Squires — director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at the Heritage Foundation — certainly thinks so. In his controversial new book, The Vanishing Black Family, Squires argues that “welfare” and “feminism” have made black marriage optional and children vulnerable. Squires identifies what he calls the “sinister six” forces that have dismantled the black family: slavery’s legacy, the welfare state, second wave feminism, popular culture, the failure of the black