is not immutable, however: it can be broken, even though it has always eventually reasserted itself,
Within the family, each new generation of young males learn the appropriate nurturing behavior and superimpose upon their biologically given maleness this learned parental role. When the family breaks down—as it does under slavery, under certain forms of indentured labor and serfdom, in periods of extreme social unrest during wars, revolutions, famines, and epidemics, or in periods of abrupt transition from one type of economy to another—this delicate line of transmission is broken. Men may flounder badly in these periods, during which the primary unit may again become mother and child, the biologically given, and the special conditions under which man has held his social traditions in trust are violated and distorted.17
E. Franklin Frazier makes clear that at the time of emancipation Negro women were already "accustomed to playing the dominant role in family and marriage relations" and that this role persisted in the decades of rural life that followed.
Urbanization
Country life and city life are profoundly different. The gradual shift of American society from a rural to an urban basis over the past century and a half has caused abundant strains, many of which are still much in evidence. When this shift occurs suddenly, drastically, in one or two generations, the effect is immensely disruptive of traditional social patterns.
It was this abrupt transition that produced the wild Irish slums of the 19th Century Northeast. Drunkenness, crime, corruption, discrimination, family disorganization, juvenile delinquency were the routine of that era. In our own time, the same sudden transition has produced the Negro slum-different from, but hardly better than its predecessors, and fundamentally the result of the same process. The promise of the city has so far been denied the majority of the Negro migrants, and most particularly the Negro family.
Negroes are now more urbanized than Whites.
| Region | White | Negro | ||
| United States | 69.5 | 73.2 | ||
| Northeast | 79.1 | 95.7 | ||
| North Central | 66.8 | 95.7 | ||
| South | 58.6 | 58.4 | ||
| West | 77.6 | 92.6 | ||
| ||||
Negro families in the cities are more frequently headed by a woman than those in the country. The difference between the white and Negro proportions of families headed by woman is greater in the city than in the country.
| Region | Urban | Rural Nonfarm |
Rural Farm | ||
| United States | 23.1 | 19.5 | 11.1 | ||
| Northeast | 24.2 | 14.1 | 4.3 | ||
| North Central | 20.8 | 14.7 | 8.4 | ||
| South | 24.2 | 20.0 | 11.2 | ||
| West | 20.7 | 9.4 | 5.5 | ||
| |||||
The promise of the city has so far been denied the majority of the Negro migrants, and most particularly the Negro family.
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