They have four children. He runs a barber shop in South Shore. She’s a home-school operator and advocate. Together they also run a house-call-based ministry counseling other couples on child-rearing. They’ve both seen worse times and then far better.
Births to unmarried mothers heighten the risks of low achievement, lower adult income, and greater risk of incarceration. That’s all too evident in the city of Chicago, where eight of every 10 black babies are born to unmarried mothers. Exactly when it’s most needed, the black fatherhood conversation – once forcefully laid out by then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama – has become off-limits. That’s all wrong.
Latasha H. Fields
“The greatest youth program is the family. Restore the Moms and Dads if you want to help society.”
Their commitment to parenting stands as a lived response to the warning underscored by Obama in that 2008 Chicago Father’s Day speech. He said then, “if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that too many fathers also are missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community…and the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”