Underlying the attacks on black single mothers is the assumption that patriarchal families are the healthiest. Of course, most of the recent work on nuclear families highlights that these families are more often than not dysfunctional. Feminist scholarship on family life calls attention to the extent to which coercive male domination erodes family values. Widespread domestic violence and male-perpetrated incest are two indications that the patriarchal nuclear family is not inherently a more positive location to raise children than a single-parent household.
