As I acknowledge in my November 16, 2014 blog, Christian Women And Restoring Men, under the category, Instruction, black females have been taking care of their families with absent fathers since slavery. This was due in part to the family destroying business of slavery when “masta” would sell off the men or use them as studs; in part because of the well known sexual promiscuity of the slaves that carried over from some polygamous West African tribes and certainly the natural, morally and spiritually unchecked human sex drive. Let it be said here that many of the however they came to be devoted, single mothers until now, have raised some outstanding sons!
Be that as it may, the statistical and tangible evidence of black communities plainly shows the long time pattern of absent fathers and female headship good and bad is not benefitting the larger number of mama’s boys. For example, as Portland, Oregon black American High School Counselor and Boys To Men Founder Donald Dixon observes referring to the Five Stages Of Manhood developed by the late Rev. Zachary Tims, “Boys look for a mother” in other women; “someone who is going to take care of them” as does a mother. In contrast, God has designed the family such that as Dixon declares, “a husband takes care of a wife,” (Genesis 2:24; 1 Timothy 5:8).
The foregoing certainly speaks to what mama’s boys appreciate about her as deeply loving, compassionate, sacrificial (if not caught up in “the life”) and tender. Since birth in 1956, however, I can speak with abundant first-hand knowledge and experience gained from many geographical settings that in general, black American females can also be physically aggressive, intimidating, domineering, controlling and emotionally suffocating. It is these latter qualities that drive many of mama’s boys to seek escape in the streets and against which they slickly vent through Hip Hop lyrics and videos that degrade, exploit, dominate and control females.
It is not only the ugly side of mama her boys loathe in their public rants, but beside their deep seated anger at missing in action fathers, they also carry the envious resentment many black males have had since slavery that our sisters have been more greatly favored by white society and its males in particular, threatened in the all of the ways they are by black males. Only God knows the healable in Him alone depths of injury that the black male psyche has sustained from the demoralization of castration as a man both by an oppressive society and the betraying complicity of those usurping black females with no fear of God that have been guilty (Exodus 1:8-22).
Make no mistake about it; mama’s boys will hurt you if you talk bad about her in a personal way. The natural mother-son bond in the black family is just as real as in any other. However, it is now time or never to understand the generationally high prevalence of mothers raising boys to manhood especially as the casual and detached result of sexual promiscuity is slowly killing our boys and community. Although our community and even the nation have settled into this state of affairs as normal, it is far from it in the eyes of God. By His design, sex in marriage is the means to bringing forth wanted and cared for children (Genesis 1:27-28, 4:1; Psalm 127). For the children’s sake, we must repent now!
Truly, we have not even begun to see all of the natural consequences much less those that will be imposed by God for willful rebellion against His will for sex in marriage only. Many that have been and are guilty that repent of their rebellion against God’s will may never see rectifying good come out of it; for though I am a witness He forgives the repentant, He will not allow Himself to be mocked in our thinking we got away with something as in my own situation (Exodus 34:6-7; Galatians 6:7-8). Still, we must repent! While it is good we have men willing to step in and mentor boys without fathers at home, males that are guilty must repent from the insidiously selfish sin of demanding sex from our females outside of marriage and unceasingly creating mama’s boys.
Our females too must repent from allowing themselves to be sexually active before marriage whatever their flesh rooted reasons. Every pillar of our community including the churches that are guilty must repent from lax and condoning attitudes about sexual promiscuity among singles and uphold God’s way of marriage and family along with abstinence before marriage.
Compromising pastors--many of whom are themselves mama’s boys--must also repent from allowing the spirit of Jezebel to bring disorder to God’s house and further emasculating black males out of greater reverence for mama, wife and women than God (Genesis 3:6, 17-19; 1 Kings 16:29-33, 21:1-26; Revelation 2:18-23)! Otherwise, know you will bear your guilt as well for the crisis of mama’s boys and ruin of our community (Luke 12:35-53).
Happy Father’s Day! I am posting the following blog after praying through reservations that came to my heart due to the racially motivated murder of nine and wounding of other black Americans at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC this past Week. The issue I deal with is that urgent! Indeed, both racial prejudice leading to violence and the concern of my blog have existed together since slavery and as those martyred in the church slayings instantly learned in His presence, equally occupy the heart of God. That said, I continue to stand with all who are praying for God’s comfort of the grieving families and the church along with the salvation of the gunman.
This is an important post-script to my two-part Blog, 150 Years After Slavery in which I was led by the Lord to examine especially the spiritual condition of America’s freedmen at the 150th Juneteenth. In this Blog, I address a severe consequence of one of the generational patterns of sin that has followed black Americans from slavery: the beyond crisis number of boys without fathers at home primarily due to sexual promiscuity. If as an unmarried father you are now handling your business, I commend you. But we still have a problem and since I was an unsaved, teenaged father of twin children born out of wed-lock, I am part of it too.
I make this acknowledgement to avoid any charge of hypocrisy for not disclosing the truth and also because I want absent fathers reading this to know that I have been there. I continue to feel the sting of my irresponsible conduct now over forty years later as I deal with the reality that all of my grand-children and great grand-children to date have been conceived out of wed-lock. Illegitimacy will sadly continue unless there is repentance in the thinking and sexual behavior of our community. That truth was painfully brought home to me at a mentoring event when several usually unruffled by cool black male teens came to tears as they spoke of fatherless homes.
It used to be that calling a young male "mama's boy" was fighting words. That was because he was being insulted as weak, tied closely as he was to his mama's apron strings. In those days as today, young males that were teased as mama's boys came just as easily from intact families as those headed by single females. I confess to having been a bit of a mama's boy due to my married mother holding us kids very close while my dad was away in the military. As the streets go, the mama's boy moniker could be escaped if a guy could act cool, be tough and fight. Today, being a mama's boy is not as much of an insult as it is a description of the facts.
As I share in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics, over 70% of black children are born out of wed-lock and live mostly in female headed households. Why? Many single fathers (as I once was) are purposely and irresponsibly absent doing their own thing including impregnating other women with children they do not plan to fully embrace either. A few of these even proudly boast of their many children by different mothers as a badge of masculine superiority and sexual potency. Other fathers are on lockdown or in the graveyard due to early deaths caused by their engagement in “the life;” the urban mindset of hustling, survival and fast living.
How much harm does 70% of a community’s children born out of wed-lock and into households largely governed by single female parents do long-term? Much! Damage is done to the entire community, for example, as the economic cost of supporting and dealing with the many adverse needs of fatherless households is in the billions. The spiritual, psychological and sociological impact on the children is generally negative and still being tabulated. However, hurt the most are young black males as they become part of a longstanding generational underclass of spiritually and materially impoverished mama’s boys; boys that are supposed to develop into responsible men and future family leaders with few positive role models to emulate.
In God’s design of the human family, children are imprinted on by both of their parents (Proverbs 1:8-9). Men as His designated lead teachers teach whether we do so intentionally or not. Mama’s boys learn from and imitate their absent fathers, the bad example of other men from the streets and media as well as each other. This is one reason gang love is so attractive. It is male bonding complete with a leadership structure and rules where there is punishment for violations and rewards for conformity. Additionally, the full expression of natural and fallen masculinity such as risk taking, conquest through violence and all forms of pleasure seeking are encouraged.
The unrestrained seeking for sex as pleasure, of course, with the cooperation of all too willing females desperate for scarce male interest and relationship, leads to mama’s boys becoming fathers as young as Middle School! For them like many of their fathers it is a status thing. At the end of the day mostly female grandparents are left scrambling about if they bother, to take care of another mouth to feed.
When the baby is a boy, he will soon enough be ready to perpetuate the endless cycle of out of wed-lock births if he is not killed first since murder is the leading cause of death among young black males. Meanwhile, many surviving mama’s boys angrily vent through media on females that at once draw them because of hormones, but also repel them out of bitter resentment for their ambitious self-assertion, societal favor, achievements and ubiquitous dominance.1
1 This Blog is not my first trek into the harsh realities of urban life. Besides dealing with responsible fatherhood from God’s Word and my own failures in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics, Strong Man Ministries has used radio in which I transparently share positive encouragement with males young and old in the Strong Man Minute as part of our Urban Radio Campaign. I invite you to take a look and listen to the newly re-launched page on our Web Site then e-mail the link to someone you would like to hear these still timely public service announcements.
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