The Vanishing Black Family: Delano Squires on Marriage, Moynihan, and the Crisis in Black America

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Tuesday, 06/16/2026. It was more than sixty years ago, that Daniel Patrick Moynihan came out with his so called report, the Negro family, the case for national action. It was extremely controversial, both on the left and the right amongst the white and black Americans. And yet sixty years later, to some people at least, not much has changed. My guest today has a new family. I was gonna say new family. No. He doesn't have a new family. He has a new book out. Delano Squires, the vanishing black family is a black conservative, unusual in this country, works at Heritage, and, is very explicit in seeing this book as volume two or part two in the Moynihan report. Delano is joining us from the Heritage Studios in Washington DC. Delano, two questions on this. Firstly, given that the Moynihan report, was written sixty years ago, is there really a need for a follow-up if you agree with everything it was said?

00:01:47 Delano Squires: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on. As it relates to your question, I wouldn't frame the book as a follow-up to the Moynihan Report even though I do, talk about and cite the Moynihan Report extensively in my chapter on the rise of the welfare state. But to answer your question, yes. There's a need to reassess the current state of the black family. Because in 1965, for instance, the nonmarital birth rate, among black Americans was about twenty five percent. Now for context, nationally, it was about seven percent. Right? So it was still higher, but twenty five percent means seventy five percent of black children were born to married parents. And with even with that, Moynihan believed that was cause for national concern and cause to marshal resources, political, cultural, social resources to address the issue of black family dissolution. Roll it forward sixty years, and today, about 70% of black children are born to unmarried parents. Now, again, the national rate has risen to forty percent, but you still see a fairly significant and wide gap between family formation patterns in black America versus the rest of the country. So, yes, I would argue that there is a need to assess the state of the black family today. And one of the big differences between my book and the Moynihan report is that whereas Moynihan was speaking almost exclusively to, liberals in and outside of government saying we need to do something with the black family, I'm speaking primarily to black leaders saying that we need to do something about the state of the families in our own communities. The people who say that they are interested in racial equity, and they're interested in closing racial disparities. I argue in the book that this is the source of almost all the disparities, whether in the schoolhouse, the courthouse, or the jailhouse. Like, these things start in the home. So I'm writing to a slightly different audience, even though I'm touching on the same subject matter.

00:03:50 Andrew Keen: The third rail, Delano, how controversial this stuff is. So as in one of your heritage pieces and in the book, today, only 33% of black adults are married compared to 48% of Hispanics, 57% of whites, and 63% of Asians. This is, of course, we're we're wandering onto the third rail of American politics. Why all American culture? Why are so many more let's take Asians. Why are almost double? Why are families of Asians almost doubly likely to be made up of mothers and fathers rather than single parents? How do we explain that without descending into some sort of rather vulgar racism?

00:04:42 Delano Squires: Well, I think a big part of it, has to do with cultural norms. And to your point, sometimes it's difficult for some people to disentangle culture from race. But when I when I'm talking about culture, I'm just on a basic level. The norms, the values, the practices that are, seen as acceptable within a particular community. And regardless of what that community is, whether it's racial, ethnic, geographic, religious, there are both incentives for people to practice those norms. Part of that could be the particular life script that children are handed at a young age. This is what you do. You go to school, you get married, you start a career, or for some people maybe you go to school, get a job, you get settled in your job, and then when you're ready, then you, find a spouse and then have children. For some people, like, the marriage and children the marriage part doesn't necessarily have to precede the children part. So I think a big part of it is that there are, strong cultural norms within Asian American communities. And, obviously, that is a large category with that covers everything from Indians in South Asia to Chinese or Korean families, in East Asia. But you still see certain patterns of behavior as it relates to family formation. And I think in the broader American context, those patterns, and those norms have been weakening ever since the nineteen sixties. And I just think the black families has been the canary in the coal mines since that time. Part of it because of the history where American chattel slavery meant that black families in their formation were starting out on a weaker foundation because slavery and marriage are two fundamentally incompatible institutions. Alright? A husband can't guarantee his wife's safety. He can't even guarantee that they will live together when they are owned by someone else and can be sold away at the whim of their, owner. So black families already started off on a on a weaker foundation. And then when you add and began to build themselves back up in freedom and emancipation, by the time you get to the nineteen sixties, again, a number of complex social and political economic factors, you have the rise of the welfare state, the rise of second wave feminism at the same time, weakening the bonds between men and women and actually, creating discord within the home. So and so that is what started to, make black families unravel. And then over the course of sixty years, you have what used to be on the margins become in the mainstream. And then from there, as the Bible says, everything reproduces after its own kind. So when that value when that, belief system that a man is not marriage is not needed for couples to have children and a man is not needed to be in the home with his children, when that starts to replicate itself, first within a family, then within a community, then within a culture, that's how you get to where we are, at this particular point.

00:07:54 Andrew Keen: Delano, what does second wave feminism has have to do with it? I know, as I said, you're part of heritage, so you're a conservative. Are you against the idea that women should work? I mean, what exactly is second wave feminism? I don't know what first wave or third wave is, but why is second wave feminism so problematic for, for the strength of the family? I would have thought it would have strengthened the family in many ways.

00:08:22 Delano Squires: So I have an entire chapter dedicated to, the rise of second wave feminism. And what I'll say, this is the top line message, that 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.

00:08:42 Andrew Keen: Well, that's a little I mean, I'm jumping in here, Delano. Not everyone would necessarily categorize second wave feminism in such extreme terms, would they?

00:08:51 Delano Squires: Well, I don't I don't think the term's extreme. I think they're accurate. So if you look at the writings of Betty Friedan, and I sort of note her book, The Feminine Mystique, as the unofficial beginning of second wave feminism, when she talked about the home and characterized it as a as a cult, comfortable concentration camp, when she talked about, sort of the graded sense of self and mental state of suburban housewives who are relegated to only domestic labor. When Gloria Steinem talks about what life would look like if women were to win, and she says, well, she characterized women who stayed at home as homemakers as hostesses. Right? So there was a certain level of, demeaning language that women in that particular era used when it came to marriage, family, and a relationship between men and women. I go on in my chapter to talk about the evolution of black feminism as a distinct political philosophy, and how those writers mimic much of what sort of the white mainstream was doing in terms of, how they looked at the relationship between men and women. But ultimately, my ultimate conclusion in the chapter is that second wave feminism and I'm not talking about women being able to own a credit card or go to college. I'm I'm talking about

00:10:09 Andrew Keen: Or have the vote.

00:10:09 Delano Squires: Writing or I'm sorry. I didn't hear the last part.

00:10:13 Andrew Keen: Or have the vote.

00:10:15 Delano Squires: That came in first wave. That came in first wave. But so I'm not talking about any of those things. I'm I'm talking about the belief that, men and masculinity were toxic, that the use of patriarchy as a pejorative, and the idea that women needed to be liberated from their husbands, and that economic independence and education would give them that type of autonomy. What you end up having in second wave feminism is a political ideology that as a feature, not a bug, as a feature, so discord between the sexes. And that's why if I were to ask someone, okay, name a full throated, pro marriage and pro family second wave feminist, it would be very difficult. Because if you just read their writings, that's not what they were

00:11:05 Andrew Keen: talking about. But they're all saying it

00:11:06 Delano Squires: was I'm not sure

00:11:07 Andrew Keen: how many people actually read people like Betty Friedan. I mean, it was it was the preserve of academic East Coast elite. I mean, how many women are really affected by the work of what you call these radical second wave feminists. There were a lot of more moderate ones. And why did it have such a more dramatic impact on the black family than the Asian family? I mean, how many Asian women read Betty Friedan? Are there more black did they all when Betty Friedan's book came out, did all the black women in America go out and buy the book? I somehow doubt it.

00:11:46 Delano Squires: No. I and I'm I'm not making that argument. I don't make that argument in the book. I see Friedan's book as sort of the unofficial opening of the second wave feminist movement. You ask a really good question, which is how many women read her. I'm not sure of that number, but one of the things that you can clearly see just throughout human history is that you don't have to read a particular author or their ideas to be influenced by them. Alright? So if I can move it from feminism to race for a quick second and jump forward to 2020 and after George Floyd's death, the majority of Americans did not read the work of Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo, but they certainly felt the effects of their ideas in every part of the country, in every part of the culture, in our institutions, in our media. Talk of anti racism and white privilege and white guilt and white fragility was all the rage. And people were picking up on it and mimicking it and allowing it to seek into their both conscious and subconscious even if they never read the text and the and the primary source material themselves. I make a similar argument about second wave feminism. It is it was the ways in which these scholars shaped thinking around sex and gender. And I wouldn't even I would not characterize Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem as radical per se, because there were people far more radical than them, who were saying that we should abolish sex and gender as categories altogether. And this was in the early nineteen seventies. But to your question on, black women, again, in the book, I talk about the transition from sort of mainstream feminism to black feminism or womanism. And I cite several authors there. And one of the reasons that it was it was such an effective political ideology is because the black feminists were saying that patriarchy was a cousin of white supremacy and capitalism. Basically talking about interlocking systems of oppression. And that women were paying they pay both the black tax and the female tax. Right? So they were doubly oppressed. And that is an attractive message to people, who see themselves that way. And when you have women saying, no. True liberation means, like, we're not doing traditional marriage. We're not becoming homemakers. One In the Black Woman's Manifesto, one of the authors basically said women who are staying home and reading bedtime stories to their kids are not going to make it. Like, women need to be on the front lines of the revolution. So which means they have to get certain types of education and be in certain types of jobs. So you could see even if they didn't mean to do that, they were demeaning the vocations of wife and mother and upholding every other vocation and every other use of a woman's time, talent, and treasure. So I'm not saying that these were women were particularly following Friedan. I'm saying that they developed their own way of thinking that fused race and gender. And that way of thinking has been extraordinarily influential in every system, and every structure in our society and culture.

00:15:01 Andrew Keen: Let's define, Delano, what you mean by fat let's let's leave the race bit out for the for the minute. We'll come back to that, the notion of a black family or an Asian family or a white family or a Hispanic family or, for that matter, just a mixed American family, which are increasingly the norm these days. In your take on the world, it's the way you're presenting this Mhmm. Is a family can a family be functional if the woman has a career and works? I mean, is your notion of family, one, defined by a man who the fifties notion of the man who goes out, has a career, has a job, the woman stays at home, looks after the kids, does the washing, washing, does the cooking. Is that what the family means to you? Can you conceive of a healthy family where the man and the woman both work, both share parenting? Because that seems to be increasingly the norm in many families, many successful families these days. Certainly the families I know.

00:16:11 Delano Squires: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, when I was growing up in New York, I actually I didn't know any women who did not work outside of the home. That was not my norm. I didn't know any kids who were raised by a mom and dad where the mom the dad was the sole breadwinner and the mom was a homemaker or home educator. So that I'm I'm not making that argument in the book. One of the things that I say in the book is that I'm appealing to a particular blueprint for family construction that focuses on the rights and needs of a child. And what I argue, and I think this is self evident, is that every child is the living embodiment, of a of the relationship between one man and one woman. And because of that, that every child has a right to the affection, the protection, the connection of their mom and dad. And that right is best exercised in a loving low conflict household with their married biological parents. Now, obviously, I'm saying that's the ideal. I acknowledge that is not the case for everyone. But I'm not taking a position on whether women can work outside the home, or not. My wife has done both over the course of our fourteen years together.

00:17:19 Andrew Keen: You got four kids. So she's busy. I hope I hope you do some bedtime stories, Delano, too.

00:17:24 Delano Squires: I do. I actually do most of the bedtime stories, and for a period of time, I did most of bath time. So I'm I'm not telling couples how they should Do you do the

00:17:32 Andrew Keen: cooking and the washing too?

00:17:35 Delano Squires: Some. But she's she's a better cook. I'm a better griller. Okay. But so I'm not talking I'm not telling people what type of home they should design. Some like French provincial, some like farmhouse style, some like Tudor style. I'm I'm saying that there's a particular blueprint that is ideal for children, and that include and that blueprint requires a married mom and dad.

00:18:00 Andrew Keen: Well, I'm not sure it's you say it's self evident. I mean, are you a trad wife guy? Trad wife seem to be all the rage these days, very divisive issue for conservatives. For some conservatives, at least, they seem to be ideal. For many progressives, of course, they're far from ideal. Do you think I mean, you've talked about the rights of children, which is Mhmm. Sometimes a little vague. I mean, I got a couple of kids. I'm not sure whether they should have. Right? So they're very demanding these days. Are your kids demanding, by the way?

00:18:33 Delano Squires: Not particularly.

00:18:34 Andrew Keen: How old are they?

00:18:36 Delano Squires: 10, seven, and we have two sisters.

00:18:39 Andrew Keen: You wait you wait, Dylan [as spoken: Delano]. Until when they grow up, they'll have a lot more rights.

00:18:42 Delano Squires: They'll be a

00:18:42 Andrew Keen: lot more vociferous. But anyway, it's not clear to me whether or not I mean, the trad wife people argue that it's best for the kids if the woman stays at home and takes this quote, unquote traditional role of cook mother. Others would strongly disagree. Some people, especially in sort of progressive neighborhoods like Berkeley and, and, San Francisco and Brooklyn, it seems to be the man who's staying at home. In your view, does a child need for a successful childhood, do they need an anchor whether it's a man or a woman staying at home bringing them up?

00:19:24 Delano Squires: I wouldn't make that argument even though so I know some people who would and say children do best, particularly when mom is the person rearing them and taking care of them, especially in the early years. So I know some particularly social conservatives who are very skeptical of commercial daycare because they talk about how it separates mom and baby, at a time when children are still forming bonds. Right? I'm I'm not again, I'm not taking a position on that. I wouldn't argue that a child needs a stay at home parent for eighteen years in order to be successful. That would go farther than what I'm comfortable going. I will say this. I can't think of a single society that teaches women that it is their duty and obligation to take care of an adult male and the children that they share together. By contrast, every society teaches men that if you want to have a family, your role and duty in the home is at the minimum to provide for them their material needs and to protect them in terms of their physical person. Every society teaches men that is the minimum that you have to do to be a good man. But going back to your question about feminism, the trouble comes in when we start to ask, okay. Well, what are the duties and responsibilities that women owe both either the man in the home or their children? That is when people, whether in Berkeley or Brooklyn, start to get a little bit shaky. So, again, these dynamics exist whether people want to acknowledge them or not. People who believe that gender roles are some type of fiction are kidding themselves. Because as a husband, if something goes bump in the night, I don't turn to my wife and say, well, I got it last time. I think it's your time to get it because I'm completely egalitarian. No. She expects me to do certain things as a man, as her husband, 100% of the time.

00:21:11 Andrew Keen: So and then all the women, you I bet your woman, you're not I was gonna say your woman. Your wife isn't from Brooklyn or Berkeley, is she?

00:21:19 Delano Squires: She's from Houston, and I'm from Queens. So we broke grew up as city kids.

00:21:24 Andrew Keen: Alright. Tell me a little bit about your background. Did you grow up in a in a family, both parents?

00:21:31 Delano Squires: Yes. My parents will make forty five years of marriage, on August 1. And my in laws thank you. My in laws were married about fifty plus years before my father-in-law passed away in 2018. So both my wife and I come from, families and fam a family background where marriage was the foundation of family life. So it was it was not just marriage, but we both grew up, in Christian homes, going to church, hearing some of these messages. So we had a very firm foundation. Again, as all couples do, you have challenges and you work through them. But what I argue in the book is that for a lot of kids, and particularly black children growing up in cities all across the country, they grow up in neighborhoods where it is rare to find a boy and a girl I mean, a child being raised in a home by a married mom and dad. And what I want this book to do is to be the match that starts the movement to say no. We focus on racial inequities of every sort in every other area of life, in every other social outcome, except when it comes to the home. And that is one of my critiques of progressives in the book, is that they care about every structure except family structure and about every institution other than the institution of marriage.

00:22:49 Andrew Keen: Where are you then, you personally, on this trad wife thing? Do you think it's a figment of the liberal paranoid liberal media, or is it real? Do you do you do you think it's a healthy movement, the trad wife movement?

00:23:05 Delano Squires: Let me let me say this because I've I've heard a fair amount about trad wives. I think a big part of that one. Oh, yeah. I've I've I've met plenty. Part of it depends on how you define trad wife. If we're talking about, a woman, a married woman who plays more traditional roles in the home. Let's say she's a homemaker or home educator. Alright? Then I've met plenty of trad wives. I guess by that definition, my wife would be a trad wife at this point. She's a homemaker. We educate our children at home, so she's she's the headmistress of our little day school with our four kids. So we've been homeschooling now for close to six years. But part of the trad wife movement, I think the part the progressives pick up on, is also the aesthetic. Right? And that I'm not as interested in. I don't think every woman needs to wear a flowing, little house on a prairie skirt and have a handkerchief around her head to be a trad wife. But the idea that women and men play different and distinct roles in the home is definitely one that I agree with. I believe men and women are equal in dignity and worth, but different in form and function. The very the very fact that women are the ones who carry all of the babies is a clear indicator that women play a dis a distinct

00:24:28 Andrew Keen: role. What about the woman I mean, let's use my wife as an example. She's a Mhmm. Two degrees from Stanford. Mhmm. What are they supposed to do? Stay at home and look after the kids?

00:24:42 Delano Squires: No. I'm I'm I'm I'm not saying that. Every husband and wife has to decide what works best for them. So, again, I'm when I talk about the home, I'm talking about the structure. How people design is up to them. They have to figure out what works for them. I'm just doing away with this idea that traditional roles are somehow harmful to women. Because, again, what progressives have done, is paint this picture that, oh it's empowering when women spend fifty hours a week at the office. Right? And but it's oppressive when they dedicate themselves to raising their children. So the way I put it is this. Our society progressives applaud any woman who manages a large complex organization, unless it's her home. And we love any woman who dedicates herself to teaching the next generation of children unless it's her own kids.

00:25:39 Andrew Keen: Well, although, Dylan [as spoken: Delano], I know I'm not I mean, you're creating these straw men on the left. I don't know any I know lots of progressives in Berkeley and Brooklyn, and they come on the show all the time. I'm not sure any of them would argue that it's oppressive for a woman to have to raise a child. Who makes that argument? I mean, leaving aside Betty Friedan and a few other crackpots.

00:26:01 Delano Squires: Mhmm. I saw, something from Sheryl Sandberg, right, of Lean In fame talking about she was trying to push back on sort of the trad wife movement. Now why would a woman who believes in feminism, right, who believes that women should have choices, why would she feel a need to push back on women who choose to stay home and dedicate themselves to raising children? So I'm I'm not creating a straw man. I'm I'm expressing and I'm I'm reporting what it is that I see progressives do.

00:26:33 Andrew Keen: Although, again, I don't wanna get into a debate on Sheryl Sandberg, of all people. I mean, she's a multibillionaire who also lost her husband, raised, I don't know, three or four kids. So I'm not sure. She is she someone who's in favor of trad wives? She's anything but a trad wife.

00:26:50 Delano Squires: No. No. She was pushing back on trad wives. She says that she wants to push back on the trad wife movement. And it's not just her. When Heritage came out with its a 160 plus page family, policy report, there was a reporter in, a columnist in the New York Times who wrote about us trying to take women back fifty years. Take away women's rights and relegate them to the home and make them barefoot and pregnant. Right? So this type of this type of, pushback is part of the reason why marriage and family issues have been ceded by the left to the right, and they are now conservative coded. And that is one of the reasons that when progressives see people on even on the center right talking about marriage and family, they feel a need to push back on it, even though many of them are married with children, by the way. So they live right, but they talk left.

00:27:40 Andrew Keen: And I know that's one of my problem. And you're probably not a great supporter of some of the politics of Obama, but you like that element of him. What about the religious element? You wrote an interesting piece for, bro for Heritage recently about Democrats taking black Christian votes for granted. How central in your narrative, Delano in the vanishing black family is religion? Can you have a healthy black family that doesn't believe in god?

00:28:12 Delano Squires: I believe it would make it more difficult. By far, I say the most important institution needed for a black family revival movement is the church. And I make that argument because, again, building, whether building in the original or reconstruction, always requires a blueprint. So I'm I'm very clear about the blueprint that I'm citing. Right? I'm I'm talking about, I cite the Bible throughout the book. I talk from in Genesis where the writer of Genesis says that God created man in his own image, male and female. Created the first marriage in Genesis 2:24. Or a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one. So I believe that the church is by far the most important institution. But I also argue that marriage is what in evangelical circles people would call a common grace, which means it is for the benefit of peep all people regardless of whether they believe in God or not. So religion is central to my argument. Christianity is central to my argument, which is why I'm critical of the progressive black pastors who I argue, traded biblical fidelity on issues around sex, sexuality, marriage, and family for the appearance of social justice and political power. It's also why I say that, again, the church is still critically important because the progressives who applauded the Obergefell decision in 2015 and said marriage should not just be legally, speaking, be between one man and one woman. And they said it should be two consenting adults. Those people have no basis on which to argue that it should only be two adults. And when three adults walk into a courthouse, again, whether in Brooklyn or in Berkeley, and demand to have their union the unions that the New York New York Magazine has been writing about, polyamorous unions ad nauseam for the better part of two or three years, progressives will have no basis on which to say no. It should only be two people, and that's it. So, yes, I do cite Christianity. I do cite my biblical beliefs throughout the book, because I'm citing I point to God as an architect and to the Bible as his blueprint.

00:30:34 Andrew Keen: So where are you then on gay marriage? What about two black men who love each other, who physically intimate with one another? Can they have a real family? Or in your view, are they sacrilegious in some way and dysfunctional, and they'll bring up unhappy, miserable kids?

00:30:53 Delano Squires: Well, I'm I'm glad you ended the question where you did, right, which is around the children. So this book is not a dating manual. I'm not, I don't have a chapter in there speaking to a septuagenarians about how a seven year old man can get a nice silver fox down at the retirement home. I'm less interested in the dating lives of adults. I'm much more interested, in the outcomes, emotional, social, behavioral outcomes for children. And because of that and because I center children in my arguments around the family, I always go back to the one man and the one woman who created that child. Because I said and you asked me about rights. And I said, no. Yes. Children do have a right to the protection, connection, affection, direction, and so they have a right to those things from the man and woman who created them. Where does that right come from? Well, the act of creation always comes with an obligation towards stewardship. Right? So when a man or woman lay down to create a child, those are the two people who have the greatest responsibility to raise a child. It does not work in the reverse. No man or no individual man or individual woman or two men or two women have a right to a child that they that they have not created or cannot create.

00:32:17 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But I know. I mean, you're getting into the legalese here, Delano. I mean, there are lots of kids. I know lots of gay parents with kids who seem very happy, very functional families. You think of prominent Americans, Sam Altman, Pete Buttigieg, Kara Swisher. I mean, they've all got kids. They're all in gay unions. So why shouldn't that work? I still don't really understand it. Is it because the Bible supposedly bans same sex marriage, says it's unnatural?

00:32:51 Delano Squires: Well, one, I'm I'm not getting into legalese. I'm I'm making a moral argument.

00:32:57 Andrew Keen: Well, morallys then, shall we say, rather than legalese.

00:32:59 Delano Squires: Now you can make the legal argument, which is to say that the law allows for this, and I would have to concede that point. The law does allow for it. But what I'm saying is that every child has a mother and a father. And I believe that every child has the right to be raised by that mother and father. And people who create intentionally motherless or fatherless homes deprive a child of one of the things that they need. Now people can feel whatever way they want to feel about those relationships, and they can say the children seem well functioning, and many of them probably are. I'm not making a distinction. I'm I'm not debating that per se. I'm just grounding my argument in a moral framework that does not even require the Bible even though I am a Christian. You can just look to nature. Again, it takes a man and a woman to make a child. And so I would never argue that it takes two for nature, but only one for nurture.

00:33:54 Andrew Keen: Very controversial. So the subtitle of the book is we've talked about feminism on the vanishing black family, how welfare and feminism made marriage optional and children vulnerable. Let's get to welfare, another very controversial area. I mean, Moynihan wasn't against welfare, was he? I mean, he's one of the architects of LBJ's new welfare state. So why what's wrong with welfare, Delano?

00:34:23 Delano Squires: Well, Moynihan spoke to in his report, in the Moynihan report, he talked about how, black families are stronger when men have work. Right? And I think he saw welfare, as sort of a consequence of family breakdown. But the welfare reforms in the nineteen sixties that were pushed by Lyndon Johnson, and pushed as help to low income families, particularly low income black families, that transformed welfare from a consequence of family breakdown, I argue in the book, to a cause of family breakdown. And the reason is quite simple. At that time, married couples in most states could not qualify for welfare. And even if a mother had, let's say, a live in boyfriend or she was not married to the father of her child, he could not be in the home in order for her to receive welfare. So the system was created in such a way that it provided a disincentive for a man to be in the home if the woman wanted to receive certain types of funding. And what you see from 1965 to 1985 is an explosion in the welfare state, both in terms of cash transfers, AFDC, which was what people would think of typically when they think of welfare at that time. Right? AFDC — Aid to Families with Dependent Children. So you see an explosion in that. You see an explosion in public housing spending. And all of these things in effect, displacement from their rightful duty and responsibility to be providers in their homes. And one of the things that I write about in the book is that, even some of the organizations there was a national welfare rights organization led by a woman named Johnnie Tillmon who described welfare as a super sexist marriage. And she said, you trade them you she you trade your man for the man, but you the man being the government. But you can't divorce him if he treats you bad. And she went on to talk about other ways in which the welfare state made black women feel under

00:36:29 Andrew Keen: the law. Say, government acts as a substitute father, but isn't that

00:36:33 Delano Squires: what the

00:36:33 Andrew Keen: state is? I mean and why did it then, in your view at least, have such a dramatically, more of an impact on black families than Asian families' welfare? Why didn't why didn't everyone go on welfare and break up the family?

00:36:48 Delano Squires: Well, I believe the Asian population was much, much smaller back then. Right?

00:36:52 Andrew Keen: Oh, whites. The whites weren't.

00:36:55 Delano Squires: That is that is true. But the other thing is that in 1960, the black poverty rate was about 55%. Right? So you're talking about a community that had much higher rates of poverty compared to sort of the white mainstream. And then in the sixties and early seventies, poverty became both feminized and racialized. And when I say feminized, it became seen as an issue disproportionately impacting women because women were the ones who were raising children. And it became racialized because black families had higher rates of poverty. So you had, in effect, efforts in some in some places to recruit black women onto welfare roles. And part of it was saying, look, we have this aid that will help you that will help you support a child. You just can't have a man in the house. So it creates a perverse incentive for couples to not marry because if they married, they couldn't they couldn't have access to the funding. And for women, to not have a man in the home. And now and what it also did, it conditioned certain communities to see, having a man in the home as not particularly necessary for raising a child. And I opened the book in the intro with some dialogue from a documentary called The Vanishing Family, Crisis in Black America. This was, narrated by, Bill Moyers in 1986. He was looking at the breakdown of traditional family structure in Newark, New Jersey. And he starts by asking a group of about 10 about 10 or 12 black women, who here is married? Nobody raised their hand. He said, who wants to be married to the father of their child? One woman raised their hand. And by the end of that dialogue, one woman said plainly, she said, I just don't think that a man is substantially important in the home in raising a, a child. She said, I was raised without my dad, and I don't think that man is substantially important. And I'm saying that idea, was made possible by the welfare state and the government playing the role of substitute father in the home. The government in the role the government in the form of elected officials and unelected bureaucrats. And that new dynamic created a, an iron triangle where you have low income moms who need support. Right? And they got support, so they benefited from that part in their mind. You have elected officials who need votes and need voters. So if they're promising greater support to these women, they could be assured that they'll those women will support them. And then you have unelected bureaucrats who manage the poverty economy, Statisticians, caseworkers, administrators of one type or another. So that iron triangle, includes three parties, none of which is the father, of the children. So he ends up being cast aside, only valuable for his reproductive material, but not valuable for the leadership that he brings to a home.

00:39:57 Andrew Keen: So the way you're presenting it, the government is the father genderizing maybe the state. What about the de facto consequences of all this, Delano, when it comes to what some people at least or what I hear? Some people describe, quote, unquote, the black family as a matriarchy where most black kids have been brought up by a single parent, usually a mother. Is this a good or a bad I mean, firstly, is it true? And secondly, what's wrong with a matriarchy? I mean, feminists, of course, idealize that. I don't suppose you're very much in that camp. But can't matriarchy work if you have a woman who works very hard, who's a responsible parent?

00:40:42 Delano Squires: So you asked me, are most black children raised in this environment? And I would say, 70% roughly 70% of black children are born to unmarried parents. Roughly 45% live with a single mom. So that means that to be a black child who was born to and raised by your married biological parents through your eighteenth birthday is the exception and not the norm in America today. So that doesn't mean that 70% of black kids are fatherless. And I'm actually somewhat critical of conservatives when they get play fast and loose with the language. Alright? So if you actually live in a black community, what you'll see oftentimes is men dropping kids to day care and to school. Now these kids are typically younger. Right? So dad is around a little bit more, but America does not have the cohabitation culture of Europe. So the idea that couples are going to stay together as one is in a monogamous relationship for thirty, forty, fifty years without the benefit of marriage is not something that occurs at scale in this country. So, yes, this is becoming increasingly the norm, and particularly in low income working class communities where black children are not raised in the same home with their dad, or and or seeing their dad and mom in a in a marital relationship. Now to your question, is matriarchy good? I would argue, one, I wanna figure out what we mean by the definitions. But if we mean both a home, community, and culture where women have the primary responsibility both for the protection and provision of the home, and men are not around in the home, in the community, then no. I would say that is a terrible structure, in which to raise children because children need fathers point blank. The

00:42:36 Andrew Keen: not be the father as well, you're saying?

00:42:38 Delano Squires: No. No. She cannot. Mother's mother and women mother and men father. That's that's sort of the basics. And if it was reversed and I said 45% of black kids live apart from their mother, everyone would recognize the challenges that would bring into the life of a child. But for some reason, we treat the mom as the heart and the brain of the family, and we treat the dad as the appendix. Nice if you have one, but not particularly necessary. I reject that line of thinking, which is quite common on the political left. So no. I

00:43:16 Andrew Keen: I have someone on from, Berkeley or Brooklyn. I'm gonna ask them if they think of men being like the appendix. That's an interesting, metaphor, simile. Delano, finally, fascinating stuff, very controversial. Some people will, of course, as strongly disagree with you. What are we gonna do about it? I mean, if Delano Squires was in charge, if you took over, if, I don't know what kind of relationship you have with the current administration. I assume you're in some way sympathetic. But if Donald Trump or called you out and said, well, Delano, what are we gonna do about this vanishing black family? What would your answer be? Not more state, I assume, given that the state's the problem. You don't want more government, and that's the substitute father. Where's the real how are you gonna get the real fathers back?

00:44:04 Delano Squires: Yeah. That's a great question, and I'm glad you framed it the way that you did because the first thing I would say is that this has to be a cultural revolution, led by sort of spearheaded by black leaders. Black leaders in media, politics, religion leaders in industry. So it can't it can't be dis this responsibility cannot be discharged to the government. Do I think that the government has a limited role to play? Absolutely. That role can be on a federal level. So for instance, in the heritage family policy paper, we recommend certain types of credits. Like, we had one credit, where a child when the child is born, you deposit $2,500 into a private account. And with the power of time and compound interest, if that child, who's now an adult, takes a distribution at the point where they're ready to get married and they do that before the age of 30 if you have two adults who do that and will come up in the same circumstances, they would be looking at $38,000 or so that they would be able to access. Right? Again, the power of compounding interest. So that is one policy recommendation. There are other things that governments can do that will cost a lot less. So for instance, any municipal government in this and I worked fifteen years in local government in DC before coming to Heritage. And I ran public awareness campaigns all around the city. There's nothing that would stop a city now, DC, Memphis, Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans, Cleveland, Detroit, from running ads all around the city that say give her a ring before she gives you a baby, that say, if you finish high school, get a job, get married, and then have children, your chances of being in poverty will be in the single digits, three percent. That's the success sequence. So government plays a limited role, but 90% of the action is going to be in the culture. And what I write in the book is about not only reframing the issue to focus on the needs of children as opposed to the desires of adults. I talk about the role of institutions, the role that the black church has to play, that HBCUs have to play. The role that, art, whether in the form of music, film, or movies, have to play in terms of how it conditions young men and young women to see each other. So I'm critical of nineties era hip hop that promoted images of women as sexually promiscuous, that use degrading language to talk about women. And I said, you can't expect a young man in West Baltimore to grow up hearing that music from the time he was five or six years old and it not have an impact on how he sees the young women in his community. So I recommend and I call for an all hands on deck cultural revolution in black America that prioritizes rebuilding the family and reviving marriage. And part of that will mean, a new allocation or a reallocation of cultural, political, economic, social, and spiritual capital, which means that the black leadership class now is gonna have to change the way it does business. Because for black progressives today, they are far more invested in retaking the White House than rebuilding the black family. And that is what I argue has to change.

00:47:33 Andrew Keen: So if, your advice to young black men is to give her a ring rather than

00:47:40 Delano Squires: a Before she gives you a baby.

00:47:42 Andrew Keen: Before a baby. So the ring rather than the baby or, certainly, the ring before the baby.

00:47:47 Delano Squires: That's correct.

00:47:47 Andrew Keen: What's your advice then, Delano, for a young black woman who might be watching this or maybe even a middle aged black woman who's enormously ambitious and believes that she can square a highly successful career with marriage and family? Is that possible or not?

00:48:03 Delano Squires: It is sir it is certainly possible. I would just I would recommend a few things, and I would give this advice in a fatherly tone. One, I would recognize that, human beings have a particular nature. And one of the things that you find consistently is that women date, across and up. When Bloomberg did an analysis of occupations, among men and women married men and women, they found that a male surgeon would date a female surgeon, a female lawyer, or he would date an executive assistant or a teacher or a secretary. A female surgeon, generally speaking, does not date a male nurse or a male teacher. So women are always going up in terms of what they're looking for from a man in terms of income, education, and social status. So if you are a woman who's true to your nature, generally speaking, and you have a career where you earn $300,000 a year, generally speaking, you are going to want someone who matches you or does better. So all I'm saying is and there's nothing wrong with ambition. Just know that the higher you go, the fewer men that you're going to be choosing from among your pool. But, ultimately, what I would say is this. Previous generations not only married more frequently, but they also got married at younger ages. The median age of first marriage in 1980 in America was about 24 for men, 22 for a woman. It's about 31 and 29 respectively today. So Americans are not just getting married less. We're getting married later. And I would challenge her to rethink much of what she's been taught in her life, oftentimes by mom or grandma or aunts that say, just focus on your career, focus on your education. Don't don't don't get distracted in your twenties with a man or relationships or marriage or children, because that advice oftentimes leaves women in their early, mid, or late thirties saying, I desire a husband and children, but I don't think it's going to work for me at this time. And some of those women passed up on good relationships with solid young men who were going somewhere, and the two of them could have built together, which is social scientists that would call that a cornerstone marriage as opposed to what we have now increasingly in America, which is the capstone marriage, where people wait until they not only finish college, they get two or three degrees. They their passport has more stamps in the post office. And then at the ripe old age of 37, 38, they say, now I'm ready to settle down, get married, and start a family. Well, women have a biological clock that makes doing that slightly more difficult than it does for men. So I would counsel her to prioritize the vocations of wife and mother in the same way she prioritizes her education and her career.

00:50:55 Andrew Keen: Interesting advice. I'm gonna certainly relay that to my wife, Delana [as spoken: Delano], that women marry up. I'm not sure she'll be convinced with that. But interesting observations, very controversial, and very brave, really, I think, in America these days. Delano Squires' new book, The Vanishing Black Family, is out today. I think it will prove to be one of those books that will divide people, but certainly stimulating and important. Thank you so much, Delano, and thank you, for the book. I think it's an important contribution.

00:51:25 Delano Squires: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.