ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The traditional method of studying black families (in the social science literature) has often focused on the pathological rather than on the strengths of the black family. According to Billingsley:
There are four tendencies in the treatment of black families in social science scholarship. The first is the tendency to ignore black families altogether. The second is, when black families are considered to focus almost exclusively on the lowestincome group of black families…. The third is to ignore the majority of black stable families even among this lowest income group…and to focus instead on the most unstable among these low income families. A fourth tendency, which is more bizarre than all the others, is the tendency on the part of social scientists to view the black, low income, unstable, problem-ridden family as the causal nexus for the difficulties their members experience in wider society.
