ABSTRACT
African-centered scholars focused specifically on African cultural retentions in African and African American marriage and family structure and functioning. Traditional African societies were organized around the "nation" or "tribe", clan, family, and household. Although everyone is connected through spirit, giving one literally hundreds of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles, blood relationships assume important significance, primarily because of the goal of immortality. Niara Sudarkasa, in her study of the Yoruba families of West Africa, found two characteristics of traditional African kinship systems that may have particular significance for understanding African American marriages and families. When Africans were brought to the Caribbean and the Americas during slavery, they brought with them marriage and family patterns that they had practiced for centuries. Changing social and cultural trends may be leading to the rising phenomena of "baby's mommas" and "baby's daddies" for African Americans. Institutional deprivation is the "involuntary" under-, sub-, and unemployment of African American males.
