What if the government paid unmarried men to be more involved with their children?

	Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson spoke yesterday at the University of Pittsburgh. Click photo for larger image.

Or what if the chance to be a better dad was offered as an alternative to going to prison for drug violations?

Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson would be the first to admit that these ideas aren't fully formed, but he tossed them out yesterday as possible first steps toward tackling one of America's biggest problems: the growing absence of fathers in the lives of children, particularly African-American children.

Dr. Patterson, the John Cowles professor of sociology at Harvard, addressed a gathering of about 100 people at the University of Pittsburgh as part of the Center on Race and Social Problems' speaker series.

He started with the grim statistics: Nearly 40 percent of American children will spend some time without a father present. More than 60 percent of African-American children live in single-parent households, nearly all of them headed by women. Among more recent births, that rate is above 70 percent.

The consequences of that start in early childhood, he said, and ripple into the adult years, particularly for boys.

African-American boys from single-parent homes have lower grades, lower scores on standardized tests and finish fewer years of school. They get in trouble with the law more often and are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol.

And psychologically, they often end up exhibiting aggressive behavior in their teen years, Dr. Patterson said.

Many African-American boys raised by single mothers display "an almost exaggerated masculinity in adolescence," he said. Sometimes, "in searching for role models" in poor city neighborhoods, "these boys turn to the most aggressive boys, the ones who run gangs ,as father substitutes."

Dr. Patterson, a native of Jamaica and the author of books on slavery, integration and freedom, wrote about this youth subculture recently in an op-ed piece in the New York Times that has generated intense national reaction, including more than 300 e-mails sent to him personally.

In that article, Dr. Patterson referred to research at one high school on why young black men were flunking out even when they knew the consequences.

"Their candid answer," he wrote, "was that what sociologists call the 'cool-pose culture' was just too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture."

The problems from that lifestyle, particularly among black teens raised by single parents, last far into adulthood, he said.

They are less likely to get married themselves, and unmarried men have higher unemployment, earn less when they do work and go to prison more often than married men do.

Some sociologists have argued that the low marriage rate among blacks is a simple function of economics. If there were more and better jobs, they say, the marriage rate would go up.

But Dr. Patterson argued that "it's ridiculous to claim that poverty is the cause of this problem rather than the result of it."

Other groups -- Hispanics in America and families in Latin America and India, for instance -- have much higher rates of marriage despite suffering greater poverty, he noted.

The single-parent dynamic also weakens black neighborhoods as a whole, he said.

"African Americans love to celebrate the community -- the hood. And I've been castigated before for talking out about the myth of the hood."

But social networking surveys, which ask people to cite the number of close friends they can turn to in a crisis, show that African Americans have a lower number of relatives and friends in their inner circles than whites do, Dr. Patterson said.

Single-parent households contribute to this phenomenon, he said, because "when you get married, you immediately double your social network -- it's the single most important way of extending your personal ties."

Even if the marriage rate can't be boosted quickly, there are other approaches that might improve the involvement of black men with their children, he said.

Some researchers have said that many men are discouraged from taking jobs because so much of their pay goes for child support, but Dr. Patterson suggested that if they could see their money was going directly to their children instead of to a bureaucracy, that attitude might change.

He also condemned the "war on drugs" and draconian sentences for drug sales, and said a closely monitored program in which men would support their children and spend more time with them might be an effective alternative to prison.

"And it's time we started teaching parenting in the schools in a serious way," he said. "The most important skill in the world is being a parent, but we don't teach it."

Dr. Patterson emphasized that many of his comments about unmarried black fathers are aimed at a subculture of about 20 percent of the African-American population.

"The vast majority of African Americans are living productive lives," he said, "so we're talking about a minority who did not make it and are living lives that have become dysfunctional."