About 1953, at age 4 or 5, my mother and father divorced. About a year later, my 10 year old brother and I, got on a train by ourselves and went to see our father in Texas for the summer. At the end of the summer, our father put us back on the train to go back to Mississippi. We never saw or heard from him again for another 10 years. A lot of birthdays went by, and no word. We didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

When my brother and I got back to Natchez that summer, our mother had remarried. In those days, women who were trying to get into the workplace, especially a beauty shop owner, did not want to be known as a divorce’ with three children, me, my brother and my sister, and were not going to raise a family alone, without a husband. Later, with excitement, we would welcome the birth of one, then another brother into the family. That was the way it was done in those days. But sadly, today is much different!

Noted, black radio talk show host, writer and attorney, Mr. Larry Elder, says no, to “It takes a village to raise a child.” He says, “It takes two parents, a mother and a father who provide structure, discipline, hard work, honesty, accountability, tough love and church!”

Mr. Elder goes on to say, “Fatherless families are the number one problem in America today! Not racism or social injustice.” He also says, “The current welfare system encourages women to marry the government and allows men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility.”

In Mississippi, in 1962, 14.4 percent of all babies were born to unwed mothers. Today that number is 54 percent and Mississippi leads the nation in the number of children born to unwed mothers, and is second highest in the nation with teens having children. In Mississippi, 34 percent of all white babies are born to unwed mothers, 81 percent of all black babies are born to unwed mothers and 54 percent of all Hispanic babies are born to unwed mothers. Here in Adams County, the numbers are about the same as the state’s shocking numbers. Some, would call it, an epidemic of unwed mothers and very alarming!

Statistics in child trends/data bank, indicate children born to unmarried mothers are more likely to grow up in a single-parent household, have socio-emotional problems, engage in sex at a young age, have births out of wedlock, drop out of school and live in poverty. In Adams County, the poverty rate is double the national rate, at about 31 percent. That’s one out of every three people you see, living either at or below the poverty level. The national poverty rate is 15 percent.

Even former president Barack Obama was alarmed about out of wedlock births.  He said, “A kid raised without a dad is five times more likely to be poor and commit crimes; nine times more likely to drop out of school; and 20 times more likely to go to jail!” He knew what he was talking about.

Why these glaring statistics, that are crumbling the institution of the family, adding to poverty, adding to crime and adding to failing schools in Adams County, has not caught the attention of local government officials, the churches and the proclaimed social and civic leaders, is beyond explanation.

If we really want to have less “For Sale” signs, help stop the exodus of our citizens, improve our economy, improve the public school system and maybe bring our children back to Natchez, then crime, poverty and unwed mothers, before anything else, should be the number one issue or issues on everybody’s mind and agenda’s in Adams County, every month! Why? Because statistics say, one contributes to the other.

Recently, on the Christian radio network, American Family Radio, I heard Mr. Brian Fisher say, “to avoid poverty and to stay married, do the following:

4Graduate from high school.

4Don’t have children before you marry.

4Don’t get married until after you reach the age of 20.”

That is simple, yet great Christian advice for almost any young person. In the 1950s and 60s, when I was growing up, this similar advice was a given and something everyone would live by.

To paraphrase Mr. Larry Elder, the underlying, number one problem in Adams County is “fatherless families.” And, raising a child, starts at home with two parents, a mother and a father. Not a village!
Henry Watts is a Natchez resident.