Pallavi Gogoi

I decided recently, like,

I don't need to subscribe to that, and I'm not going to, because that's not serving him and it's not serving me.

And I can see why.

Single women who are Black are also skewing older, and those numbers are growing.

As for teen moms who are Black, those numbers have completely fallen off a cliff.

They've dropped around 60% in the last 30 years.

And sure, there are a lot of single moms who are poor, but the statistics show that Black women today are more educated than previous generations.

Danielle Townsend is a case in point.

She has a master's degree and a stable job overseeing a library in West Philadelphia.

She says she wants to write a brand new narrative of Black American matriarchy.

For instance, she pushes back against research that suggests little boys like hers have a bleak future without a father as a male role model.

Healthy role models for boys can be women.

Yeah, I mean, Danielle Townsend, she really believes that it's not just about gender.

She makes sure that Caleb is exposed to both men and women in his life.

She has her dad, her uncles.

She says they're pretty close to a coach at the local Y. However, what is really important to her is that he's exposed to men and women who have high standards, who are good human beings, rather than the fact that they are male or female.

You know, as a mother, Townsend nurtures her son's dreaming of becoming a conservation scientist.

Right now he's seven, so it's all about birds.

In one conversation, he imagined himself to be a bird named after himself, the Caleb bird.

And it's, of course, it's not just any bird.