{"id":48266,"date":"2025-10-03T17:43:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T17:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/03\/backlash-to-cardi-bs-pregnancy-echoes-racist-broken-families-theory\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T17:43:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T17:43:45","slug":"backlash-to-cardi-bs-pregnancy-echoes-racist-broken-families-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/03\/backlash-to-cardi-bs-pregnancy-echoes-racist-broken-families-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlash to Cardi B’s Pregnancy Echoes Racist ‘Broken Families’ Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tOn Sept 5, 2024, a year before his death<\/a>, Charlie Kirk was debating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. \u201cWe have a problem in Black America,\u201d he argued. \u201cThe biggest problem is not racism, it\u2019s a lack of dads. If dads are around, kids flourish.\u201d He pointed to Barack Obama, a product of single motherhood<\/a>, who in 2008 said, \u201cToo many fathers are missing\u2026More than half of all Black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled. The foundations of our community are weaker because of it.\u201d A student in Kirk\u2019s debate audience countered by pointing out systemic racism and noting the way mass incarceration \u201ctake[s] away Black people from their families,\u201d creating so-called \u201cbroken homes.\u201d But Kirk doubled down. \u201cThere\u2019s a cultural expectation that is different in Black America than white America,\u201d he said. \u201cIn Black culture, it\u2019s OK to impregnate a woman and abandon her. It\u2019s glorified by the rap culture. You think the songs most popular in Black America are uplifting Black America to be better versions of themselves? Nicki Minaj, Cardi B<\/a>, do you think they are empowering people to be great?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat debate came to mind one year later, on Sept. 17, 2025, when Cardi B confirmed in an interview with Gayle King that she\u2019s expecting a child with her current boyfriend, New England Patriots receiver Stefon Diggs. She was on a press run<\/a> to promote her second album, Am I The Drama?<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>off the heels of a court date earlier that month where she made headlines for throwing a pen at a street reporter who questioned the paternity of the child. \u201cI\u2019m excited, I\u2019m happy\u2026 I feel like I\u2019m in a good space,\u201d Cardi told King during their sit-down. \u201cI feel very strong and powerful that I\u2019m doing all of this work\u2026 while creating a baby.\u201d She revealed that the baby, her fourth, will be born before she goes on tour next year.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not hiding,\u201d she said of her choice to keep her pregnancy under wraps until then, to the point that she hadn\u2019t yet told her parents. \u201cCan I just say it on my own time, my own terms?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut as news of her pregnancy spread throughout social media, users accused the Bronx rapper \u2014 who is reportedly still legally married to fellow artist and former Migos member Offset<\/a> \u2014 of bringing a child into a \u201cbroken home,\u201d being \u201cirresponsible,\u201d and partaking in \u201cghetto shit.\u201d While many noted that her youngest child, Blossom, had just celebrated her first birthday, others compared Cardi to Nick Cannon, who recently admitted that he was acting out of a \u201ctrauma\u201d response when he fathered 12 children with six different women. One of the most viral and vitriolic critiques came from Crissle West, co-host of the popular pop-culture podcast The Read. <\/em>\u201cGiving her pussy to whoever the fuck she wants to and keeping whatever y\u2019all drop off in her fucking uterus is crazy,\u201d West said to her co-host Kid Fury. \u201cI was expecting so much more out of Cardi B\u2026 You are not some bored, broke bitch in the Bronx, who don\u2019t have shit else to do.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor decades, researchers, politicians and community leaders have pointed to \u201cbroken homes\u201d and single motherhood within Black communities as the culprit for Black Americans\u2019 disadvantages within society. In this view, the lack of traditional nuclear family structures \u2014 a married mother and father living with children \u2014 within Black communities resulted in gun violence and poverty. Yet research<\/a> has thoroughly debunked this idea. Contrary to popular belief, the negative effects for Black children within single-parent family structures, such as poor performance in school, are actually less pronounced in comparison to their white peers, in part due to the extended-family kinship present in those homes. More than their peers, Black children from single-parent structures often have father figures around \u2014 be they biological, communal, or stepparents \u2014 even if they\u2019re not living in the home. Even so, the theory that nuclear families are the saving grace for Black children reigns supreme, albeit untrue.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it\u2019s unclear where West or Fury, who are both queer, stand on the nuclear family conversation, the concern that West expressed for Cardi\u2019s children aligns with the stereotypical assumption that Black children have a lack of fathers and are therefore suffering. \u201cMaybe because you have so much money it\u2019s not really hitting you\u2026 [because] other people are doing\u2026the day-to-day child care work,\u201d West continued. \u201cKids need a solid foundation and need their parents to be locked in and engaged. Your children will be hurting for the lack of their father\u2019s presence in their life\u2026 Either way, the children lose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tBlack nuclear families, like the one Cardi B (who is Afro-Latina) was part of for the past seven years, are actually on the rise, according to Christina Cross, a professor, researcher,\u00a0 and sociologist at Harvard University who has studied this subject extensively. <\/strong>Yet most of those families are still systematically behind due to racial inequality, and Black families, of all kinds,\u00a0 are facing discrimination that leads to higher suspension and expulsion rates in school, lower on-time high school completion rates, and not enough financial resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her latest book, Inherited Inequality<\/em><\/a>, Cross examines the question of whether or not living in two-parent families determines success for Black children. According to her findings, although two-parent Black families had improved outcomes versus their peers from single-parent homes, the improvement was generally modest. And both groups fell behind white two-parent families, with Black two-parent families barely thriving above white single-parent families. \u201cBlack two-parent families are still at a higher risk of experiencing poverty because of America\u2019s history of unequal economic opportunity that makes the gap so wide,\u201d Cross tells Rolling Stone<\/em>, concluding that Black families as a whole \u201care systematically disadvantaged in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCross\u2019 work on the matter started a decade ago. As Cardi B\u2019s celebrity transitioned from reality stardom on Love & Hip Hop: New York<\/em> to a high-profile career as a Grammy-winning rapper and fashion mogul, Cross was tracking the success rates of Black children in America living in single- and dual-parent families. She sees her work as adding something that\u2019s missing from most other sociological studies: \u201cWe haven\u2019t spent a lot of time studying two-parent Black families, and we make a lot of assumptions of the single-parent family being the fundamental reason why Black people have a harder time getting ahead,\u201d Cross says. \u201cA lot of these conversations that are happening about Cardi B and her new child are rooted in the culture and politics, but unfortunately not rooted in fact.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe phrase \u201cnuclear family\u201d was first coined around the 1920s by Polish anthropologist and Yale professor Bronislaw Malinowski. Malinowski \u2014 who studied communal societies like that of Papua New Guinea, whose people he deemed savages \u2014 believed that the nuclear family was the \u201cpivotal element\u201d of society and that anything less than that would cause \u201csocial catastrophe.\u201d By 1965, as the U.S. economy was shifting from agriculture to industrialization, the idea of a nuclear family gained strength. \u201cThe U.S. government invested money into advertising campaigns to promote the two-parent family,\u201d says Cross. \u201cIt was accommodating the changing economic structure of American society.\u201d Labor Department researcher Daniel Patrick Moynihan, hired by president Lyndon B. Johnson to analyze Black poverty, landed on a similar conclusion in his report The Negro Family: The Case For National Action<\/em>. \u201cMoynihan decided that slavery had led to the destruction of Black families, and it was this brokenness, this destruction of Black families, that was at fault and the root cause,\u201d Cross says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile slavery did break apart Black families, Black folks resisted, often maintaining their own family structures known as kinships, while also having <\/strong>higher rates of marriage than their white peers until the 1960s \u2014 contradicting Moynihan\u2019s findings that Black \u201chouseholds developed a fatherless matrifocal (mother-centered)\u201d family because of slavery. \u201cIn the Emancipation era, we see an increase in the number of Black folks who marry,\u201d says Deadric Williams, an associate professor at the University of Tennessee whose research focuses on racism and families. \u201cBlack women had this conundrum. They left one white supremacist institution called slavery to enter into another oppressive institution called marriage, in which they are second-class citizens to their husbands. Marriage showed this interlocking system of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism happening simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the 1960s, Black folks\u2019 conditions within the United States have been blamed in part on fatherlessness and supposedly domineering mothers heading households while on public assistance. Yet in the last decade, the nuclear family structure within the Black community has risen by 15 percent, and Cross\u2019 findings show that the U.S. isn\u2019t spending nearly enough to help those of them in need. Public welfare programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are not being directed toward the families they\u2019re supposed to serve. In fact, many of the funds<\/a> states receive are put toward programs that promote marriage and prevent \u201cillegitimate births.\u201d \u201cTANF is run by the federal government and is our country\u2019s primary cash assistance program for low income families with children,\u201d notes Cross. \u201cThe funding for this program has not increased since 1996, and we are defunding it by not making sure the budget keeps up with inflation. If we did, we could see an increase in the money families have to devote to their children or like we saw in the pandemic, there was an expansion on the child tax credit for six months that lifted millions of children out of poverty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the case of Cardi B, whose net worth is reportedly close to $100 million<\/a>, being legally separated from her husband qualifies her as a single mother, although her economics put her in another category apart from both single- and dual-parent families. The litigation over her divorce, especially while she is now pregnant, also shines a light on local laws and policies and how they impact families that do not take nuclear form. According to Diana Adams, a New York lawyer who specializes in LGBTQ+ and non-traditional-family law, \u201cthere can unfortunately be issues\u201d in cases like these, where \u201ctoo often it\u2019s a subjective decision\u201d based on the judge and the location of the court. \u201cI\u2019ve done divorce cases in New York State; if you\u2019re in a progressive county or New York City, they don\u2019t care,\u201d Adams says. \u201cThe further north you go, the more rural and more likely you\u2019re going to have a judge that gives you a hard time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of those who agreed with West\u2019s critical comments said their concerns were less about Cardi and more about the children. On one hand, she is amidst a messy divorce, and much of the toxicity surrounding that has been in public view. Children need safe environments to thrive, which is one of the reasons why I left my own relationship with my son\u2019s father at seven months pregnant, choosing single motherhood. Yet despite the domestic peace this choice can bring, the system, especially when navigating conservative judges in court proceedings almost five years later, is taxing \u2014 especially as a woman who is left to do it all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Deja Logan, an analyst at Child Trends \u2014 a nonprofit research organization that studies children and families \u2014 the most important factors for children\u2019s success are \u201caccess to supportive households, community resources, quality schools, safe neighborhoods, positive role models, and access to parks and recreations and green spaces.\u201d In her May 2024 cover story<\/a> for Rolling Stone<\/em>, Cardi B discussed the mansion she had recently purchased in New Jersey and how members of her extended family \u2014 at one time, eight people \u2014 were living with her and helping with her two kids at the time, Kulture and Wave, as she recorded her next album. She spoke fondly of their family time on the weekends, which they spent dancing to merengue and eating oxtail. \u201cWhen Offset comes around, he comes around, so he\u2019s a helping hand too,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cShe doesn\u2019t fit the stereotype of the welfare queen,\u201d says Cross. \u201cAnd so the question then becomes, does a child raised in a well-off single-parent family or stepfamily do as well as their peers in two-parent families? The honest answer is we really don\u2019t know because we haven\u2019t spent much time studying it. My suspicion, based on what we know about why family structure matters, is that these children are going to have opportunities most people on the planet will not have access to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe bottom line is that societal views on motherhood and family have real implications for everyday people \u2014 especially mothers with similar circumstances but less money than Cardi B. Despite her celebrity, her harshest naysayers have reduced her and her pregnancy to \u201cstreet bitch\u201d and \u201cghetto shit\u201d activities. These terms fall into the same category as Malinowski\u2019s racist label of \u201csavage\u201d more than a century ago. In a time where Roe v. Wade<\/em> has been reversed and conservatives are eager to implement policies based on their own regressive views, the harsh public opinion on Cardi\u2019s family structure shows how far we still have to go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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