This is an adapted excerpt from Delano Squires’ new book “The Vanishing Black Family: How Welfare and Feminism Made Marriage Optional and Children Vulnerable,” out June 16 from Sentinel.  “Raise your hand if you’re married.” This was the opening line in a 1986 CBS documentary on black families in Newark, New Jersey.   Bill Moyers, the journalist who narrated the television special, asked this question to about ten young black mothers sitting in a semicircle. None of the women raised their hands. He continued by asking how many of the mothers would like to be married to the father of their child. One hand went up.   Moyers, clearly seeking to understand the women, asked “Don’t you think you might need help in raising that baby from a man?”   One mother spoke up, and the camera shot also included her baby. The child—who appeared to be a little boy not quite two—looked up at his mother as Moyers asked the question. He was too young to understand his mother’s answer, but the viewers certainly could. “Not really,” she said. “I didn’t have a father.”   You could see how her experience growing up without a father influenced her ultimate conclusion: “Male figures are not substantially important in the family.”  That documentary, “The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America,” took an honest look at the breakdown of the traditional family structure in the inner city. Many of the mothers interviewed for the program were on welfare. One of the fathers said providing for his children was the responsibility of their mothers and the government.   According to Moyers, “In cities all over America the traditional family no longer exists. It has vanished and something new is taking its place. Single women and the children they’re rearing alone are the fastest growing part of the black population.”  This scene paints a picture of black family life that some people would rather ignore. Mothers who don’t think men play an important role in the home, dads who come in and out of their children’s lives, and kids caught in the middle of a family drama they had no hand in creating.   While this certainly does not describe every black family, the fact is that 69% of black children today are born to unwed parents. Nearly 45% live with a single mother. This means the traditional family—a husband and wife raising their biological children—has given way to a culture where marriage is obsolete and fathers are optional in far too many neighborhoods.   That needs to change.   Decades of research prove what most people already know: Children raised in homes with their married biological parents do better on a host of outcomes—economic, social, educational—than children raised in other family arrangements, particularly single-parent homes.   No matter the metric, the evidence is clear: A world in which every black child was raised in a loving household with a married mom and dad would do far more to advance racial equality than a new government program or social justice campaign. Marriage matters because families matter and families matter because children matter.   There are only two responses to this reality.   The first is to accept the current state of the black family as the result of complex social, political, and economic forces interacting in ways that are impossible to change. This response consigns more black children to poverty, crime, delinquency, and academic underachievement. Even those who succeed by these metrics will still be left with that painful existential question, “how come he don’t want me, man?”   The second is to pursue the hard work of rebuilding the family, a multi-generational project that requires a cultural commitment to reviving the institution of marriage. Beyond its connection to improved social outcomes, this response will provide more black children with the ultimate privilege: growing up in a loving, stable, and secure home with a married mother and father.  I saw the effects of the second option play out in my own life. As a teenager growing up in New York City, I often wondered why my life and the lives of my friends looked so much different than some of our less fortunate peers. It certainly wasn’t money. Our parents were not rich by any stretch.   The difference is that all of us grew up in homes with parents committed to each other in marriage who raised us according to their Christian faith. Each of us grew up with a father in the home as well as a community of men who took their roles as providers, protectors, and role models seriously. The spiritual foundation our parents laid down in our youth explains why I believe a biblical blueprint is needed to rebuild the black family.  So yes, I am a Christian, husband, and father—in that order and before anything else. But I’m also a black man with a deep appreciation for the template created by African American leaders in past generations. That includes Booker T. Washington’s focus on building and maintaining institutions as well as the moral clarity and conviction of Frederick Douglass.   These men are often characterized as “conservative” in debates about race and politics, but like them, my conservatism is far more concerned with the pursuit of human flourishing in the family, community, and nation than with electoral politics. My work today as a researcher focused on marriage and family reflects these priorities.   This combination of personal experience, professional expertise, and public advocacy are what brought me to this moment and inspired me to write this book.   Thankfully, I am far from the only one who wants to end the injustice millions of black children are forced to endure when marriage becomes obsolete and fathers are seen as optional in the home.   More people are waking up to the truth and know that it is impossible for any group of people to thrive without strong families. They share my desire to see the restoration of the traditional family structure in black America and want every child born into a home with a father and mother who have committed to each other as husband and wife. They want the marriage and family culture that began to unravel in the 1960s but don’t know what must be done today to restore it.  This book is their answer.