NIH Study: Single-Parent Households Detrimental to Health of Black Males

A study by the National Institutes of Health has found that African-American men who grew up in single-parent homes are more likely to have health problems stemming from high blood pressure than African-American men who grew up in two-parent households.

Nearly 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock, according to government statistics.

Researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) “analyzed blood pressure rates and the incidence of hypertension, a persistent state of high blood pressure, in a group of 515 African-American men enrolled in the Howard University Family Study (HUFS).” The findings were reported in the Dec. 12, 2013 issue of the journal Hypertension, and is “the first study of an African-American population to document an association between childhood family living arrangements and blood pressure.”

“Being raised by a single parent really puts kids at a disadvantage in terms of resources that would be available to them,” Charles Rotimi, the study’s co-author, said. “Our study is not an indictment of single-parent homes. Single parents, however, may struggle more to keep things together, and this may be impacting children in ways that later manifest as adult onset diseases.”

According to the study, “African-American men who grew up in a household with both parents had a significantly lower blood pressure as adults compared to African-American men who grew up in a household with a single parent, regardless of whether the parent was a mother or father.” Furthermore, the “researchers saw the most positive health effects in men who lived with both parents for one to 12 years,” with this group having a “46 percent lower chance of being diagnosed with hypertension compared to adults who for those years were raised by a single parent.”

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