Journalist Michael Datcher wrote in his memoir, Raising Fences: A Black man’s love story, that in his east-side Long Beach, California, apartment building of thirty families, he never saw a father visit, let alone live in, a household. Because of that, he says, “I’ve been obsessed with being a husband and father since I was seven years old. Quiet as it’s kept, many young black men have the same obsession. Picket-fence dreams… . But usually we strike a cool pose. Hide Huxtable-family dreams in the corner: Can’t let someone catch us hoping that hard.
Roberta L. Coles, The Myth of the Missing Black Father
