This past December, a Church in Orange, NJ (just outside of Newark) was the site of an unusual, and in some communities even radical, act: my then boyfriend and I—two black 20-somethings with no children—were married.
It is no secret that single-parent households and teenage pregnancy outside of marriage have been a source of concern in the Black community for quite some time. But while opinions and proposed solutions to this problem abound, little real impact has been made.
I am a 26-year-old Black female from suburban NJ who was raised in a conservative, Catholic household. Marriage has always been very important to my family. My parents were married for 38 years until my father suddenly passed away. Each…