Migration Experience and Family Patterns in the "Promised Land"

Abstract

The relationship between migration experience and family patterns among resi dents of the North and West is examined for three time periods-1940, 1970, and 1990. In general, an inverse association is observed between duration of residence in the North or West and family stability among African Americans. Although selective return migration to the South contributes to this association, it can account for only a minor part of the variation in family patterns by migration history. It is concluded that there is no evidence to support previous assumptions that southern migrants carried a dysfunctional family culture with them to the North and West, and thereby destabilized the nonsouthern African American family. Rather, changes indigenous to the North and West were responsible, for example, structural changes in the economy or the emergence of an inner-city "oppositional culture" that does not emphasize traditional family patterns or transitions.