Deindustrialization and "Broken Fathers"

The postwar economy of the 1950’s saw a major downsizing of the industrial and manufacturing sectors of the northern urban economy as the war machine wound down to slower and lower productive activity. Subsequently, once-bountiful blue collar jobs and positions for unskilled labor also downsized just as Southern African Americans and Puerto Ricans flocked to the city in record numbers seeking these rapidly vanishing industrial jobs, an economic mirage. “Between 1947 and 1976, the city lost 500,000 factory jobs as big and small industries left the city” while “education and language requirements kept many blacks and Hispanics from [other remaining] entry-level service jobs,” while still more jobs for new migrants were displaced by mechanization. [1]

Deindustrialization affected not only new immigrants but also long-time residents such as Adrienne’s father, who was a “strong man” but “semi-skilled” and with only a “fourth-grade education.” [2] Adrienne expressed admiration for her father’s craftsmanship and knack for mechanics: “he was very gifted with his hands. He knew how to make things. He made furniture. He could fix anything, anything that broke down in the house, he’d fix it.” [2] However, despite his skill, the broader American economy left little room for tradespeople like Adrienne’s father when automaton made for cheaper manufacturing of marketable goods. The growth of a service sector in the wake of withdrawing industrialization, comprising increasing numbers of white collar jobs that required a higher degree of education, which had the effect of excluding hard laborers like Adrienne’s father, like Adrienne’s friends’ fathers, and many other fathers like them and left them generally bereft of employment. Evelyn Gonzalez informs in her reconstruction of the history of the South Bronx how “[as] much as 25-30 percent of the eligible work force [was] unemployed” in 1976. [1] Adrienne and her acquaintances’ mothers, were forced to “get on public assistance” to meet their needs, which “broke” the fathers. [2] Not only were these fathers (and other semi-skilled male laborers) displaced from their jobs, from their place in the wider economy which occupied them and served as a source of personal strength, but they were also displaced from their role as “head of the household,” as major breadwinners, their essential purpose within the family. [2]

The reaction of the strong men was to find other ways of coping with their expulsion from a changing economy which left them behind. “[It] had to be depression,” Adrienne theorizes. [2]  Chronic unemployment in general (not just for strong men), as The Atlantic reports, has been linked in multiple studies to higher rates of depression (not to mention ruined pride); furthermore, a “Rutgers study found much higher rates of reporting [...] “strain in family relations” for those for whom a loss of job had had devastating financial consequences.” [3] Indeed, Adrienne pointed out how “some [fathers] went on drugs” while others “abandoned the families.” [2] How can a family remain stable when the main means of economic stability are no longer available?