Stephen Cohen, economist for the National Bureau of Economic Research, consulted more than 2,000 written slave narratives and statistically catalogued the structure of slave families. He found that more than 50 percent of individuals represented in the sample grew up in two-parent households in which both parents resided on the same plantation. Fewer than 10 percent lived in single-parent households. The remainder resided in two-parent divided households in which the child's parents resided in separate but nearby plantations.
Even parents who resided on separate plantations took pains to preserve family commitments. Men visited their wives', lovers' and children's plantation of residence, even when the trip meant risking punishment. In his study of the slave family, Cohen notes that more than 80 percent of divided-residence families in his sample reunited after emancipation. Enslaved mothers, fathers and children took great risks and invested much energy in maintaining a sense of familial unity.
Washington Post reporter Donna L. Franklin conducted a literature review concerning black families during and after the emancipatory period of the mid 1800s. Her research reveals a common theme in social scientists' treatment of enslaved and recently emancipated families: status. Individuals who were skilled in carpentry and domestic service were less likely to be sold. Thus, these individuals were more likely to maintain two-parent households in which the parents were not separated. Field laborers, on the other hand, were more likely to contend with separation from loved ones.
Gender roles within the family shifted to meet the survival demands that plantation slavery imposed upon the family. Franklin notes decades-long discussion and argument among historians and social scientists about gender construction in enslaved families. Many believe that enslaved women assumed a more dominant role in child-rearing than their free counterparts. When compared to a plantation owner, an enslaved father would exercise little authority over his child. Yet, these contentions are the subject of wide dispute in both academic and lay communities. Historians agree however that both males and females prioritized family life even under the oppressive conditions of slavery.