“The family is the nucleus of civilization.” — Will Durant
When news broke from Senegal that so-called “schools for husbands” were being used to lower maternal and newborn mortality rates, the headlines focused on the novelty of men being taught to wash dishes, attend prenatal visits, and support women’s healthcare. Yet beneath the surface, Senegal’s program is not just about chores or even just about health, it is about reshaping cultural norms so that households operate as functional units rather than fractured spaces of authority and neglect. In a country where patriarchal structures often keep women from making life-saving decisions without a man’s permission, Senegal’s government and community leaders recognized that sustainable change had to address the power imbalance between men and women.
This insight carries an important lesson for African America. The African American family is facing a structural crisis. Only 38 percent of African American children grow up in two-parent households compared to 78 percent of white children, and the numbers are even more stark when considering households of generational stability, wealth accumulation, and transmission of institutional knowledge. The decline of the two-parent household in African America has had profound consequences not just for children, but for adults who often enter adulthood without ever having witnessed sustained partnership between equals.
What if African America had its own version of Senegal’s schools expanded to include both husbands and wives, and designed for straight couples and LGBTQ couples alike? A “School for Husbands and Wives” could become a powerful cultural and institutional lever, equipping African Americans with the skills, expectations, and frameworks to build households that are not only emotionally healthy but also institutionally productive.
Why African America Needs Schools for Husbands and Wives
African Americans live in a paradox: on the one hand, they are among the most religiously active groups in the country, with churches historically serving as community hubs. On the other hand, African American households are disproportionately fragmented. The reasons are historical and structural—slavery destroyed family continuity, Jim Crow restricted marriage rights, mass incarceration and discriminatory welfare policies tore apart families, and modern labor and housing policies continue to erode family stability.
The consequence is that too many African Americans enter relationships without having observed healthy models of partnership. This absence manifests itself in multiple ways:
- Gender distrust: Many African American men and women view each other as competitors rather than partners, shaped by economic inequality and media stereotypes.
- Power imbalances: Without clarity on roles, relationships often collapse under stress: financial, emotional, or social.
- Institutional gaps: Families are the basic units of institutions. When African American families are weak, African American institutions remain undercapitalized and undercoordinated.
This reality is not confined to heterosexual couples. LGBTQ African Americans, who face both external discrimination and internal cultural tension, often have even fewer family blueprints to draw upon. Whether in straight or queer relationships, the challenge remains: how do two people form a sustainable partnership when their models are fragmented, mistrust abounds, and institutional frameworks are weak?
A School for Husbands and Wives would take on this challenge directly, teaching the mechanics of partnership in the same way Senegal’s program teaches men the mechanics of maternal health support. But instead of focusing solely on chores or permissions, the African American model would expand to include economics, conflict resolution, institution building, and cultural grounding.
The Senegalese Model: A Starting Point
Senegal’s schools for husbands use respected community figures like imams, former soldiers, and elders to teach men about women’s rights, maternal health, and shared responsibilities. The success lies in reframing: chores are not humiliating, they are acts of love; women’s health decisions are not threats, they are family investments; shared authority is not weakness, it is strength.
For African Americans, a School for Husbands and Wives could use a similar approach: respected voices drawn from the community like professors, entrepreneurs, cultural leaders, and married couples who have sustained long-term partnerships would teach relationship and family skills as community investments. The aim would be to destigmatize conversations about partnership and create new models where none exist.
Curriculum for Partnership
What would a School for Husbands and Wives look like in African America?
- Economics of Partnership
- Teaching couples how to pool resources effectively, manage debt, invest in assets, and prioritize institutional wealth over individual consumption.
- Lessons on real estate, life insurance, trusts, and estate planning—so that households become wealth anchors, not debt traps.
- Conflict Resolution and Communication
- Many couples replicate cycles of mistrust they observed growing up. Training in conflict resolution, active listening, and equitable compromise would be central.
- Both straight and LGBTQ couples would benefit from structured conversations on navigating cultural stigma, managing extended family expectations, and sustaining emotional intimacy.
- Household Labor Distribution
- Senegal emphasizes men helping with chores to reduce women’s burdens. In African America, the conversation must extend further: both partners share responsibility for cooking, cleaning, parenting, and professional ambitions.
- The school would also address how unpaid labor at home directly connects to economic outcomes, productivity, and career success for both partners.
- Cultural and Historical Grounding
- African American couples would be taught the history of the African American family as an institution under assault—from slavery to mass incarceration.
- By understanding the intentionality of these assaults, couples would better grasp the importance of intentional partnership as resistance.
- Parenting as Institutional Strategy
- Children should be raised not just with love, but with strategy: to become contributors to African American institutional wealth and culture.
- Parents would learn to combine elements of “tiger” and “gentle” parenting—discipline and nurture balanced toward the goal of institutional power.
Straight and LGBTQ Couples Together
Too often, discussions of African American family structure exclude LGBTQ couples, reinforcing division where there should be solidarity. A School for Husbands and Wives would explicitly include both straight and LGBTQ couples, recognizing that the core challenges of partnership communication, trust, economic strategy, cultural grounding are universal.
In fact, LGBTQ couples often demonstrate resilience in building intentional families under hostile conditions, a skillset that all African Americans can learn from. By including diverse couple models, the school would normalize different family structures while emphasizing the shared goal: strong, functioning partnerships that build institutions.
Institutional Implications
African American institutions such as HBCUs, banks, businesses, nonprofits are only as strong as the families that sustain them. Wealth is built in households before it is transferred to institutions. If African American households remain fragmented, then institutions will remain weak.
A School for Husbands and Wives could therefore be sponsored or housed by HBCUs, serving both as a community program and as a research lab. Partnerships with African American financial institutions could integrate financial literacy into the curriculum. Faith institutions, cultural centers, and civic organizations could all play roles in teaching and sustaining graduates of the program.
The benefits would ripple:
- Higher marriage stability rates among African Americans.
- Greater pooling of household income, increasing wealth accumulation.
- Stronger parenting, producing children with higher educational attainment and cultural grounding.
- Increased institutional giving and investment, as families with stability contribute more to churches, HBCUs, and community organizations.
Policy and Public Health Dimensions
A School for Husbands and Wives should not be seen only as a cultural innovation, but also as a public health and policy strategy. The lack of stable households directly correlates with higher rates of poverty, incarceration, and health disparities. Policymakers could frame such schools as preventative investments, much like job training or nutrition programs.
Public funding, alongside philanthropic investment from African American institutions, could help establish pilot programs in cities with large African American populations. These schools could even be tied to existing healthcare infrastructure such as community health clinics so that relationship education is linked to wellness checkups, parenting support, and financial literacy programs.
If Senegal can link male training to maternal survival, African America can link couple training to family survival.
Lessons from Senegal’s Caution
Senegal’s experience shows that change is incremental and contested. Some men embrace new roles; others resist. Likewise, in African America, not everyone will accept the idea of formal schools for partnership. Some will argue that love is natural and cannot be taught. Others will resist LGBTQ inclusion. Some will see the program as unnecessary “therapy culture.”
But institutions are built through intentionality, not accident. Just as one studies law to become a lawyer or finance to become a banker, so too must African Americans study partnership if they are to build families that function as institutional engines.
A Vision Forward
Imagine a future where every African American couple, before or after marriage, participates in a School for Husbands and Wives. They leave not only with a deeper love for each other but with tools for building wealth, resolving conflict, and raising children with purpose. They learn to see themselves as not just individuals, but as co-founders of a household institution.
The Senegalese model shows us that cultural change is possible when men are trained to view equality as strength. African America can expand that vision: training both husbands and wives, straight and queer, to view partnership as the foundation of institutional survival.
Just as Senegal’s schools for husbands aim to save lives, African America’s schools for husbands and wives would aim to save legacies.ve legacies.
HBCU Money 