I’ve gotta get to work, but I’ll drop two anecdotal stories on you:

1. My cousin’s 28-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. But she and the baby’s father are MBA grads, in a committed relationship, raising his son from a previous marriage, and planning to tie the knot when she can once again fit in a small, cute dress (only half joking about the dress).

2. Another cousin and her family (joined by their church and me) for years have been helping a single mother of SIX out-of-wedlock children, several of whom she can’t even identify the father. We haven’t had the guts to come out and ask how on earth she could get pregnant over and over again, by one no-count man after another (believe me, the ones we can identify as fathers are indeed no-count), and give birth to children she has no means of raising properly.

It is only by the grace of God that my cousin found this family — otherwise those kids might be just more statistics: dropouts, aimless, in trouble, begatting more out-of-wedlock children. Now, one lives with my cousin’s family, and attends the same private school (on scholarship) that her son attends. The rest come over on weekends, and get a glimpse of life they would have seen only on The Cosby Show: middle-class black family with all the requisite details that “middle class” implies: loving, married husband and wife; two respectful, smart, goal-oriented children; church on Sunday; athletic events that Mom and Dad attend/coach; doting grandparents. Thanks to my cousin, her policeman husband, and the rest of our family, these wonderful kids are going to summer camps, to outings around town, and talking about staying in school so they “can live like Aunt Debbie and Uncle Daryle.” I call my cousin St Debbie.

But I digress. All this to say that, yes, the statistics can be misleading (witness Cousin #1). But there is still far too much truth in the numbers — and the devastation behind those numbers.