Young women hold the key to ending the city's cycle of poverty and violence

YESTERDAY, I wrote about young black males being killed in the city. Now let's get

real and talk about where that starts and hopefully where it will end - and that's with you, my sisters.

We can have a national discussion about race and urban violence. We can push for a long- overdue national movement to combat black-male genocide. We can beg, cajole, even guilt, society to care and act - or at least pretend to.

But really, it's on you - mothers of boys.

You are the ones with the best shot at changing the bleak reality out there.

You have the most to lose, and the most to gain. Because, overall, those are your children dying out there.

And it starts with one simple word: No.

No: You will not sell yourself short and become a cog in the cycle of poverty by becoming teen mothers.

No: You will not let some sperm donor, however good-looking or smooth, subject you, or your future children, to the inevitable hardship that comes with raising children on your own, and in poverty.

And you know - you know better than anyone - what that hardship looks and feels and tastes like, because chances are you are a product of it.

No: You will not become a statistic or a stereotype because yes, you are worth more than that and yes, your future children deserve more than a life struggling to claw themselves out of a black hole.

And yes, you finally realize how much power you hold in your hands, and in your decision to say "No" - no more.

That is not to say that children who are born to single mothers can't or don't make it. President Obama was raised by a single mother. I have spent my nearly two-decade long career writing about young men and women who were teen mothers, or raised by one, and who beat the odds.

But that's just it: They have to beat the odds, of high poverty, of low graduation rates, of violence and incarceration and death.

It's right there, in all the depressing stats.

An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Philadelphia teens are mothers, according to a story by thenotebook.org, a local education-news service. Project U-Turn, a city campaign to focus on the city's dropout rate, estimates that more than 70 percent of those teens will drop out of high school.

The number of children living in single-parent homes has nearly doubled since 1960, according to data from the 2010 Census. More than 40 percent of teenage moms report living in poverty by age 27. The rates are especially high among black and Hispanic teen moms, more than half of whom end up in poverty.

I'm not just holding you accountable here. One-third of American children - 15 million - are being raised without a father, according to studies.

I cannot and will not downplay the importance of a father in a child's life. I don't know if I so much made the decision not to get pregnant out of wedlock or my father scared the resolution into me. Either way, I saw the difference between my household and those of my friends and family that were headed by single mothers struggling to make ends meet, to balance the difficult - often impossible - task of raising their children and feeding them.

Let me be really clear here: None of this absolves society for its part in the history and circumstances that led to embedded, multigenerational poverty. As I've written, we all own a piece of this crisis. And while it's tempting, easier, to wipe our hands of our responsibility by blaming "kids having kids," it's more complicated than that.

But here's the reality: No one and nothing, not the most well-intentioned do-gooder, not the most well-funded program, will ever be able to do more to break the cycle of poverty and violence than the people who are most affected, and that starts with young women of color.

And that starts with more of them saying "No."

If I'm wrong, I'm ready to hear it. If I'm not, let's start having this conversation . . . Ladies?

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