This is a Public Service Announcement from PGB: prime reproduction age for women is 15-25.

Human biology has not caught up with societal expectations.

While I don’t feel that most teens in the United States can handle parenthood (given that this culture has a delayed childhood that extends into the early 20s) I do feel that teens who do become parents should be given full support and encouragement. I also feel that women need to be told about their reproductive fertility, so that they can make informed decisions about when to have kids. There is nothing wrong with women in their early 20s having children. That is when we are supposed to have them, biologically speaking. What is wrong is the disconnect between the mothers and fathers of these children, which is one of the factors causing the single mother issue in particular to black Americans. What is wrong is the way our education and employment system works against young people and mothers. So if you are both young and a mother you are going to be messed up financially, usually. But the system being wrong doesn’t change biology. It doesn’t change the fact that women of any race or ethnic group are most fertile between the ages of 15-25.

Currently most black children in the United States are born to single mothers, most of whom will never marry. I think this needs to change. I am not sure about why as a community we began to devalue marriage, but the marriage rate among black Americans began a steady decline starting in the late 1960s. It is still declining.

I also feel that children are not valued enough in the black community. The way most college educated and ‘upwardly-mobile’ black people that I have come across act about kids, if it wasn’t for the teenagers and the 20s-something unwed mothers having babies, our birth rate would be shockingly low. As it is, the black population in the United States has not achieved significant population growth in nearly 20 years. This is scary and depressing enough. The birth rate for black women now is like 1.8 children, according to some stats I read in Standard Rate & Data. That is what it averages out to, less than 2 kids per black woman. That is not even a replacement birth rate! Which means we are not even having enough children to replace ourselves. (replacement birth rate is when a couple has 2 kids, replaces mom and dad. Growth birth rate is at least 3 kids) For every black woman in the United States you see with 3 or 4 kids, there are 3 or 4 black woman who don’t have kids…and will probably never have kids.

I’m 35 and I am a mother of 3 and very proud of it

For a visual understanding of this post, go to any major airport in the United States or any other place where there is a large gathering and cross-section of people to see who is having scads of children. It’s white women, they are the ones you will see with a double stroller full of 2 or 3 kids and/or 3 or 4 other little kids hanging off both arms. And their people don’t look at them with shame and disgust or even annoyance. Yes, they might get irritated stares or even mean comments if the kids are loud but rarely do white folks look disgusted at the fact that they are mothers with multiple kids. They value and respect mothers in a way that I don’t see reflected in most black communities. I have often seen other black people look at black mothers with disgust, simply for being mothers.

Now I’m not saying all sisters should run out and have 10 kids as a revolutionary act but I definitely feel we should value our fertility and our children and be very PROUD!!! of being mothers, married or single. Black men and women who choose not to have children should be proud of us and give us props for bearing and nurturing the next generation.

I do understand folks wanting to wait until they are married and get some savings together before having kids. But if the current marriage rate for black Americans is so low, how realistic is it to expect young girls to ‘wait until they are married’ before having kids? I had the expectation that I would get married someday because my parents are married, but I had girlfriends in high school who did not have that expectation…their mothers never married, their grandmothers weren’t married, their aunties weren’t married…when I talk to teen moms now and talk about waiting for marriage until they have another child some act like I am crazy. I have been told that marriage is a ‘fantasy’ and not something they think will ever happen for them.

I just wish more folks were conscious about our population numbers as an ethnic group. I am between both worlds, I’m a former teen unwed poverty stricken mother who lived in nasty broken down apartments in the hood and I’m now an older married college graduate mother who lives in a house in a suburb. The disconnect between the two is alarming and the children issue really gets to me. Older, educated, and self-sufficient black folks (and by self-sufficient I mean you pay your own rent or mortgage and can feed yourself; not on food stamps, have a decent job, car etc.) seem so smug and act all superior to the poor folks in the hood on welfare with kids…but by and large it is the poor folks who are actually having and bearing the next generation of black people in this country. That is real and should be respected, not dissed.

This blog entry written by Trula Breckenridge. Thanks for visiting Mama Specific Productions!

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