I had an interesting exchange on a black-oriented message board a while back and thought I’d share it with you all. A woman posted that she was tired of seeing young mothers mistreating their children in public. Her words are in bold, mine in plain text:

I feel that the next time that happens, I am going to confront these witches and tell them how bad they are. No one told these whores to get knocked up by their baby’s daddy in the first damn place and they could have adopted the children so that they could have some kind of a life.

Really? understand that placing a child up for adoption does not guarantee that the child will be adopted. We are only 12-13% of the U.S population but over 40% of the foster care and adoption population. This is for many reasons, including the fact that the foster care and adoption system prevents many black people from being able to adopt. Also consider that the ‘baby daddy’ has to sign away his rights as a parent in order to make the baby or child eligible for adoption, and some won’t do this even if they want nothing to do with the child. Many states are cracking down on this due to a number of lawsuits from fathers whose children were adopted out without their knowledge or consent. So even if a single black mother wants to consider adoption, she may not even start the process if she knows ‘baby daddy’ won’t agree.

Instead, they decided to keep the child (for that welfare check) and because of some anger with the man who screwed them, they are taking it out on the child. I absolutely abhor these women because they are the reasons why we are having so many problems in our community.

Again, it takes 2 to make a baby and both parents are responsible. Black fathers, especially absentee black fathers, are equally responsible for how their kids turn out. It is unfair to place the burden and responsibility for parenting entirely onto black women. It is unfair to place the problems the black community experiences onto black mothers. Also welfare in most states now has a lifetime max of only 5 years, so I hardly doubt any woman anymore decides to keep a child for a welfare check. Actually even before welfare reform most single black mothers only stayed on welfare for around 2.5 years! I remember reading that in Standard Rate & Data back in 2001 when I was doing research for my Afro Mama book. So that whole having-kids-for-welfare-stuff is just a myth.

I do not see any other mother of any other race treating their children this way. I know its not all young black mothers, but there are too many I see who do this and I just want to say “Damn girl, adopt the poor child if you don’t want them, give them to a relative who would care for them, but stop talking to you child like they stole your fake Gucci handbag”.

I live in a mostly white suburb and I do see white mothers publicly neglecting their children. I do agree that some black mothers need help/support/knowledge in how to raise their kids, in how to show their kids love, empathy and respect. But consider that people usually parent how they were parented unless they make a deliberate effort to do better….which is why people who were spanked grow up to spank their kids, people who were cursed at grow up to curse at their kids, people whose parents rarely hugged them grow up to rarely hug their kids, etc. So perhaps instead of feeling ire for these mothers you feel compassion instead, because they are publicly displaying the neglect they experienced as a child.

I’m frequently in ‘the hood’ and when I see this behavior among black moms I will often interject with positive praise about some aspect of their parenting. Like if they are berating their kids, cursing at them or whatever, I’ll say Hey I know how hard it is with these kids! Man, they can act the fool sometimes. I like their haircuts/braids/whatever, you did a good job on that! or I’ll compliment the kids’ outfits or shoes or whatever, something that will positively reflect on the mother. Then I will say something kind to the kids, like tell them how nice their eyes are or something. This usually calms the mother down and she will engage in conversation with me…after blowing off steam she will usually turn to the kids and either apologize or say something nice to them. I have witnessed this time and time again.

So please do not go off on these mothers or call them witches or whores because they are often out there struggling all alone trying to do the best they can with what they know how to do. Show a little kindness and compassion to both the mothers and kids in a situation like this, that will speak wonders to such a mother much more so than angrily berating her about her parenting…that will only embarrass her and shame her and cause her to feel even more confused and angry, triggering further lashing out at her child or children.

Just like some black mothers go off on their kids because of how they were parented, some black fathers are absent because their own fathers weren’t there. People parent how they were parented and most identify with their same sex parent, most grow up to interact with their children how their same sex parent interacted with them unless they consciously choose to do different. Not all, but most. It’s a vicious cycle but I think as a community we can break it if we show positive examples of parenting. And if we make an attempt to interact with each other with compassion and not try to clown or shame each other.

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