Mother, May I?
I was talking with a sista-friend of mine about her experiences as an elementary school teacher in the public school system. She’s also seven months pregnant with her first son.
The baby is still in the womb, and she and her husband are already getting their game plan together. They recognize that they will be raising a black man in America.
When we started talking about one of the two schools where she teaches, she mentioned that the majority of the kids classified as mentally disabled are black boys, but what’s more alarming is they aren’t disabled, they lack discipline.
Among the crazy stories she told me, this one was too much. There was a boy who one day arrived at school in his mother’s arms. He’s friggin’ four years old. She carried him to class because he didn’t feel like getting up that morning. So, does that mean everybody else is supposed to carry him for the rest of the day?
I told her this is the little boy who grows up and expects me or other single women to “carry” him.
I asked her if she believes that single mothers coddle their sons out of guilt because the father, for whatever reason, isn’t present. She said yes. We both admitted something that may sound sexist – we believe children need both genders in their lives.
That doesn’t mean if the child has a sorry ass father then he should be there. I mean a competent male and female adult. Little black boys need a man who is emotionally, spiritually and physically available to teach him what a man is. And, I hate to say this, (actually I don’t), mothers can’t be fathers to their sons.
If you are a single mother, it is your duty to find a competent man to be an example for your boy. Period. And it’s a mother’s responsibility, all mothers – married, divorced, widowed or single – to heal themselves from the guilt or any other negative emotions concerning the father. I threw married mothers into that bunch because some of them know they got a sorry ass husband.
I feel so strongly about this, because as a single woman I see there are more men running around who have no clue what a man is.
When they experience failure, like not getting a promotion or a business venture didn’t pop off the way they expected, some men wallow in it. They don’t know how to acknowledge their feelings, create a new strategy and keep it movin’. Some want their girlfriends to actually baby them. There is a difference between a woman giving emotional support and her babying him like his mother would after a nasty fall off of a tricycle.
I have one friend who had two jobs and a side-hustle while her husband had one job, and his one job was really a side-hustle. I just couldn’t understand. As a man, how could he be comfortable letting his wife out-work him? Man, that situation honestly made me step away from the friendship because I couldn’t watch that mess no more. That’s her husband and I have to respect that, and the only way for me to respect it is to not be around them.
I was raised by my father, so I know what a man looks and acts like. I know he’s not perfect, but the older I get, the more I respect him because he did whatever he had to do to make sure our family of seven had what we needed. But, he wasn’t just a dude who brought a check home. He got in our asses!
He was there talking to my brothers about police brutality, white supremacy, education, being passionate about your work, responsibility, integrity (he hates liars and manipulators), and being a leader. My father was always, always, and I mean always, lecturing us. But he’d been through a lot, especially as the youngest of five kids of an impoverished single mother. Most of his childhood friends are either dead, in prison or addicts. There are some things from his past that he doesn’t talk about now, even at 63 years old.
Looking back, I see that he could have never given us what my mother gave us, and likewise, she could have never given us what he gave us. And I am so thankful to God that I have both of them.
Envisioning you with much love, light and fulfillment. See you next week.
Yaminah Ahmad is editor-in-chief of The Atlanta Voice and contributing editor to Collective Voices, a newspaper published by the non-profit, SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective. She can be reached at missyaminah@gmail.com.
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