Boomerang – And I Don’t Mean the 1990s Movie

As much as my husband and I enjoy the developmental milestones, gut-grabbing, hilarious moments and precocious humor of our Little Ladies, we at times long for the day when they will leave home.

Sometimes we are fatigued from the rigmarole of the morning ritual – making lunches, fixing breakfasts, doling out vitamins, coordinating outfits, making sure teeth are brushed thoroughly. Other times, we are exasperated and gasping for breath – room to breathe and just be – without the red tape of finding babysitters or using our vacation days for childhood illnesses or seamless coordination with school closures, teacher in-services and holiday shutdowns.

We don’t know what it’s like to sleep in anymore. We usually have peace but little quiet in our household. As quickly as we clean up, we pretty immediately find ourselves stepping over toys, slices of cut-up construction paper, errant crayons and uncapped markers.

Of course, when we do get away – whether for an evening out, a night left alone or even several days on an adults-only vacation – we pine for them (me more often and sooner then he). We repeat their familiar phrases and corny sayings. We mimic their body movements and idiosyncratic quirks. We talk about how quickly time is flying by and reminisce about their births and early months.

But we also discuss what they’ll do and be when they grow up and leave the house. Notice that I said WHEN they grow up and leave, not if, whether or hopefully. Like most parents of healthy, developmentally normal children, we envision a time when they will come into their own and navigate the world on their own terms. We see them continuing their education, starting careers, meeting suitors, getting married and having children (we’re already hoping for a grandson). Most of all, we see all of this happening under our watch but beyond the confines of our address – sometime within the next 16 years when Little Lady #2 goes off to college, Little Lady #1 is on the crux of graduating, and we finally have the house to ourselves again.

But what would we do if they came home again? A recent New York Times story shows that more adults are returning home in record numbers. A study conducted by the Pew Research Center finds that 10 percent of adult respondents under 35 years old have returned to the homestead because of the recession. The story goes on:

They also blamed the economy for other lifestyle decisions. Twelve percent had gotten a roommate to share expenses. Fifteen percent said they had postponed getting married, and 14 percent said they had delayed having a baby.

In the Pew study, 13 percent of parents with grown children said one of their adult sons or daughters had moved back home in the past year. According to Pew, of all grown children who lived with their parents, 2 in 10 were full-time students, one-quarter were unemployed and about one-third said they had lived on their own before returning home.

My husband and I have discussed under which circumstances a return home would be understandable and permissible. We came up with . . . pursuing professional degrees or other advanced study, having an illness or injury befall them, and perhaps starting a new business or other entrepreneurial leanings. We also realized that our children could boomerang back to us if they had made poor, ill-advised choices that we would clearly be against, such as carelessly mismanaging their finances and acquiring a lot of debt or shacking up with a guy and the relationship fizzling out, with no independent financial resources to rely on and nowhere else to go.

I left home at the age of 22 and never bounced back. In fact, I was so independently spirited and autonomously minded that I would have struck out on my own sooner if I could have. Nonetheless, I subconsciously told myself that returning home just was not an option. Sure, it probably could have been exercised, but it was not in any way a contingency in my mind. The only time I went back home was when we were getting one of our former homes constructed – that inconvenient period between the time one home was sold and the other was still being built.

This trend of adult children returning home also serves as a reminder that our economy has changed and is changing. Many adults going back home probably did everything “right.” They followed the formula for success. Finish high school? Check. Go to college? Check. Get a job? Negative.

Many of the careers and industries that once welcomed newly minted, green inductees have gone the away of the Commodore 64 computer by Radio Shack. Many of today’s entry-level jobs require not only the requisite undergraduate degree, but also 2-5 years of relevant experience (and collegiate extracurricular activities do not count). In these times, well-trained, (over) educated, tenured professionals in their late 20s and 30s are applying for internships and apprenticeships to get their foot in the door. They are working retail and service jobs just to get by, while hoping on a prayer that their years of study and absorption of student loan debt weren’t in vain.

Even those who didn’t follow the aforementioned conventional, middle-class path to the American Dream are encountering obstacles. America doesn’t manufacture much anymore. And certain skilled trades are being filled by non-citizens who can be paid under the table, tax-free, and who demand no benefits or protections. Duties that were once the provision of skilled task-takers in stateside offices are going overseas with no signs of a comeback.

This is the order of the New Economy.

How are you preparing your children for it? Are we rethinking our definitions of success and recalibrating the life phases we expect our children to take at certain age-specific junctures? Under what circumstances would you allow your adult children to return home, eat your groceries, increase your utilities and alter your lifestyle? What conditions would be attached to them dwelling in your domicile?

Working Mothers Putting in the Real Work

Talk show impresario and media maven Oprah Winfrey is known for saying that stay-at-home motherhood is the hardest job in the world – usually to throngs of listeners or captive crowds who, in unison, almost robotically nod in agreement.

Before I became a mother, I had no clue what women with children went through. But after being in the trenches for five and a half years now, I believe that I am in a legitimate position to chime in as a member of this special interest group and make a claim that might strike some as controversial: As challenging, mind-numbing and unrelenting as stay-at-home motherhood can be (as well as purposeful and, in some instances, revolutionary and transformative), I believe that working motherhood is more demanding, disconcerting and, yes, the more selfless and sacrificial of the two.

As popular as debates and diatribes by and about stay-at-home mothers are, the reality is that most mothers work – that is, they are employed and perform a service for compensation and, in most cases, benefits as well. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than half of all children have working mothers. While most mothers may not prefer full-time work, the Pew Research Center has found that 59 percent of mothers of children under three years of age work, and 75 percent of all women, mothers or not, between the ages of 25-54 are employed.

No matter how much cyclical, circuitous, self-effacing and finger-pointing conversations about working mothers and stay-at-home carry on, the reality for most American mothers is that they are waking up in the morning and getting dressed for 4, 8, 10 or 12 hours of work, depending on their shift, scheduling and/or industry. Contrary to the many platitudes about the selflessness, sacrifice and nobility of non-working mothers, I believe that working mothers swallow the most pride, strike the most untenable balance and sacrifice the most – personally and professionally – for the greater good of individuals and lives beyond their own: that of their children and their spouses.

Conversely, if a woman’s family is in no financial position to allot for a stay-at-home mother, I believe she is instead the selfish one. If a mother can only stay at home if she’s on the government dole, she is not circumstantially qualified to be a stay-at-home mother. If she can only do so while her meager-to-medium earning husband works two or three full-time jobs (or one fill-time gig supplemented by all sorts of odd jobs and part-time work), then she is not circumstantially suited for stay-at-home motherhood. If a mother cannot explain how her retirement will be funded so that she is not a burden on her spouse and a potential drain on her future adult children, she is not circumstantially qualified for staying home.

I would also argue that if a mother is not well-educated and prepared to provide her children with thoughtful lessons on a daily or otherwise routine basis, they would fare better in a highly rated pre-school program. If a mother who stays home spends her time on MySpace, Facebook, text messaging, watching television or shopping, then she is not fulfilling the requisite duties that should be undertaken by a woman who views stay-at-home motherhood as a vocation.

Many mothers who work full-time would be in favor of not doing so – that’s not a secret. This is especially true when our children are young and not yet school-aged. In many ways, full-time work is incompatible with the litany of doctor’s appointments, a commitment to breastfeeding, watching each developmental milestone and maintaining the most efficient and peaceful household. More precisely, most working mothers would elect to work according to more flexible, family-friendly terms – that is, independently as a contractor, consultant or freelancer; at home in a telecommuting arrangement; in a job-sharing agreement; on a part-time basis; or in a compressed work week of four 10-hour days. Most mothers, especially those who work in their field of choice or training, would be loathe to surrender their connections, income, seniority and development, except if only under the most irreconcilable professional duress (and many professional women – often those with higher-earning husbands – do opt out when they feel faced with an inflexible and unyielding work culture).

Most mothers work for all sorts of reasons, but few are self-serving or short-sighted. The reasons include and are not limited to:

1) Staying ahead or to continue treading water in an economy that, for most families and in many locations, demands two incomes to afford life’s necessities – all niceties aside.
2) Providing a financial cushion that enables the family to meet shared goals, from debt elimination to funding children’s education (current private school expenses or future post-secondary price tags).
3) Preparing for an eventual retirement in order not to be a drain or burden on one’s family, including children. Between contributing to 401(k)s to working long enough to qualify for the Social Security we hope will be there, many women work with the hope that they can have a comfortable retirement that doesn’t place undue stresses or expectations on their children.
4) Providing medical coverage for the family. Healthcare costs are out of control and spiraling upward each year. In fact, in 2008, it cost more than $15,000 a year to cover healthcare expenses for an average family of four. Many mothers are working for the company-provided health coverage benefit; while it may consume hundreds of their take-home pay each month, it is much less than the alternative.
5) Serving as an example to their children, perhaps especially to daughters, that women can fulfill educational and professional goals, while meeting their family’s needs and doing so well. Today’s working mothers, studies have found, spend as much – and, in some cases, more – time with their children than mothers did 40 years ago:

How have working parents found the time? A surprising bit of research shows that despite increased workloads outside of the home, mothers’ time at work has not resulted in a decrease in sleep or leisure time. The researchers found that many parents, particularly married mothers, “multitask” by including their children in their own leisure and free-time activities in order to juggle and find time for both themselves and their children.

Some people have posited that working mothers raise working daughters – that either via suggestion or example daughters of working mothers don’t consider staying home possible, desirable or acceptable. In my own case, I am the daughter of a working mother. I watched her get ready for work, come home in the evenings to cook full meals, clean up the house on her days off, take us shopping, drive us to church, meet with our teachers, shuttle us to extracurricular activities, watch most of our little league games and more.

I never realized how much she did until I was in a position to undertake all of the roles and responsibilities myself. As the daughter of a working mother, I don’t feel deprived or denied. If anything, had she not worked, I can quite clearly imagine the very different life we may have lived. In retrospect, I can now flashback to moments where she did it all – and probably too much – but for causes and commitments, dreams and drives greater than herself.

The stay-at-home debate wasn’t even on her radar because she had way too much else to worry about and do.

I am not always at peace with being a working mother. I have never not worked. My maternity leave each time expired by the time each of my children was eight weeks old. However, I love my work and am admittedly quite skilled at what I do. Each day, I report for duty on two fronts – the divine one, for which God so chose me as a mother and the professional one, for which I educated and trained myself for years. Most professional working mothers feel this way, I believe; after all, new studies show that most stay-at-home mothers never left work because they never started, and they tend to be less educated, so there’s less of a debate for them to have (of cost-benefit analysis).

If any real conversations need to be had, they revolve around policy. The United States is behind the map when it comes to industrialized nations and the perception and treatment of parenthood. Families need affordable healthcare. They need paid sick days and mandatory maternity (and paternity) leave. They need high-quality childcare at a manageable cost. They need workplaces that don’t discriminate against and marginalize parents, especially mothers. They need a remedy from the antiquated 8-4 or 9-5 workday that presumes you’re not doing real work if you’re not present, even with all of the technological conveniences that now make remote and offsite work oftentimes more productive than in-office seat-warming.

If these agenda items were satisfactorily dealt with on a national level, the stay-at-home vs. working mother debate would seem anachronistic, because the real issues in the background of the dialogue would have finally had some substantive air time.

For more, check out Moms Rising.

We Learned We Were Savage “Cannibals” at the Pediatrician’s Office

A recent experience reminded me of how a parent’s job is never done. But it’s even more of an overtime endeavor with no vacations or reprieves when you’re a black parent of black children.

Sure, we have our moments of frivolity. We are occasionally fancy-free. We laugh. We kiss and hug. We play board games, hide and seek, and skip rocks in the creek that runs alongside our home. We even bake cakes and cookies – though eating raw batter is something I won’t let my Little Ladies enjoy.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I took our daughters to see their pediatrician. The patient rooms are intentionally child-friendly, with abacuses, toys, make believe doctor’s kits and, thankfully, many, many books. I am always interested in the sort of children’s books marketed and intended for young eyes – at bookstores, libraries, children’s book clubs and, yes, here, too, at the doctor’s office.

Imagine my relief when I saw a variety of books that featured illustrations of children who looked like mine. One book even focused on the beauty of all things black – the many colors in which we are wrapped, the swirls, twirls and curls of our hair, and even the features of our faces. I recall, one illustration in a book showed a brown boy proudly pointing at what was described as his “perfect nose.” It was mildly generous and perfectly rounded.

There were probably five books filled with lovely images of black children in their cool café au lait, marvelous mahogany, captivating caramel, tenderly tawny and on-point onyx fabulousness. So imagine my surprise when I eyed one innocuous-looking book titled The Travels of Babar – so named and themed after the popular elephant character – and saw the insidious and reprehensible images inside.

Apparently originally published in 1934 by Random House – with copyright renewed in 1964 by the named publisher – this edition was released by Dragonfly Books in 1989. Now, it is very important to keep these years in mind when you see what I am about to show you.

Consider what the racial and social climates in America were in 1934, 1964 and 1989. Even if you were not alive at some of these times, reflect on what might have been deemed palatable and permissible at these times as well as what clearly would have been ruled as out of bounds.

On page 10, we see an image of an elephant sleeping. Perched over a hillside are six literally black figures with candy-apple red lips, with spears in hand.

The passage reads:

After breakfast,
While Babar explores the surrounding country,
Celeste, left alone,
Has fallen sound asleep.
Just then,
The inhabitants of the island,
Fierce and savage cannibals,
Suddenly discover her.
“What kind of strange beast is this?”
They say to each other,
“We have never seen anything like it.
Its meat must be very tender,
Let’s creep up quietly and catch it
While it sleeps.”

On the following page, we see that the “cannibals” have climbed over the hill, with spears and shields in hand. And, hey, they discover the civility of clothes, too!

It reads:

The cannibals have succeeded in tying up Celeste
With the clothes line
On which the clothes were drying.
Some dance with joy, while others have great fun
Trying on the stolen garments.
Celeste sighs sadly,
She thinks soon she will be eaten.
She does not yet see Babar, who returns
Just in time to save her!

On the following pages – 12 and 13 – a battlefield scene is displayed in landscape fashion. The black “cannibals,” who all look exactly alike, whose lips are illustrated as exaggerated pouts, who are all the same Crayola shade of black, are scattered about. Some are apparently injured. Others are still fighting. And some are walking away with the “stolen” attire.

It reads:

In the twinkling of an eye, Babar has unbound Celeste.
They both hurl themselves on the cannibals.
Some are wounded, others take flight;
All are terrified.

Only a few courageous ones still resist,
But they are thinking;
“These big animals are certainly terribly strong
And their hides are mighty tough!”

My husband and I were stunned that the pediatrician’s office would have such a book. Had they looked at it? Did anyone question the images? Was the antiquated minstrelsy even recognizable to the majority? How many white children – and white parents – had flipped through its pages with hilarity and happiness?

In the Amazon.com reviews of this book, a Heather McDaniel observes:

I loved the Babar books when I was little and my son is coming to love them, too. They have fun stories and a great use of vocabulary. I was excited when I found this book for a quarter in the discard sales rack of our local library. However, my happiness at purchasing it turned to dismayed shock when I read about Babar & his new wife encountering "savages" on their trip. The savages portrayed are offensively stereotyped Africans - big lips, sub-human, stupid leers on their faces, mindlessly violent... it's been a long time since I saw such blantant [sic] bigotry in a child's book. I trashed the book immediately. It's offensive enough that I can't believe it's still in print. Enjoy the other Babar books, but stay far away from this one if you don't want your child absorbing hurtful racial sterotypes [sic].

Unfortunately, many of the other reviews are gloating, with parents lauding the novelty and charming nature of the story. Someone even christens it “a classic” and “endearing.” My husband and I took the book away from the doctor’s office. And I am planning on following up with a letter communicating my shock, horror and disgust – if not at their ignorance, at their apathy; if not at their callousness, at their cluelessness.

Being on the offense and defense is the daily duty of every responsible black parent. Behind many corners, lurking in many shadows, and even front and center for all to see are visuals and vices that – if unaddressed or allowed to be – can make us and ours the intended victims.

Black Married Momma: The Anti-Statistic on Blog Talk Radio

The Black Married Momma was on Blog Talk Radio's DJ Sqwyd Show this evening. You may listen to the complete interview inspired by the column Most Black Married Mommas Could Have Been Statistics.

Why are so many black mothers unmarried?
What accounts for diminished standards among black women?
Why is shacking up, playing house and giving up the goods accepted now?

All this and more to be explored . . .

Feel free to post comments.

Can White Women Raise Racially Proud, Historically Knowledgeable Black Children whose Self-Esteem Is Intact?

In recent years, out in public – at the park, the grocery store, major events and elsewhere – I have seen white women with black children. (Now, for the sake of clarity, “black,” in some cases, may technically represent biraciality. However, in the context of the history of race, representation, categorization and social treatment in the United States, biracial status has been – and largely remains – another incarnation of blackness.)

These women seem to represent a broad swath of statuses in economics and class. Some look like the stereotypical white woman who many may say no white man wants, but who – for very complex reasons buried deep into the consciousness of black denial and DNA of this nation – many brothers will stumble, fall and trip over themselves to reach. They may be obese, unattractive, and inarticulate ; they might appear to have little to nothing going for them in the eligibility department, yet they have apparently bedded a black man and have a black child or children to show for it. They may attend black churches. They may have learned how to cook fried chicken, fresh collard greens and chess pie. They may even wear Baby Phat and PZI Jeans, accessorized with door knocker earrings.

Others are of the Meredith Baxter-Birney variety. You know, she played the mom on 1980s sitcom Family Ties and was featured in a slew of Lifetime movies. These white women are a bit more mature and socially palatable by most superficial indications. They are not bombshells. They seem middle-class, moderate to liberal in ideological views and, outside of their black husbands (who typically resemble someone like Dennis Haysbert – attractive, intelligent-sounding and delicious to many black women of all types), probably have few close black affiliations. She, too, may be found pushing her black child in a Maclaren stroller and may conspicuously avoid eye contact and not speak to other black mothers when she zips by.

Then there are those white women who are married to white men. They raise neither suspicion, nor curiosity; however, others do a double-take when they do see the black children with them who, clearly, were not a biological product of this couple’s union. They may look you in the eye when you cross their path, deigning you to think or speak ill of their decisions or to pity their child.

So, whether as biological mothers or as adoptive parents, it seems as if more white women are raising black children these days. Whether as baby’s mommas to black baby’s daddies or as veritable wives of fully present and committed black men, more white women are the primary caretakers and mind-molders of tomorrow’s black men and black women. This brings to the fore a very important consideration and question: Can white women raise racially proud, historically knowledgeable black children whose self-esteem is intact?

When I see white women with black children, I don’t feel ire, anger or betrayal. I don’t feel particularly joyful or optimistic, either. Instead, I am left feeling a bit like an inquisitive child whose questions lack satisfactory answers. I feel like a researcher who has eyed an experiment in progress whose outcomes I may never witness or know.

I don’t doubt that white mothers love their black children, like all mothers love their children who happen to share the same gene pool and look like them racially. However, knowing and living the life as a black person in the United States, I often wonder if a white woman can truly equip her black child with a sense of back story, purpose, pride, strength and coping in a country that still puts immeasurable odds, stumbling blocks and speed bumps in the way of black people at every phase of life. I question if a white mother can internalize the insidiousness of institutionalized racism and arm her child with awareness, lessons, anecdotes and ancestors for the sake of overcoming and achieving, if not just to prevent them from losing their minds, their selves and dealing with it all in unhealthy ways.

Will white mothers raising black children uncover the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege that Peggy McIntosh so clearly unloads in her seminal essay? Can white parents admit to the many unearned entitlements they receive in this country for which their black children may not experience the benefit of the doubt. McIntosh accounts for 26 white privileges; they are:

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in secondhand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behaviour without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge," I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

If a white mother realizes and recognizes all this and more (as most black people can probably add at least five to 10 items to this list), she’ll be in a better position to understand and not deny all sorts of prejudice her black child is likely to encounter – from the formative years to the finale.

If a white mother purports to be a Christian, can she provide her black child with a strong, positive and affirming spiritual core if all the iconography associated with her belief system is European? In other words, what messages could white mothers be sending to their black children if they expose them only to images of a white Christ, white disciples, white prophets and a white God? Will many white mothers do their research, complete their homework and realize, based on anthropological, geographical and historical inquiry that most of the figures in the Bible instead look like their black children? Would they replace the images that bedeck their homes? Would they replace their Bibles with something like The Original African Heritage Study Bible? Would they cease claiming that Christ is white or stop scapegoating the issue with canned phrases like “It doesn’t matter what color He was,” or “He was probably Middle Eastern in appearance”?

Can white mothers understand the intricacies and inanities of black hair in America? Will they understand the historical backdrop that has rendered natural black hair an undesirable anomaly in this society? Moreover, will they take the time to learn which products to use, which styling implements work best and what styles are most conducive to maintaining healthy black without resorting to caustic, damaging chemicles? Will they go through a sort of self-guided initiation into black hair, like Emory professor Clifford Green did with his adopted Ethiopian daughter? The Atlanta Journal Constitution story notes that: “In learning how to take care of Miriam's hair, the Greens learned that what was at stake was far more than hygiene or looks. Her hair was a litmus test of their parenting.”

I could go on – and I will at another time. However, these are just some of the questions I have when I see white women raising black children. I am not saying that white mothers cannot effectively and positively parent black children. However, I do believe that in order to do so, they must somehow learn to look at life and our society vicariously through the eyes, mind and heart of a black parent.

What’s the Right Age to Have Kids?

A message board I occasionally frequent has a half-civil, half-contentious debate going on about a question too personal, circumstantial and subjective to ever lead to an unequivocal answer: What’s the right age to have kids?

I gave birth to Little Lady #1 and Little Lady #2 at the ages of 26 and 29, respectively. I rather casually got pregnant the first time around during the second half of my 25th year. I really put little thought into it. It wasn’t a mulled-over, cerebral exercise. I didn’t make a list of pros and cons or pluses and minuses. I just knew I was with the man who was undoubtedly right for me and who would doubtlessly make a great father. I was done with my undergraduate education and a few years into my chosen career. It may not have passed every test of sensibility to get pregnant at that time, but I certainly wasn’t uneducated, unemployed or unmarried – some serious deficits that most would say should make a woman think twice or thrice before conceiving.

It took me a while to have any desire or want for a second child. My birth experience had been so horrendous that I was nearly on the road to being the parent of an only child, a situation that I still don’t find unfair, selfish or any of the other descriptors unsolicited opinion-givers offered at the time. However, as I entered the last half of my 28th year, I felt that I needed to go ahead and have another, if I was going to. Moreover, I had always maintained that I was not going to have any children after the age of 30, as it would have clashed with many of the age-specific deadlines and hallmarks I had set for myself.

And so I made it, having Little Lady #2 when I was 29 ½.

Since I became a parent, I have met others whose children will be legally grown or even into their early 20s by the time they’re in their late 30s or early 40s. When I encounter them, I feel a twinge of envy, looking at how young they are and how youthful they will still be when their children enter adulthood. They are on the path to becoming grandparents in their late 40s-mid-50s, and I think that timing is fabulous for those who want to see and witness and experience as much as they can, while being young enough to be participatory and in good enough health not to be a burden.

I will be 44 when Little Lady #1 is 18 and 47 when Little Lady #2 becomes legal. That’s not too bad, in my own mind with its idyllic approximations of appropriately timed milestones and events. I have found generally that black women – even those who have completed undergraduate and postgraduate schooling – are apt to have children in their 20s. Pregnancies and childrearing often occur concomitantly with the cultivation of careers and the completion of educational goals. They may certainly slow other pursuits or passions, but child-having, I have observed, doesn’t bottleneck the lives of many black women.

White educated and middle-class women, on the other hand, seem to delay family planning until they’re in their late 20s to early 40s, a time when many black mothers are preparing for high school graduations. I see it every day at work. Black working mothers, in their early 30s, well into the trenches and demands of motherhood, juxtaposed against white working mothers, in their early 30s-early 40s trying to pregnant and just beginning their expanded roles of parent and professional.

These days, in commercials and in everyday life, I see white mothers with preschool-aged children and think they look more like grandmothers than mothers. I see graying white men with a full supply of crow’s feet and wonder what the differences are between how they are parented and how mine are. I know how zapped and fatigued I am around the clock, and I am relatively young, with no health problems and in shape. I cannot imagine rearing babies and toddlers and elementary school students in my 40s and 50s.

All the same, I cannot say that there is a serendipitous time to have children.

So, how old were you when you became a parent? Do you wish you had waited longer or began sooner? Is there such a thing as being too old or too young to enter the world of parenthood?

Are Locks the Natural Version of a Perm?

My husband and I both wear locks. We also both happen to be wearing them for the second time. I previously had locks for about two and a half years, and have had the set I currently sport for more than four years.

I began this set of locks right around the time Little Lady #1 turned one. Why? At the time, I found caring for my inches of fro too taxing. As a then-new mother who now had another head of hair to maintain, I just didn’t have the time and lacked the motivation to take the time each week to shampoo, deep condition and spend time weaving my strands into two-strand twists, which was my style of choice back then (I’d later undo the twists and wear a coily, crinkly Afro for as long as the look lasted).

I knew more and more that locks were the hairstyle most conducive to my new lifestyle. I also knew that I had been happiest with myself and my hair when it was locked. So, in April 2005, I began the set of locks I now wear, which number 250 and, when totally left to their own devices, hang around my mid-back.

Little Lady #1 came into this world with a head full of hair. And as time has pressed forward, it’s grown longer, thicker and more beautiful by the month (save for the time last year when she inexplicably took scissors to random sections of her coif). As she matures, she is developing a refined sense of her aesthetic preferences. She is developing her own ideas about what’s attractive, what she likes and, clearly, what she doesn’t. This sense of identity is funneling into the clothes she wants to wear, the clothes she recommends I wear and, of course, the way she wants to wear her hair.

Little Lady #1, who I also refer to as “Mini-Me” for self-explanatory reasons, really admires me. Sometimes I feel undeserving of such love and veneration. She thinks I am all that and much than a bag of chips ever was. She tells me I am the “most beautiful lady in the world” and the “prettiest momma she knows.” She wants me to save my clothes for her so she can wear them when she “grows up like a woman.” She likes to play in my purse and wants to experiment with lipsticks and gloss (my only guilty pleasure when it comes to makeup). And she also wants to rock the same hairstyle – locks.

Since she was three, she has repeatedly told me she wants locks. So, for two years, I have been denying her request. I have seen some beautiful locks on black girls her age and slightly older. When we were in Atlanta this past summer at the aquarium, I saw a sister around 10 years old with lovely locks piled high and nearly elbow-length. I went to college with a young lady with waist-length locks; she told me her parents started hers when she was around seven years old.
I am a natural hair advocate. I abhor perms but don’t inflict my opinions on those who choose to wear them. If we happen to discuss hair, I make my viewpoint known, but I do not condemn them for their choices, however misguided I think they usually are.

But I have been reluctant to lock my daughter’s hair. Not only have others advised me not to, but I have been struggling with my own hypothesis: “Are locks the natural version of a perm?” I ask this and put it in these terms because locks are, for the most part, a long-term commitment that require drastic efforts – or acts – to undo. However, after much thought, I have decided that, no, locks are nowhere near perms or relaxers.

1) Locks are not actually permanent. Yes, locks result from uncombed (usually naturally curly and kinky) hair allowed to mesh and intertwine. However, they can be removed. More than 10 years ago, when I cut off my first set of locks, I first attempted to take them down. While each one took about two hours to pluck through and undo, I found out that it is possible. And now, with the proliferation of natural hair forums and YouTube videos, those with locks increasingly discover that if they decide to turn back – for whatever reason – they can. Watch “How to Take Down Mature Locks” and “Danielle’s Loc Take Down” for more. There are also many, many more videos on this theme. Whenever I get tired of my locks or want to try something new, I will likely cut them off rather than undergoing this arduous process. However, it must be noted that the idea that locks must be cut off is a fallacy.

2) Locks don’t require caustic chemicals to sustain the style. Locks are a result of a natural process that takes advantage of the naturally occurring kinks, coils, curls and loops of our hair. Perms, conversely, require chemicals whose pH levels are akin to Liquid Drano. There just isn’t any comparison.

3) Locks embrace what God naturally gives us, while relaxers are a denial of the image in which we were designed. Not only is hair irreparably altered and damaged through relaxing, we also risk our brain health, as some studies have purportedly shown that chemical traces reach the outer brain.

4) Locking can protect our girls from a lot of avoidable hair grief. My daughters will be spared the wages of relaxers and hot combs based on the fact that they are my children, and they will be subject to my philosophy on the matter until they’re of age. However, locking not only promotes hair growth and length accumulation, it also enables women and girls to wear the styles they’d want to anyway. Locks can be curled, roller set, braided, crimped (with braid and twist sets), cut into styles, worn in pigtails and ponytails.

5) With locks, our hair reaches its full potential in an unencumbered state. How many people with relaxers have you seen with thick, long hair that remains that way through the years? I haven’t seen many. I find that permed hair seems to plateau and stick at a growth stalemate that doesn’t resolve itself over time. Take a personal inventory of those you know with relaxers. Has the length or health of their hair really improved over the course of 2, 5, 10 or 15 years?

All this said, I still won’t be locking Little Lady #1’s hair any time in the immediate future. I want her to understand exactly what she’s committing to and what’s required. I want her to know that locks are not an instant gratification hairstyle, but it’s certainly a process that evidences one’s patience, fortitude and sense of self. If she is still hankering for locks in three years, I’ll probably let her have them. By the time she enters high school, she could be rocking two feet of luscious locks that her permed cohorts envy, as they spout nonsense about the perils of “naps.”

This, after all, is the best revenge and one of the biggest unspoken statements. Believe me, I know.