While talking to a friend of mine recently about race relations, she told me how sorry she felt that I had to raise African-American children in today’s society.
Pause.
While her intentions may have been good, the delivery, not so much. The truth of the matter is raising African American, Hispanic, Asian, or multi-racial children in 2018, is no different than it was in 1998, 1988, or even 1968. There are things that have been put in place to make our lives “easier”, but when you really get down to it, it’s still the same. Nothing has changed except for the fact that incidents are being documented for social media on a seemingly daily basis.
While in California a few weeks ago for Mom 2.0, I had a chance to attend a wonderful breakfast featuring other bloggers of color hosted by Baby Dove.
The breakfast which featured some of my favorite bloggers, allowed us as moms to talk about our experiences raising children of color into today’s society. As parents, our ultimate goal is to raise happy healthy kids, but there is no denying that there can also be roadblocks in the way.
Sometimes those roadblocks can come from our own family.
Breastfeeding, babywearing, homeschooling are things out of the norm for many African American families. Many of us grew up in super traditional households where full family meals were cooked every Sunday, mom, and dad both work, and we attended brick and mortar schools. And breastfeeding wasn’t something that ever brought up (or possibly done).
Stepping outside of the norm of that and dealing with the blowback was a common theme that resonated amongst many of us. While it felt good to know that there were other families out there like mine and that hopefully, these practices will become the norm in our community.
This breakfast helped me to realize that while children of color have a different set of challenges, we parents have to learn to navigate them; it’s not completely impossible to do so, it just means that we may have to work a little bit harder than our counterparts.
Love of impromptu dance parties, 80’s cartoons, and horizontal life pauses (aka naps); Natasha Brown is a stay at home mom of 4 kids, and wife to one lucky guy! In her spare time, she is co-editor of Grits & Grace, as well as editor for The Mother Hustler Blog and Creative Director for the Mother Hustler podcast.
It’s hard to believe that not that long ago, my marriage to my Chinese husband would have been illegal! While not myself a POC, I appreciate this post and the meaningful conversation that you bring up, for our children and our shared future…and I love Baby Dove 😉 Cheers!
Your experiences are really shining through on this post. I can see this helping out a lot of people.