I wasn’t compelled to write anything about the No Wedding, No Womb shenanigans but I’ve seen two posts today about marriage, children and Black folks that made me want to share my own point of view. One piece from Clutch Mag focuses on the “single mother syndrome” in the Black community. You can read the piece for yourself but a few assertions therein stuck out for me: (1) More black children are born to unwed mothers because of poverty and lack of access to competitive job market; (2) If women …

My momma keeps asking me for money and I’m pissed. For the past several months, my mother has called me up and asked me to send her some money for various things ranging from minutes for her pre-paid cell phone to cash for cigarettes. It’s gotten to the point where I see her name pop up on my phone and I sigh loudly, my shoulders slump, and I get upset. “What you want now?” That’s my standard greeting for my mother these days. This is stress that I really don’t …

A new study from the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University found that children who are spanked as 1-year-olds are more likely to behave aggressively and did worse on cognitive tests as toddlers than children who were not spanked. The study focused on low-income families and found that African-American children are spanked more than their white and Mexican counterparts. I have no love for Duke but I guess they have some pretty decent researchers there. Still, I don’t think, from personal experience, that children who are spanked …

I was in court yesterday and although I recently graduated law school I wasn’t there to represent anyone, nor was I there to chat with a judge or observe lawyers in action. I was there because I had to drive my mother. It wasn’t for anything too bad. She just had some tickets or traffic violations that hadn’t been paid and were probably some kind of violation of probation, I don’t really know because I didn’t really ask. Anyway, I go to take her and my uncle wanted to come …

You can’t always go home. I watched Grosse Pointe Blank all the way through for the first time today and John Cusack said that when he realized his childhood home had been turned into an Ultimart. He was home for his high school reunion (incidentally, I’m on the committee to plan my HS reunion right now) and people were all weird and asking where he’d been. I used to think my reunion would be cool. Now I’m like ugh. I digress…
Who says you can’t always go home? People always say …

I had the dumbest conversation a couple days ago. I was sitting here with my uncle and my step-dad (who is only my step-dad because saying “my sister’s father” is so cumbersome) enjoying the night breeze, drinking Guiness and Heineken (my uncle opted for Steel Reserve. SMH), and blowing it down (cuz that’s what the kids are calling it).
Anyway, my step-dad, who has been broken up with my mom for years now, was talking to us about all of his female troubles. He’s a single dad with two girls …

I used to have this cat named Tiggah (womp womp, yeah I know). Anyway, I got Tig when I was a junior in college and had this lil off campus apartment. At first my roommates were all like “that’s your cat so no one else is responsible for taking care of him”. I could understand that. However, after a little while, Tig began to grow on everyone who came around. He was so cute and I watched him grow from the little kitten I got from the shelter into a nice …

These trying financial times coupled with the holiday season made me wonder how my family was able to make Christmas so good for me as a child. At any given point in time, there was usually only one person in the household with a full-time job. I can barely feed and clothe myself right now on this student budget I’ve got. How in the hell did my grandmother and ‘nem put so many gifts under the tree and food on the table? As a good friend recently said, clearly people …

A lot of folks are of the opinion that girls who grow up without their father’s presence have issues, particularly concerning other men in their lives. While I believe that is true for some, I don’t know if that’s particularly true for me at this point. Granted, there are some things I have little patience for that I can trace back to my father.
For example, I hatehatehatehate waiting on men. I don’t like being stood up. I don’t like people taking too long and not calling. I don’t like promises …

I have no concept whatsoever of what it’s like to be a child of divorced parents. I just saw this girl on the show Private Practice crying because she thought her parents were going to get back together. I really can’t understand what that must be like. My parents were never married to begin with. Where I grew up, I can’t recall ANY of my friends’ parents being married. Well, wait, I just thought of one, but that’s it. I can usually empathize with people on a number of things …