Motherhood In Retrograde: Can People Miss What They Never Had?

My college-educated, former school teacher mother chose myself and my two sisters over her career. It was a choice she and my father made together. (Picture, my mother and my baby sister, Deidre)Feminism is back, guys! (Of course, if you ask the editors at Ms. Magazine and the women of NOW, it never left.) But thanks to Sheryl Sandberg's book "Lean In" and its advice that women need to stop pussyfooting around and get to running stuff everyone's talking about feminism like it's 1969. Case in point: New York Magazine has a feature called "The Feminist Housewife" which I thought was going to be about someone like my mom -- a woman who chose a traditional marriage but raised her daughters to be independent and self-starters -- but instead it's just about some lady who really likes staying at home, raising her kids and still believes in all the traditional gender roles.

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Clutch Magazine: Choosing Safety Over Independence For Black Children

In my latest post for Clutch Magazine Online, I write at length about the efforts black parents go through to keep their children safe, even at the expense of their child developing better skills to be independent. While it may be easy to throw out advice and parenting rules and bring up all sorts of psychology studies to black parents, most are solely concerned with making sure their son or daughter doesn't become a statistic, freedom be damned.

Here's a snippet after the jump.

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Black Men Blame Media, Themselves For Less Cliff Huxtable, More "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" Stereotype

For Father's Day this Sunday, The Root did a poll of black dads talking about the "bad rap" they get, with 64 percent of those men blaming the media for the negative perception. But, 21 percent of those polled also blamed black men themselves for the problematic reputation of being non-existent or negligent fathers. 

More after the jump.

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Berating Your Children Into "Greatness" (Now With Stereotypes)

Mother, professor and Chinese American lady Amy Chua wrote a crazy piece for the Wall Street Journal where she seemed to have confused being a strict parent with being a control freak, then wrapped it in a pretty bow of "stereotype" declaring that it was common place for many Chinese mothers to make their 7-year-old practice piano for three hours at a time whether they had an interest in it or not.

In the piece she posits Chinese people are able to produce amazingly successful children by essentially beating the greatness into them through guilt and shame and telling them they are fat and worthless unless they do this one thing exactly the way mommy wants.

So, you know. It's a comedy.

More after the jump.

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Parents, Children Need To Dream A Bigger Dream

Little girl and woman at Fair (Belton Family photo) My mother taught me about sex when I was nine-years-old. Nine. Years before my first period or puberty. Years before I was interested in having sex. Years before peers and television would try to feed me misinformation.

She wanted me to hear it from her first because she knew the truth. She wanted to give me the choice that only knowledge can bring.

More after the jump.

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