Literally.  Happy Father’s Day to everybody.

Twitter is a blessing and a curse. On the upside, it’s an amazing platform for the mingling of new ideas, a hub of creativity, and a great way to kill time and avoid all your offline responsibilities. At worst, it’s a microphone for the small minded, who have loud fingers and unlimited access to

Mind you, I’m a bit biased. I have some rather unpopular ideas about parenthood, many informed by my time spent in a single-parent home. These ideas are as follows:

1. Mother and father are pretty much biological terms. Anyone can be a mother. Anyone can be a father.

2. Women can raise good men, and men can raise good women. This is because being a good man or woman means only being a decent, upstanding person, regardless of sex or gender.

3. If we abolished Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replaced them both with Parent’s Day, that would be just swell. It would be more inclusive of all the different types of mothers and fathers out there.

I dread Father’s Day on Twitter every year because there’s always a huge outcry against people who dare take the opportunity to thank their single mothers for playing both roles. People who do that are almost unwaveringly seen as “bitter” rather than appreciative. Apparently, appreciating women on Father’s Day cheapens the importance of the day and weakens its sanctity (gee, where have we heard that rhetoric and language before?). You don’t see anyone wishing single dads a Happy Mother’s Day, they argue (which is actuallycompletelyuntrue — it just doesn’t happen en masse because there are far more single mothers than there are single fathers).

Parenthood transcends sex and gender. Sometimes the people who play the role of father in our lives are women. Sometimes our mothers used to be our fathers. Sometimes our aunts and cousins are better mothers to us than our birth mothers ever were.

Moms and dads don’t always look the way you want them to look; sometimes people’s definitions of motherhood and fatherhood may make you uneasy because they challenge your own. In that case, it’s not the job of those of us who love our unconventional parents to curve our adulation to make your more comfortable. It’s your job to let people be who they are and love how they want, across the board.

What is important isn’t that the terms of parenthood are rightly prescribed and assigned; it is that those charged with the duty of parenthood are deserving of any congratulation at all. In a perfect world, we’d all be too busy celebrating the fathers in our lives — whatever form they may take — to worry about how everyone else is celebrating theirs.

Brokey McPoverty is a writer and humorist whose work can be seen at The Root, The Huffington Post, PostBourgie, and Uptown Magazine, among other publications. You may also follow her on Twitter at @brokeymcpoverty.

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Before, he was just the belt wielder. Barber. Things-around-the-house fixer. Wood chopper. La-Z-Boy occupier. Pipe smoker. Grandmother’s nagging post. I wasn’t fond of him. As a disciplinarian, I came to see him as stern. And mean. So I kept my dealings with him limited. Nine-year-olds prefer grandmothers anyway. They’re softer. Permissive. Willing to bend rules for precocious children. Better at banana pudding from scratch. I was certain I chose well.

Then, certain reversals of fortune cause ten-year-olds to grow rapidly. Age substantially. Wizen prematurely. Grieve deeply.

Rules of the game would need to change. No more hiding in the billows of her dress. I couldn’t pit queen against king. Now, it was just the king and I. Two of us on a somewhat bare board. In a much-too-quiet house. Taken aback. Having to stare at each other in the eyes. Perhaps for the first time.

The king, though prized, is probably the most vulnerable in the game. Only moving about slowly, one space at a time. Not a problem with a queen present. She can fly around accomplishing multiple tasks at one time. Enforcing order while retreating selectively. Defending territory while deferring demurely. A queen makes every piece stronger. Losing one early puts the fate of the whole game at a disadvantage. Faced with the challenge, some kings concede. Mine reworked his strategy.

Statistically, spouses who do not re-marry, die after 10 years of viduity. This left him very little time to do twice the work he thought would need doing. His strides impressed me.

He learned how to talk. He also learned when not to. He became a quick study in affection. I don’t recall being at a loss. He learned how to be tender. Eventually, so did his food. He learned how to comfort with one hand, defend with the other. He learned how to forgive and how to lose his cool. Kept a pretty good record of doing both at only the right times. He even improved on the queen’s flaws, learning what to confront and what to ignore.

He learned how to exercise. He learned how to live. And he did a lot of it for me. He even surprised me towards the end. After years of failure, he finally learned how to cry. In hindsight, I suspect he probably practiced whenever I wasn’t looking. He really got good at it though and could do it without losing his dignity.

It was amazing to see it all. I didn’t know he could move like that. Zipping across the board like the queen I remember. Sustaining no losses. Occupying every space. She would be proud. I wouldn’t have survived alone. He won the game for me. In truth, he really was just a king. But if you let me tell it, he was everything.

 

Mark C. Coston is a musician and writer in Los Angeles, CA.

This photo, taken during Camp Divas’ Daddy-Daughter Dance in the multipurpose room at Richmond City Jail in Rhode Island. “A Dance of Their Own” is the only program of its kind in the U.S., but incarceration impacts an ever-growing number of father-child relationships.

I’ve yet to meet a woman who set out to become a single mother, but if there’s anything life has taught me, it’s this: You make plans. You have hope, and then life happens. You dust yourself off, make new plans, and dare to hope again. It’s cyclical. 

We met when I was 16 years old. His mother and I worked together at a fast food restaurant. At that time, my relationship with my own mother was tumultuous, so his mom took me under her wing and showed me the kind of love I thought I needed. He and I were friends first, but soon moved to a physical relationship.

Within a few years, we decided to be as serious as a 19 and 21-year-old could be.  We discussed a small courthouse wedding, three-bedroom brick house, and a baby. We tried for the baby first, and in July 2002, our first daughter was born.

By June 2003, we had a second daughter, and our relationship was over. Having children was my catalyst for change, but it didn’t mean the same for him. The lifestyle we led was fine when it was just us.  We both had been in and out of jail for various reasons.  But, having children meant that I was responsible for someone other than myself, and I refused to let them down.

His mother left six days before the birth of our first daughter to serve a ten-year federal prison term. I saw firsthand how devastating her departure was for the family, and I couldn’t do that to my children. I’d have to find another way. For him, it was cause to double-down on his old habits.

Last month he and several other family members, including his mother, were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on multiple drug charges.  He’s facing a minimum of 10 years in federal prison. His mother is facing a minimum of 20 years. The news shook me to my core when I realized I’d have to somehow explain to my wide-eyed 9- and 10-year-old girls that their entire immediate family was gone- and gone to prison no less.

For some reason, I always thought I could shield them from THIS side of things until they were adults, or at the very least teenagers.  At most, they knew their dad smoked cigars, hung out late at night, and didn’t have a regular job.  I only wanted them to know the redemption; I never wanted them to live through the pain of the process. The only thing I could do was pray.

I sat the girls down and explained that their father was in prison, that he’d be there for a very long time, but that they can write letters, talk to him on the phone, and visit whenever they’d like. I figured going with a positive approach (i.e. “You can talk to your dad and have his undivided attention now!”) would be best. Turns out it doesn’t matter how you spin bad news, it’s still bad.

My oldest daughter cried and she continues to cry about every other day. She’s also tried to runaway twice this week. The younger one hasn’t cried yet, but she is very angry with him. They both are.  [I’ve yet to disclose the status of their grandmother and other family members.]

I’ve watched my daughters carefully scan gym bleachers for their father at the championship game, and countless times I’ve run out of excuses for why he couldn’t be there. I find minimal comfort in the fact that, now, one reason for his absence will remain constant. Honestly, no matter how angry he made me over the years, I still held out hope that he would come around. I saw glimpses of an “aha moment” at the one basketball game he attended.  His eyes lit up when she dribbled down the court, he said how much he wished he had been there for other games, and promised to do better. I believed it was just a matter of time before he’d truly “get it” as a parent.

Some pain is inevitable, and all pain certainly causes you to grow. You find character and strength in the trenches.  I know these things.  But I’m not a fan of the lesson – not by any stretch of the imagination.

In the past month, I’ve questioned my own parenting and the choices I’ve made. Hell, I’ve blamed myself for the father I chose for my daughters.  It’s heartbreaking to see your children hurt, to watch them wonder how their love could return to them void, but I know that I’m not in this alone.

I find comfort in knowing that others have gone on to do this successfully.  I pray that at some point they will have a relationship with their father.  And I remain hopeful that even if they don’t, they’ll still turn out okay.  Countless children have grown up to become amazing men and women without their fathers being in their lives.  That is the truth I stand on.  But, in the meantime, I’ll continue to wrap my arms around them as they lie next to me, wondering why they weren’t enough.

Jerdi is the mother of two daughters, aged 9 and 10. You can follow her on Twitter and send words of encouragement and support at @justjerdi.

Because no one site can cover everything, as it relates to minority fatherhood, we thought we’d roundup a few really thoughtful posts we read this week. The diversity of perspectives should serve to fill in some of the gaps in our coverage. We hope you enjoy these links as much as we did.

• Camp Diva founder Angela Patton’s TEDTalk shares the story of how the teen girls in her organization all rallied to connect a teen daughter and her incarcerated father for their annual Daddy-Daughter dance. “A letter was written to the Richmond City Sheriff, signed collectively by all the girls.” The sheriff’s reply: “Whenever there is an opportunity to bring families inside, [my] doors are always open…. When fathers are connected to their children, it is less likely that they will return.” Listen to the full story, complete with pictures of the Camp Diva dads and daughters dancing with their fathers in the visiting room of the correctional facility:

• Joshunda Victoria Sanders blogs with breathtaking vulnerability and courage about father loss and the importance of social fathers (father figures) in Father Time:

A surrogate Dad is a lifesaver, like any surrogate. It’s not the same as having the man who helped create you take an active role in helping you see the world and your place in it. There is no substitute for the missed father-daughter bonding, the “talk” or how to relate to men in the world as a strong-willed woman (I don’t think anybody really knows). But being jaded or angry is a waste of energy. Like holding a hot coal and expecting another person to suffer, the saying goes.

• On this week’s Hip Hop is for Lovers podcast, hosts Uche and Lenee sat down with guests Wil and Stefan (who was also featured here this week) for an episode called “Stuntin’ Like My Daddy,” which discussed — among other things — how the terms “baby daddy” and “baby mama” are often used as pejoratives and whether or not black couples “beat themselves up” for not having traditional, two-parent households.

• In his piece for The Atlantic, “YouTube is My Father,” Michael Anthony Adams writes about the various things he learned from instructional clips on YouTube, growing up without a father and with a mother who worked crazy hours supporting the family:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a third of American children are living in fatherless homes, and some sociologists have gone as far as to say that the absence of a father in a child’s life is the greatest social problem facing America. Certainly it would be absurd to consider YouTube as an adequate alternative to an actual father-figure in the home; however, by using it as a free parenting tool, single mothers can help develop father-oriented traits in the child’s growth process.

• Visual artist Sabrina Thompson has launched a photo and video campaign to promote more positive images of black fathers. Here is the first installment, titled “Fatherhood is…“.

• At Momsrising, Brandale Randolph writes about the diminishing expectations of black fathers in Fathers have become unicorns:

Racism says that black men are not fathers. Racism is used to black men being daddies, but not fathers. Racism says that black men do not want to be fathers. To see a black man lead his family by supporting them through self-sacrifice, flies in face of every racist stereotype imaginable. I am not supposed to be smart enough to understand the postpartum depression that occurs among women who are not allowed to continue on the career paths. I am not supposed to be so selfless, that I put the needs of my family before my own. I am not supposed to give my children a sense of self-worth by my continued presence but by the presents that I can purchase for them. I am not even supposed to love their mother but treat her disrespectfully at all times. In a sense, I, as a black man, am not supposed be a father.

I choose to be a father. I love this lifestyle called fatherhood that I have chosen.

• Sean Palmer writes in “It’s Not the Bible’s Fault. You Might Just Be a Bad Dad” at his site, The Palmer Perspective, about fathers who use religious reinforcement of traditional gender roles as an excuse not to be hands-on parents:

In defense of the “Mom-Must-Stay-Home” ideology, I once heard a pastor say, “It’d be terrible for our kids if I stayed home. Ha ha.” If he believes that, he’s right.  But he’s not right because he is male. He’s right because his attitude makes him a crappy father. [...] as long as the narrative continues which articulates that men lack what it takes to nurture and raise children; as long as some argue that the cultivation of children is the domain of women only, we will continue to produce dads who believe they risk their “man-card” by trying.

• This morning, The Today Show profiled Terrell Starr, a Fulbright scholar who, at 29, found the father he never knew via Facebook. They’ve been in touch ever since.

Have you been reading anything interesting about fatherhood this week? Let us know by leaving a link in the comments.

Adam Carnegie

Beyond Baby Mamas: This your first Father’s Day! How are you feeling about it?

Excited! I was thinking about it for a couple months before he even arrived. Even though it happened sooner than I expected, I’ve always looked forward to becoming a father. This experience has been such a blessing. I’m not thinking about myself so much as taking another day to celebrate him being here. I’m celebrating fatherhood in the broader sense. It is an honor to be in this fraternity.  It’s helped in my relationship with my father as well.

I think there are some things you’re never going to be prepared for as parents. As much as I heard and expected, I wasn’t prepared for the immense love that I feel. Or the sense of protection. Or just the total shift from thinking about myself to thinking about him. Or fully adjusting to the lack of sleep. Ha. There’s a lot that I was prepared for, mostly due to my 20 month old nephew and my involvement in his life. There is also this new world of co-parenting. I learn something new every day as we navigate the space. I think the only real preparation for that is honestly coming in with an open spirit, a commitment towards communication, and mutual love and respect. 

BBM: Do you know men who aren’t as engaged with their children as they could be?

I thought really long and hard about this but I actually don’t know any men who aren’t as engaged as they could be. My family and inner circle are small, but even when I extend the range, I really don’t know any fathers that don’t go 100% for their kids.

BBM: That’s wonderful to hear! As you may know, for those families who didn’t have full-time dads, Father’s Day can prompt a lot of conflicting response. What do you think of the practice of people wishing single mothers a Happy Father’s Day?

Wishing single mothers “Happy Father’s Day” always came off as silly to me. Mothers do exactly what the title says: they mother. Saying this to a mother where the father is absent also comes off as offensive. You never know what the situation is and whether or not that is still a sensitive nerve for the mother. I know that if the tables were turned and I was in that place, I would walk away from any person who wished me “Happy Mother’s Day.”

BBM: On Monday, Roger Bonair-Agard wrote about a saying he read once: “The best thing my father ever did for me was love my mother?” Do you agree that it’s important for children to feel like their parents love and respect one another, even if things don’t work out? 

David M. Pittman

Beyond Baby Mamas: Did you plan when you would become a father or were you caught off guard by the news that you’d soon be one?

Elijah was a bit unexpected, but his mother and I had been planning on marriage for awhile. Ezra was very much planned (hence the five year gap between them). I was 24 when I became a father, fresh out of grad school with a brand new bride. It was, to say the least, tough. But I grew up with him, and it worked.

BBM: How did you prepare for the role? Did you have an immediate idea of the kind of father you’d want to be?

I think I always wanted to be a father. I wanted to be just like my dad, who is an excellent role model. If I could be just a fraction of what he was to me, I’d consider that a success. He’s like Dr. Huxtable, Roc Emerson, and Atticus Finch all rolled up in one.

BBM: It sounds like you two were quite close when you were growing up.

We are very close. My parents were great at co-parenting, and as an only child, they never spoiled me but definitely didn’t want me to feel as if I had two homes. I lived with my dad, and you only realize later when you have your own kids that every moment is a parenting moment. Riding in the car to church, sitting in the barbershop, mowing the lawn, making dinner. Those are all opportunities to teach your children. And interact with them. And love them. And for me, in hindsight, that’s where he excelled. Those in-between moments. Not the punishments or the rewards. He did great with those too. But the little times far exceed those.

We could do better. We’ve come light years than what it used to be. But there still is this notion that it’s abnormal. And it’s not. When women stop me and say it’s so good to see a young black man with his kids (I am notorious for wrestling or kissing or tickling them in public), I say thank you, but I wonder why. I see black men with their kids all the time. I love going to their schools and helping out.

Also, there’s more support for black moms (especially middle and upper middle class mothers). I remember this group Mocha Moms that my ex-wife used to go to, and it was wonderful, but I thought, why isn’t there a group like this for dads. And I then I didn’t think about it too much after that.

Love them. Be honest with them. Show them affection that is 10 times greater than any punishment you give them. You are not just the enforcer. You can love and nurture as hard as a mother can. Don’t be hard on them (especially sons) but don’t let them think the world is easy. Doing this is like planting a seed and watering it. Eventually your kids will be dying to spend time with you.

BBM: What is one specific way in which fatherhood has changed you?

I am unsure. I’m sure I have. Besides the generic not selfish, forced me to look inside, I really don’t have much. I’ve grown for sure, but I’m still the same person I have been. Now with kids. Which makes me more awesome.

David Pittman is 33 years old and lives in Silver Spring. He’s a project manger with the Department of Homeland Security. Most importantly, he is father to two incredible sons, Elijah, 9, and Ezra, 4.

Robert Gillespie and son Marco, (c) KLK 2011

Beyond Baby Mamas: How old were you when you became a dad? Where were you in life (fairly established, personally and professionally, or still finding your footing)?

I was 41 when I became a dad. I was established professionally and personally but had a job that required frequent (often at short notice) international travel, so I had to change jobs in order to be a single father.

BBM: How did you become the custodial parent of your son?

Biologically, my son is my nephew but his birth parents are unable to care for a child. I have had him since he was two days old and I have legally adopted him.

BBM: When people find our that you’re raising him on your own, do they make a big deal of it?

Many people do, particularly if they find out he’s adopted.

BBM: What do you think it means, in general, that people tend to compliment single fathers for performing parenting duties on their own?

This is a tough question. In some sense, I understand why people are sometimes so complimentary about single fathers; there are certainly fewer single fathers than single mothers. But sometimes I think the compliments mask the fact that a lot more fathers are raising kids by themselves, that we are becoming more of a norm.

BBM: Do you think expectations of fathers are lower than those of mothers?

I think this is a popular narrative in TV/movies (immature/incompetent Dad married to Supermom) and some of my experiences would seem to confirm it. Various women at my job often make comments on how “men aren’t good at that” when I bring up a part of parenting. I’ve actually had people ask me questions along the lines of, “Does his mother know you are doing X?”

BBM: How do you manage parenting, full-time work, and your health?

Some days I feel like I don’t! I am fortunate that even though I have a fairly demanding job, I have complete flexibility when it comes to parenting. My son is now in school and has a great aftercare so it has become even easier to balance work and parenting. The health part is the hardest, as have a chronic form of leukemia and, as it progresses, it compromises my energy level a bit.

BBM: Look 10-15 years into the future. What kind of man do you hope/imagine your son has become by then?

Not living in my house! I hope my son at that age has internalized and begun to employ the values and lessons I have tried to instill in him. I hope he will be a young man with a plan for where he wants to go in life, a goal for education or work that he can succeed at. I hope he has tremendous pride in his heritage and our family’s history. I hope his Spanish is better than mine.

BBM: What kinds of support and resources are essential for a father raising his children alone?

My family lives on the West Coast and I live in DC so it was critical for me to build a network of support—babysitters, daycares. I also have a close friends who provide support and help, particularly short-notice care. Finding the “right” school, daycare, and aftercare is a key in my opinion. You need folks in those roles who work as your partners.

I wanted my son in a Spanish Immersion school with other Latino children. That school however wouldn’t work with us well and we’ve moved to a new, great school which doesn’t have immersion Spanish but does have a largely Latino student body.

BBM: What is one of the greatest joys you’ve experienced as a father?

Watching a child discover the world and their joy and surprise as they learn new things is an amazing thing, not only because of the child’s contagious joy but also because you learn so many new things about yourself as a parent.

BBM: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer an expectant unmarried father?

The most basic piece of advice I can give is that while parenting is really hard work, you can learn it and succeed at it. I had zero experience with children before my son was born. I’d never dated a woman with young kids, had no nieces/nephews, had never even changed a diaper. But you learn quickly. It’s by far the best job you will ever have.

Robert Gillespie grew up out West, in Oregon and California. Now, he serves as Director of Engineering for an Aerospace Company near DC. He also helps to run the DC United Latino Supports Group, La Barra Brava. Robert has been a dad for six years now.

Roger Bonair-Agard

Having spent three great (albeit tumultuous, on a personal front) years in Chicago, I was about to return to my beloved Brooklyn. Half of my stuff was packed. My moving date was two weeks away. I was scheduled to attend a wedding the following day with an on again/off again lover, whom I had dated fairly consistently when I first moved to Chicago, but now we saw each other every other week or so after having gone through a stretch of time when we had broken up and didn’t get down at all. It seemed like it’d be a chill enough road trip to go with her to her cousin’s wedding – a six-hour jaunt to Cincinnati. But she wanted to talk to me that night, the night before we left – urgently. I couldn’t understand why because we were going to be sitting in a car for six hours the following day. So I meet with her and she drops The News. I’m stunned. She was on the pill. I ask, “What do you want to do?” She says, “Oh, I’m keeping it…”

Three months later I’m having coffee with a friend I haven’t seen in years in a coffee shop at the corner of Franklin and Fulton in what used to be one of the most gully neighborhoods in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. This woman is a brilliant, thoughtful, sensitive, poet with whom I went to college. We’ve enjoyed a parallel poetic literary evolution in the world, even publishing books with the same press. My time in Brooklyn now is temporary as I make plans to return to Chicago in time for the birth and to figure out how and where I will be a father and co-parent. I tell her the story of how the ‘news’ got dropped on me. She says, “You know… I don’t believe a woman ever traps a man, but you ain’t exactly freed a nigga either. That’s that shit I call The Abstracted Trap.” We bust out laughing over our expensive coffees, can’t stop giggling for five minutes before we return to the morning sport of hipster-watching.

But it dawned on me shortly thereafter that what happened between Lydia – lover/baby-mama – and I that evening was really powerful. Faced with an unplanned eventuality, we both made very empowered choices. She wasn’t waiting to hear what I wanted to do, and one can surmise that at that moment she was quite willing to get on with her life with a baby even if I had said I wanted nothing to do with it. Indeed, I felt in that moment empowered to do that if I wanted. After all, we were having sex with the assumption of protection from pregnancy (though I’d like to stress that one should be aware that babies are a potential consequence of any kind of fucking). But I intended to be involved in a positive way in the life of any child I was ever to have, and so I made a choice too – to figure out, alongside her how we were going to raise a child. It is important to understand that not every one has the same kind of freedom of choice. Lydia and I are college educated, and both old enough to consider the responsibility of the choice (she, 27 and I, 44, at the time of The Decision). Neither of us had other children, or situations in our lives that would make attending to the task at hand any more complicated than it was already going to be. Straight away I decided I’d be back to support with doctors’ visits and what not, and for at least the first three months of the child’s life. As the pregnancy progressed and the idea of what life might look like I decided I’d be moving back to Chicago for at least the first year.

I forget who said it but I’ve heard, and am willing to get behind, this oft-repeated quote: “the best thing my father ever did for me was to love my mother.” My grail has become exactly this. How do I love my daughter’s mother? Nina was born one month ago as of the 13th of June. This is my first ever Father’s Day. What was to be a last fling kind of a “it’s been real, I’ll see you round the way when I’m back in town or you in Brooklyn” kinda deal, has turned into an elongated romantic consideration in which we’ve decided to live together for the first three months (during those turbulent feeding and sleeping schedules), and then close by, while continuing to share responsibilities for Nina, and lives as lovers. Because we have had in the past a non-exclusive sexual relationship though, there is the chance soon enough, of other lovers of ours entering Nina’s life. For me, the question about loving the child’s mother becomes more expansive. How do I make choices that allow me to model responsible, fair, fulfilling, loving relationships with any woman who enters my life, including of course, the woman whose importance in my life has now deepened and broadened a thousand-fold; her mother?

If you refer to the woman who has carried your child to term as ‘the mother of my child’, no-one bats an eyelid. Refer to her as ‘my baby-mama’ and folks bristle. Why would you call her such a thing? It appears that the connotation of the more colloquial reference is far worse than if I were to use the Queen’s English, and apart from the complex race and class undertones involved here, is the question about assumptions of what it means – to use an antiquated, sexist, phraseology – to make an honest woman of her. Chances are that over the course of the next 20 years, my relationship with Lydia will evolve radically. The chance of its adhering to a conventional model of family life is slim. I’m going to be charged with ensuring that ours is a united front of respect and love and that ‘baby-mama’ has the same weight as wife, as mother of my child, as person with whom I will forever be fortunate to have made a child. Nina will need to see us work hard to accommodate each other’s needs, and to meet hers, and to respect each other’s boundaries. Most of all, she will need to be able to see her father as an ally towards respected personhood and feminist empowerment. I will have to work even harder to keep myself honest in that regard.

If you are a man who has had even moderate success in the dating arena, your friends will shake their heads when they hear you have a girl child on the way, or they will say it serves you right, or they will say it’s time to buy a shotgun or they will say – to the man with multiple daughters – poor guy! They will say, now you will know what it is like. Your infant daughter will immediately be cast in the role of the hunted, the infant boys – young hunters. Your daughter is prey before she has left the womb, and we hold this up. We celebrate the continuance of this every day. If you haven’t already been engaging in this introspection, you will certainly consider the times you yourself participated in this and even if, like me, you fancy yourself enlightened, you will dig deeper into the crates of your romantic history attempting to deconstruct your own selfishness, your own roughshod run over the emotions of lovers past. You will be forced to cross-examine who you are/were, and to what extent you’ve taken advantage of the power of your being a man in the relationships in your wake. Whatever ghost of girlfriends past digging you have to do, you have to draw a line between yourself and every woman with whom you interact, romantically or no, and ask yourself about the nature of power, the nature of masculinity, the difficulty of the gender construct. And when I say you, I mean me. And when I say you have to draw the line between you and all the women in your life, I mean I’m looking here at the first real opportunity I have to destroy the idea that a baby-mama is a less worthy individual than a wife and that there is such a thing as a woman, whom by her behavior, ability to marry or sexuality is more or less worthy of lofty position in our lives. Here is the chance, with a brand new girl human being in my life, to assert that not only does my baby mama come without the requisite drama, but that she is loved and treasured, her boundaries honored, and she is forever part of my family. She is no less so than if we were to be married, or exclusive partners, or any of the other ways in which certain kinds of relationships are privileged over others. She is certainly no less so than if I straightened up my diction, pronounced all my th’s and referred to her as ‘the mother of my child.’

When friends talk about how I will menace the boys who try to date my daughter, I wonder sometimes what then is my role if she decides she will date girls. Mostly, I hope that Lydia and I and her myriad aunties and uncles and godmothers and godfathers will have done such an awesome job, that menacing her dates is wholly unnecessary. Still, I fully plan to ensure that my daughter’s ability to defend herself physically, is formidable. I hope her ability to defend herself and open herself emotionally are equally formidable. I tell my friends that I have no intention to proscribe her sex to any greater degree than I would if she were born a boy. I want her to recognize the double-standard of the world she is in certainly, but I’m more interested in her feeling absolute ownership of her yesses and nos. I have more work to do in the deconstruction of my own transgressions in this regard. Much of that work must continue in therapy, but this here is the golden opportunity, to teach my daughter and her friends, and the youth whom I teach, boy and girl alike, the value of their choices, and the certainty of their ownership over them. Some day, if she so chooses, Nina Jane Merrill Bonair-Agard will be somebody’s baby-mama. She will be cherished. She will be loved. She will have entered and been embraced by someone else’s family. We will all be enriched for it.

Roger Bonair-Agard is a native of Trinidad & Tobago, and author of three collections of poems. His most recent, ‘Bury My Clothes’ is published by Haymarket Books (haymarketbooks.org).  He is Nina’s father.

And a post at the blog, Real Goes Right, titled, “Why Are Some Black Women So Comfortable Being Single Mothers?” crossed our Twitter feed just yesterday. (Google it if you’re interested; we won’t be linking.)

One of our contentions with the latter is that it makes broad assumptions about single mothers’ attitudes and motivations, without speaking to or referencing more than one single mother. (And, per usual, it does nothing to investigate fathers’ attitudes or motivations, opting instead to address women who preemptively prepare for the possibility of parenting alone.)

This is a fairly common practice, whether the lay cultural commentator uses underanalyzed statistics, informal conversation with a friend, or quick, out-of-context observation of strangers.

As we often point out, minority single mothers are among the most scrutinized and the least engaged group within the mothering community.

That makes the meme above all the more troubling. Not only does it appear to be primarily circulated by women, but it also seeks to actively disengage and distance one single mother from another based on differences in problem-solving and attitudes. It’s problematic because women within an already oppressed and stereotyped group are publicly fueling a larger societal effort to vilify unmarried mothers. Rather than piling on by attacking a single mom’s responses to issues that are much larger than how loud she is, how she confronts a child support issue, or how she manages money, it would be infinitely more effective to either engage her in nonjudgmental conversation or stop referencing her altogether.

Why not find out why she handles things differently instead of suggesting that she is less respectable than other single moms?

This is not to say that unmarried mothers will never find the actions of other unmarried mothers troubling. It’s likely that many of us will encounter moms whose parenting practices make it difficult to relate or empathize. But understanding one another always begins with mutual respect — and, for better or worse, we should absolutely want to understand one another.

As single mothers, our first line of defense against public misrepresentation is private and public respect for each other.

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With respect, support, and encouragement,

Stacia L. Brown, Founder