| Get Into It! Spring - Summer 2008 |
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Have you ever done an Internet search for the words “African mothers?” In my work for Black Woman and Child, it is a term that I use often. And the results are usually similar: “African mothers are more likely to die in childbirth.” - “AIDS virus hits South African mothers” - “Education needed to help African mothers fight malaria” - “Infant Mortality...” - “Absence of pre- and post-natal facilities...” - and the list goes on and on.
The search for “Black mothers” is not so far-removed: “Why Black mothers are falling behind in breastfeeding” - “Black mothers twice as likely to retain postpartum weight” - “Risk factors...” - “Low birth weights...” - “Drug abuse...”
Question: Is there any good news out there for us?
Worldwide, the African mother has become the focus of much attention, usually as a tragic figure. We are the single mother. The welfare mother. The no-access-to-decent-healthcare mother. The babymama-drama mother. The HIV-orphan’s mother. The unprepared teenage mother. The undereducated mother. The mother who is always in need of special programs and assistance.
Popular culture doesn’t do us much
justice either. Movies consistently show us as drug-addicted
mothers, party-and-sex-driven mothers,
stripper-hustling-for-a-dollar mothers or
blowing-the-child-support-on-a-new-weave mothers.
In the face of these disproportionately negative images, Black Woman
and Child and other magazines like ours are working hard to provide
an alternative view.
Magazines like Mommy Too! magazine - www.mommytoo.com, Mahogany Baby - www.mahoganybaby.com and Mama Earth magazine - www.mamaearthmagazine.com join Black Woman and Child to focus on the capable and positive parenting from which African families benefit.
It’s not to say that we, like all mothers and families, don’t have our problems and issues. But what is needed here is a little bit of perspective. For centuries, families, Black and otherwise, have thrived and multiplied under our care. We have the right to hold our heads up high and reclaim our status as the original mother, the earth mother from whom all other cultures have taken their lead.
Nicole Osbourne James
Publisher
Photo: Nicole and son Sekou (20 months) playing homemade mas at Toronto’s Caribana. Photography by Paul Osbourne.
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What's On?
CNN Special: Blacks in America
"Somebody who saw that special will be looking at me now, thinking that I am probably pregnant with twins for a man whose name I don’t know and looking to the welfare system to support me because it is obvious that a black man never would, right?!"