If you had asked me as a teenager what I was going to be when I grew up, I might have said Pulitzer prize winning writer or Emmy award winning producer, but stay at home mom? Nope. Never. That was after all, in my mind, something that white women did. Somehow the image of an apron wearing June Cleaver serving a pot roast to her husband had never been too appealing, and in the black community, where the path to success is through economic empowerment, the job of full time mother is rarely at the top of anyone's list.
But after graduating from college with a journalism degree, earning an Ivy League Masters degree and 13 years as a working journalist, I started to feel a gut- wrenching tug that I had never felt before. My mother had just passed away and the fire that burns in just about every good journalist's belly was starting to fade. On maternity leave with my second child, I yearned to put everything on the shelf and return to the nest. My husband had a steady salary with benefits, and after a trial run living on one income, we knew it could be done. I left my job at NBC News and never looked back.
Little did I know the repercussions of wiping away an identity that had taken me years to create. I was no longer Kuae the journalist, the one who used to work for high profile news organizations, who kept a bag packed in her office just in case breaking news beckoned me to rush to the airport. I was no longer the young journalist who moved from Miami to Chicago to work for The Oprah Winfrey Show. I had joined the ranks of the mommies who I saw pushing their kids in Peg Perego strollers around New York's Upper West side, the ones who lived to bounce their babies on their laps at Gymboree, clap their hands at Music Together and meet at the local Starbucks to share war stories about how their kids didn't sleep through the night.
It took me nearly two years to reconcile my newfound identity as a stay at home mother, not just from a journalist's standpoint, but as a black woman who had been raised, just like her friends, to excel academically, go to a good college and work twice as hard to climb up the corporate ladder. There were sleepless nights when I worried that I had made the wrong choice, that I had just let my career plummet down the drain. That is until I began to meet other mothers who looked like me, who had done the same thing... gone to college, gone to work, and made the unlikely choice to stay at home and raise their children. Many of their stories were similar to mine. Some had grown tired and weary of the daily corporate grind, a world that was often unforgiving and cold. Others decided they didn't want a sitter or nanny raising their children, and they didn't want them in day care either. Some were fed up with a broken public school system. They wanted greater control over their children's destiny. They wanted to focus on their families, and they were willing and able to make the financial sacrifice. Parents and friends told them that staying at home meant they were "throwing it all away," and implied that it would be an affront to their race.
Historically, African-American women have not had the choice, and the luxury, to stay at home. In the 1950s, when white women were heeding the call to stay at home, black women were working. In fact, black women have always worked, because generations before them worked and because they had to. We were the cooks and the cleaners and the maids and the seamstresses. During slavery, we took care of other people's children, a pattern that continues today.
So in 2001, as I sat in a living room with other black women who had not only chosen to stay at home, but to support each other, I realized that their choice was profound. We discovered thousands of other mothers who had made a similar choice through a national, non-profit support organization called Mocha Moms, Inc., started in 1997 by four mothers in Maryland. These women weren't the stereotypical stay at home mothers that I had once envisioned. They were smart and savvy, motivated and inspiring. They wanted to share ideas, discuss issues and topics. They wanted to educated their own, instill values and strengthen their marriages. And contrary to what the title suggests, they didn't stay at home. They were in the schools volunteering in classrooms, mentoring children, working in the community, serving on school boards and in town government.
Mocha Moms exists, on a basic level, to set the record straight... that there are in fact two parent African-American families in which one parent makes the choice to stay at home. Today, there are 100 chapters in 29 states. Mothers meet weekly for mother's support group meetings and monthly for mom's only get-togethers. They participate in a wide range of community service as part of a national initiative to help close the gaps in health, prosperity and achievement, and big companies and organizations are taking notice.
While the mainstream media has spent years both confirming and dispelling the notion that more professional white women are making the choice to stay at home, simmering below the radar is this quiet revolution of professional African American mothers who are making the choice. While the recession has dealt a particularly harsh blow to the ranks of black stay at home mothers, many have launched home based businesses, gone back to work part time or flex time and done what it takes to make it work.
The ability to make a choice that a generation ago might not have fathomed speaks to another level of success among African American women. Black stay at home mothers are raising their own children, supporting each other, giving back to their communities and here to stay.
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It was that independent tone that so many young black women are raised by that even took over a bible study intended to teach women to be better women and mothers! And the attitudes were so negative and pervasive I quit going to the study and even left that church.
It's important that we raise our young women to know that for the best a family can offer, there must be a working dad and a mom at home. My daughters were raised as such and my daughter who just completed her Master's and newly married, also wants to be a stay at home mom when the children come. She's in law school right now but she wants to get all of her education out the way before the little ones come. Hopefully, they'll come before her career starts because it may be very difficult to walk away after that! Her husband is an electrical engineer so they will not be hurting too badly!
Mission accomplished! As for me, I take great pleasure in knowing I now have time to do what I love doing and that is writing. I was quite pleased to see my blog hit the top 20 in Amazon newcomer sales for Kindle readers! In other words, its never too late to get back to what we love doing AFTER doing our primary job as mothers!
Our kids are only young once and they grow up so quickly. I feel so privileged to be able to have this "moment in time" with them.
Work will always be there in the future!
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Louise
One of the things that is happening in the Black community is that Black women have reached (or come pretty close) to educational and professional parity with Black men. That means that there are great numbers of Black men who make less than their wives, and are therefore in situations where it might make more sense for the father to stay home rather than the mother.
Have you considered making any changes to Mocha Moms to encourage men to join? Even if the organization doesn't officially exclude men, the name alone would cause many of us to stay away since one of the additional concerns that we have is a worry that we will be seen as less masculine.
You are way off your information must be very old indeed. Women are way ahead and it has been that way for some time. Here are some stats on education attainment:
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72
For associate, bachelors, masters, and PHD black women are getting 60-66% of degrees.
Few women will be able to rely on a higher earning male to support them in the black community. I think they should consider stay at home dads as a viable option.
Considering how few stick around to even get to know their kids, I'd say this is an extremely unlikely possibility.
But families are not averages, they are two adults who have to address their individual concerns and the needs of their children. My point (with which I think you agree) is that the assumption that if one parent is going to stay home with the children, it will be the mother, is outdated. More importantly, such assumptions squander an opportunity to help create a model for black families that leverages the educational and professional success that black women have achieved.
Bottom line - we would be well served in the black community to reject historical gender assumptions about who makes more money, who stays home with the kids. "Mocha Stay at Home Parents" isn't nearly as catchy a name as "Mocha Moms" but I wonder if it might have been better.
Thank u for a great article.
I have been a stay at home now for 17 yrs. My daughter is a senior in HS.
I got a flack for this decision that my husband and I made. Flack from some family members.
For a long time I felt unproductive, and ashamed that I didn't work outside of the home.
I would keep this fact a secret whenever I could.
I am just getting around to believing that being a stay-at-home mom....is really a blessing.
Thanks again for sharing your story.
@ black women her age thought there was something wrong with her.
I am delighted to see you shine a spotlight on women like us! Like you, I was blessed with wonderful academic opportunities, producing stellar professional credentials. I really enjoyed my career, and it looks like you did too. But as I watched so many women in my office pursue career and motherhood simultaneously, I knew I wanted to follow a different path. I quit my job before getting married so I could position myself to be at home with my kids, and also start a business. I joined Mocha Moms and today, as the Word At Home Network Director, I have the pleasure of working with you and all those other amazing women your article speaks about, to encourage these women to maximize their potential through small business ownership.
Another thing I am seeing today, Kuae, is not only black women leaving traditional jobs to be at home while their children are young, but also putting their talents and skills to work to support their families financially, and also supporting each other in entrepreneurship. As they have always done, black women are making things happen on many levels. It is fun and exciting to be living in this time.
Under your leadership, Mocha Moms continues to thrive, and I am honored to work with you!