Policing Unconventional Black Motherhood
According a 2010 study titled “Historical Changes in Stay-at-Home Moms: 1969 to 2009,” black mothers are half as likely to remain in-home with their children as opposed to working full-time outside the home. This isn’t a new or surprising revelation to those of us who’ve grown up watching generation after generation of matriarchs leave the home to help provide income for their children. But what’s less examined in the black community are the differences in parenting styles among black women who do opt to stay-at-home–particularly among those who do so as single parents or as parents whose income doesn’t allow for many conventional comforts.
Single stay-at-home moms are an even smaller subset, as it’s rare to find work-from-home employment lucrative enough to make the option possible. But a few mothers are able to manage it. One is blogger Ani Lacy, who chronicles raising a son with special needs at her personal site and on Twitter. Lacy decided to homeschool her son, to ensure that he receives the individualized care and attention he needs to intellectually thrive. She believes in simple, sustainable living, which prioritizes homemaking over financial gain. Recently, she embarked on a campaign to take their at-home classroom on the road. She began raising money to buy an RV so that she and her son could “roadschool,” which is a growing trend among homeschooling parents.
“Roadschooling” is the practice of educating by way of extended road trip. The idea is to allow the child to learn about different regions and cultures and practices by seeing them firsthand. In addition to roadschooling, “unschooling” is another learning style on the rise. Unschooling is allowing your child to find his or her own interests and to be educated through a daily practice of self-exploration. With less oversight than the traditional homeschooling model, roadschooling and unschooling have come under protest and debate. Each state has homeschooling laws that parents/home-educators must adhere to. Parents to ascribe to either of these more unconventional models are still expected to meet those requirements.
It would seem that if no harm’s being done to the child, each parent should be able to define the educational and rearing style that works best for her own child. But what happens in a community or extended family unit that is unaccustomed to parenting that’s a bit left-of-the-middle? If choosing to stay at home is an unconventional choice, homeschooling is even more unexpected–and roadschooling or unschooling can be nearly unfathomable.
Extended family has a penchant for sticking its nose into parents’ choices. Whether it’s their decision to raise a vegan or vegetarian child, a resistance to perm, a neighborhood the family finds questionable, or language the child’s allowed to use, we’re used to aunts, grandmothers, and cousins chiming in. But sometimes, “chiming in” crosses a line.
It certainly has for Lacy, whose latest blog entries and tweets have chronicled a series of police and social service visits prompted by her extended family’s complaints about her parenting. The complaints followed their discovery of her intent to roadschool. The situation escalated until her son was forcibly removed from the home for seven days, while an investigation into her mothering ensues. Despite a lack of evidence, save the dangerous accusations of three family members’ who haven’t seen Lacy or her son in a year (and thus have not witnessed any of the misconduct alleged, during that time), Lacy’s custody was rather easily stripped.
It’s an extreme and tragic case that raises a series of concerns. Should unconventional parenting choices be grounds for involving social services? Should concerns over practices with which you’re unfamiliar lead you to call a parent’s competency into question? Should a lack of interest in earning more money than is absolutely necessary to fulfill your personal parenting objectives (like roadschooling), be grounds for serious concern and accusation?
In less severe cases, where the law is not involved, extended family’s policing of non-customary parenting practices can still lead to accusations, threats and heartache. If you’ve ever heard someone admonish, “You’re gonna turn him into…” or “She’s going to be _______, if you keep _______,” then you know how difficult it can be for a parent defend her choices among family who believe they know better.
<Were you raised in a way considered unconventional by your family? Is another family member raising their child in a way that isn’t “the norm?” How is the extended family handling it?
My parents were pretty conventional except where politics and religion were concerned; they were pretty liberal, and that allowed me to form my own relationship with God, explore educational and career opportunities, and live my life on my own terms much to the chagrin of well-meaing extended family members. When realitives would begin their commentary on my infrequent church attendance, nomadic lifestyle throughout my 20′s and my carefree attitude towards relationships, my late mother would remind them, first and foremost that I was “her child”, not theirs, that I hadn’t brought home any trouble, or anything she had to help feed or clothe (i.e., a baby), and that a lot of folks sitting in pews every Sunday are going to end up busting hell wide open. That would pretty much shut the brave soul that dared to broach the subject in the first place.
Wow, it’s really horrible that they took the child away on nothing but a complaint with no witnessed wrong doing. I mean is it really that easy? No eye witnesses to any abuse of any kind and after a preliminary investigation the charges should have been dropped. This is RIDICULOUS! That little boy should never have been taken from his mother.
As far as other people disliking your parenting choices that’s their problem. I am a firm believer that children are a gift from God and there is no greater responsibility. If anyone if my family didn’t like my choice they simply would have no contact with my or my children every again. I would move if possible, change my cell number and any other contact info and simple never speak to them again. With all the issues going on in the black community for your family to contact child services or the police because you are taking care of your kid is outrageous. As soon as I got my kid back I would leave and they would never hear from me again.
I Got Sense! do you know how many instances occur where children are being abused. Being an “unconventional” parent will raise flags and seing as the child is the important one here, I don’t have a problem. Remember this mother is not “normal” by society standards so why leave things to chance. Although the child was taken away the mother should understand its because of her methods. It is better for the authorities to check the situation out than to leave things to chance. I’m suprised that it happened so fast!
@Paula
Okay, so apparently you read the parts you wanted and skipped the rest so let me posted again. “No eye witnesses to any abuse of any kind and after a preliminary investigation the charges should have been dropped.”
That means, complaints should ABSOLUTELY be investigated BUT if there is no EYE WITNESS to any misconduct or abuse and evidence to suggest that their is, charges should be dropped and the child NEVER should have been removed from her home.
If someone can come take your kids simply because they don’t like the way you are raising them, the USA is even more screwed up than I thought. Again, what’s “normal”, “unconventional” and “traditional” is irrelevant because nothing today is normal or traditional. I don’t give a damn what methods the parents are using as long as the child is being taken care of properly and no laws are being broken. This a shame and if I were her I’d move and cut ALL CONTACT with my family. I would never want my child to be around someone who is as vindictive and cruel as to traumatize a child for no reason other than “we don’t like how she raising him”. I guess those “concerned” people didn’t think of how horrifying it would be for the child to be forcibly taken away from their parent(s), surrounded by strangers and questioned, and to live in an unfamiliar surrounding too young to truly understand what is going on. They don’t give a damn about the child. They did that to hurt the mother. If they were really concerned about the welfare of the child they would be looking for signs of abuse (which I hope you know) and making a decision from there since they had ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF TO ANY ABUSE and OBVIOUSLY there wasn’t any since the child was returned. Try that crap somewhere else. They are horrible people for putting that mother and child through that and I hope she never has contact with them again.
I got sense! while I can understand how you feel about the apparent tragedy you see. I have to remind you that as an internet bystander we have even less perspective on the situation that the family or authorities involved.
For instance maybe it wasn’t easy to have the child removed, maybe school instructors worried about a child being put in class and removed frequently, might have started the whole thing, Maybe a mother who removed all contact from the grandparents of a child started calling them to threaten that she would kill her child. Maybe when that happened it resulted in multiple non positive encounters with the police that were all documented and serve as proof of instability. Maybe this mother has a long history of instability stretching before the birth of her child. Maybe the father of her child isn’t a deadbeat that doesn’t care about his son. Maybe the father has been in contact with the social worker for the past month and a half and is preparing and changing his entire life to take his son into his custody as it should have been in the first place.
Just sayin’
Well, as long as the child is meeting state requirements and standardized testing benchmarks, then, in theory, homeschooling and roadschooling shouldn’t be a problem.