How My Fear Of The Single Black Mother Stereotype Kept Me In An Abusive Marriage

I was born a Black girl in New York City in the 1980s. It was a time when graffiti graced walls, Lojacks secured steering wheels, unsheltered people with substance abuse problems roamed the streets, and flashy drug dealers ruled corners. Who was responsible for this sordid state of affairs? Well if you watched TV and read the newspapers, many were saying that single Black mothers were to blame. Pundits and politicians alike stereotyped single Black mothers as sexually irresponsible and lazy "welfare queens" who were abusing government resources while raising deviant children. With no father in their lives to discipline them it was no wonder these children were turning to drugs and crime, so they said.

As a young girl in the 1980s I could not have known much about life and love, but I sure knew that I did not want to grow up to be a crime-causing single mom. And although crime rates seemed to have gone down by the time I came of dating age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the narrative about Black women and marriage had not improved. Essays and television programs bemoaned that there were not enough educated Black men for educated Black women to marry because after all, "there were more young Black men in prison than in college." Upon entering college in the late 1990s older Black women were admonishing younger Black women to work on the Mrs. and not just their B.S. or B.A.

This essay was originally published in full in Essence magazine. Note for CMS import: this post links out to the full Essence.com article rather than containing the complete text on Substack. Read the rest at essence.com/news/relationships-stereotypes-abusive-marriage-single-black-mother/

Ama K. Karikari, Esq. is author of an empowerment workbook for mothers entitled Silenced to Soaring: Heal from Chronic Silent Treatments, Toxic Relationships, and Abuse.