Boys will be boys — but can they be raised to be men by single mothers?
That was the topic on everyone’s minds last Saturday afternoon at the Black Spectrum Theatre, where a debate, hosted by Councilman James Sanders Jr. (D-Laurelton) as part of a salute to Women’s History Month, at times worked the audience of more than 100 vested individuals into a near frenzy of emotions.
The time restrictions were not always observed, the panelists didn’t necessarily speak in turn, and the audience was talking back long before the public participation segment began, but the debate did what Sanders said it set out to accomplish: it educated, motivated and sent the spectators home with plenty of food for thought.
“We might as well start wrestling with this in a respectful, disciplined manner,” Sanders said prior to the discussion.
“Our job is to look at the whole thing, to explore it all. We’re going to bring thinking back,” he said.
According to Sanders, the debate was designed to “make us think about our children, our families and the structure of our society. What has happened to the positive male influence, and what happens to our sons if they don’t have one?”
Sanders asked the audience, “When was the last time our community thought? We used to play chess, a thinking game. For every move, 20 possibilities open up. Now we have strong thumbs and weak minds.
“There’s a lot going on in our community. Women are left with the burden of raising children,” he said.
The six panelists, representing a wide range of backgrounds, were divided into two even groups, based on their response to the debate’s premise, “Single mothers can’t raise boys to be men.” One side agreed, the other did not.
Cathleen Williams, whose book, “Single Mother The New Father,” raised considerable controversy because of its provocative title, opened the discussion by saying, “As a single woman, I was able to successfully raise my son,” currently a student at St. John’s University.
“As a people, we tell women you can’t do it, that you’re doomed to failure. Not only can you, but you must do it for the salvation of our race,” she said.
She indicated that there are “over 10 million single women in the United States raising their children successfully,” admitting that she “didn’t do it alone.”
Opening the discussion for the opposition, clinical social worker Rodney Pride, who serves as vice president of youth development at United Black Men of Queens, said, “Eight out of 10 boys are without a positive male role model in their families and that ain’t good. So many boys are walking around with a level of anger.” He suggested that their pent-up rage often leads to cases of teenage pregnancy, dropping out of high school, and black on black violence.
Joel Austin, president of Daddy University, Inc., a company that helps men appreciate the responsibility of fatherhood, finds a direct correlation between the rise in the number of single mothers and the increasing high school drop-out rate among males.
He blamed “a lack of strong brothers” as part of the problem.
Dr. Amandia Speakes-Lewis, a behavioral health consultant, indicated that many women “may not be single by choice.” Married and with two sons, she spoke of the existence of a “circle of love” that encompasses the extended families that often play important roles in a young man’s life.
Carl Clay, the founder and executive producer of Black Spectrum Theatre, said there is a definite need for a strong male figure in the household, but, in reality, that is often not the case.
“They say you cannot do it alone. We’re adding because males are not in the households, what recourse does the average black woman have,” he asked.
There is a need “for discipline and boundaries,” he said.
Terryl De Mendonca, founder of The Misunderstood Youth Development Center, an organization that caters to “mostly jail-bound young men,” is herself a single mother raising a 17-year-old son. She admitted, “I can’t do it myself.
“Can I teach my son how to be a man? No, I am not equipped. My son continues to be very angry. I had to look for male mentors. As a single mom, as a woman, we cannot do it. I tried,” she said.
Speakes-Lewis raised the question, “How do we define a man? Are you not a man if you are going to jail? I’m raising my two boys to be men, to be productive in life.”
Citing words once spoken by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Austin suggested, “My actions tell you whether I’m a man or not. I know men and I know me. Our children are hurting.”
He explained, “It’s hard for me to talk to my daughter about her period. I don’t know anything about labor pains.”
Williams responded by indicating that the hypothetical village, often credited with helping to raise a child, “is critical. It doesn’t exist like it did when I was a child. A village has to be built. No one of us is an island. No one of us knows everything.”
In defense of her book’s title, which several panel members found demeaning to men, she said, “It’s not a male-bashing book. We are not saying we hate men. My son still has a relationship with his father. Young men growing up raised by single women — they can, they shall, they must become men.”
Clay admitted the title “makes me mad, but the reality is we need to get mad. The title is a call to action. We’re facing the gradual extinction of the black male. Single mothers can raise their sons, but they have to have the tools to do it.”
Williams agreed. “We have to mentor each other as parents and continue to grow each day,” she said.
As the debate wrapped up, De Mendonca said, “It’s been a hard road. Plenty of times I wanted to pull my hair out. My son, regardless of how much time I spent with him, still yearned for his dad-that male figure. He became very angry because his father was a revolving door dad. We need men to step up. We need to pick our men more carefully.”
Speakes-Lewis concluded, “As long as black people support each other, single mothers can raise a young black child. It’s more about us working together. We’ve got to go back to our roots. We need the church, school, mentoring programs to reinforce what we teach in the house.”
Members of the audience had much to say on the issues, prior to, during and following the discussion.
Malloree Johnson, a long-time Rosedale resident, alluded to the “family breakdown,” saying, “The father image is not there. There is a lack of parental guidance. The mother doesn’t have the time to control everything.” [See sidebar for Johnson’s personal story about raising two children on her own.]
Eileen Lawrence, of Springfield Gardens, who was raised by a single parent, felt it is much more difficult today. “When I was growing up, if your mother said sit there, you sat there. We listened. The kids now are different.”
The Rev. Fred Jenkins Jr. of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in Hollis, the father of five, said the debate “opened our minds. It created camaraderie.”
Melissa Hubbard, a widowed mother who resides in Queens Village, is raising a 16-year-old son. She realizes “the importance of having two parents. Each gender brings something to a child.”
Though Sanders called upon the audience to vote for the winning side, he was forced to declare a tie, as the applause was nearly equal for both teams.
Still he was pleased with the outcome. “The people thought,” he said. “They confronted painful and difficult issues. People got their point across. There is more to come.”
See more photos of the debate at qchron.com.
natalien posted at 6:01 pm on Fri, Apr 6, 2012.
This demands a much more nuanced discussion of the issue than the same talking points we have been hitting for 50 years with little change. In fact the conditions have gotten progressively worse. Im tired, I really am.In 2007, my nephew (19 at the time) committed suicide after a woman 7 years his senior admitted to pregnancy entrapment (contraception tampering) He was to attend college in the Fall but instead was served with CS orders. Absent the ability to prove in public what this woman admitted to in private my nephew was told to simply "man up" by the courts. After two years of depression his suicide note read... "I cannot believe this has happened. Some days are better than others, but I have decided that I would rather die than to continue to support - - - - . My entire life has been turned upside down and I pray that God recives me with understanding".This has made it very personal for me. What I find most intriguing about the "war on women" is that I keep finding myself as twenty year choice advocate being perplexed by this dicussion. I work in community health. It is hard to ignore the statistics that 70% of our children are born to unwed mothers. Many of the very women for whom I have advocated for years do not even value or exercise the responsibility (use of birth control) that comes with complete control over reproduction pre and post conception. I am personally insulted by the suggestion of a war on women while we as black women continue to enjoy the right to complete control over reproductive decsions while abdicating ourselves of complete resonsibility that comes with it. With 20+ options for preventing pregnancy there is no reason for this statistic to be so high. What is disturbing is that we are marching in the streets regarding the assault on black men while I am (right now!) watching the police escort an unemployed neighbor to jail...not for robbery or assault but for his inability to pay child support! Listen I am a choice advocate but I am evolving in my belief that the very men that have stood in the trenches alongside me in defense of a womans right to choose would not even have their reproductive rights taken into consideration. Here is the hypocrisy as best illustrated in this cartoon=http://www.tastymojo.com/LouisvilleMojo/photos_pgp/093/PG7432020080109062112593093.jpgMotherhood is a CHOICE in 2012 and we have alienated many potential male allies that do not desire to take that choice away but desire to simply have equal treatment under the law.You see by focusing on condom use and post-conception responsibility it focuses on male responsibility or lack of and absolves us of any responsibility for the personal choices that we made. When men “walk away” we refer to them as deadbeats but the top three reasons that they walk away are the very same reasons that women put their children up for adoption or abort. We dont refer to women as deadbeats for “abandoning” the responsibility that comes with conception but we extend compassion to our girls and women about the options they have should they not be in an ideal financial situation, relationship or the potential impact on career. Do we not believe that men experience the same anxieties and fears and can be impacted in a such a way as well? As one that has worked in community mental health and in private practice with men whose pain has often been dismissed and/or completely invisible to society I think its time we begin exploring these issues. I fought as have other women, too hard for a womans right to choose, while most simply enjoy the rights without responsibility.There has been a war on our men and I will simply say that a community that despises its men run the risk of creating a community of despicable men. I watched coverage of the crisis in Syria a couple of days ago. As is common practice in western journalism it was reported "20 killed including women and children" I thought little of it until my nephew of 21 years of age stated "Theres the problem right there, we get the message loud and clear; our lives are assigned different value than everyone elses." I must admit that it is hard to argue that the value we have placed on our mens lives has been reduced to their "doings" instead of value in their being. As our roles began to evolve in society, we maintained the expectation that men's should remain the same. So while we aggressively asserted ourselves as “independent” women with complete control over our reproductive decisions and an ability to STAND ON OUR OWN we maintained the idea that men should remain the chivalrous, protectors and providers that we believed they should be. The problem with the idea that we “should raise our boys to be men” is that while we focused on empowering and nurturing our girls towards a re-defining of traditional expectations of womanhood, we as women maintained a traditional defining of manhood for men. The problem is that women should not engage in defining manhood for men as our expectation is rooted in a definition that is most beneficial to those doing the defining, WOMEN! The emasculating use of the term man up is rooted in our idea of a man falling short of our idea of “what a man is” without any regard for the idea that men define what manhood is for them. Should the way a man defines manhood for himself not be good fit for us then it is not meant for us to define it but rather to move on until we find a better fit for our ideals about manhood. I would never say that another woman is less of a woman because of a,b or c I would simply say that I am not that type of woman. I always hear the argument that we wouldnt have to define manhood for men if fathers would step up, but the idea that ones choice to engage in recreational sex that led to an unwanted pregnancy and the womans unilateral decision to go to term with the idea that a consent to sex is a consent to fatherhood and non-compliance with our “expectation of what a man SHOULD do” because men are no longer manning up, as opposed to accepting responsibility for our role in the current fatherlessness crisis is beginning to be challenged by many in our community that have had enough! It is a very interesting dichotomy where we are vocal about our strenngth and independence while maintaining the idea of ourselves as victims of mens ill intent. The very concept of focusing our attention on condoms (male symbol of sexual (ir) responsibility) and mens behavior post conception is a blatant attempt to shift focus away from the 20+ options we have available to us to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the lack of responsibility we demonstrated pre-conception. We cannot continue to ignore the voices of our men in this discussion. We also cannot keep saying "he should keep it in his pants if he doesnt want to pay" as it undermines our efforts to protect choice. We would never support a woman being told that we'd call it a "war on women.We began emphasizing accountability for men while extending them very little compassion. This was ruthless of course and it is respecting men but not necessarily loving them. On the other hand society began to emphasize compassion for women while extending them very little accountability.. it is infantilizing and it is loving women but not necessarily respecting them. (Goldich, 2011) There are a number of byproducts of this but perhaps one of the most dmaging to my community has been the pivot away from referring to unwed mothers in our community as such to being lumped in with divorced mothers and widows for the now all encompassing term “single mother”. With this for example came the unintended consequence of empowering generations of women towards acceptance of the current “babymama” phenomena. You see referring to an unwed mother as a single mother is empowering in that it createss the narrative of a “strong black woman that made it in spite of…”. So if a child attends college it is the testatment of the strength of a single mother..if the same child were to become incarcerated it is an indictment of the colossal failure of men/fathers. Unbelieveable! Another uninteneded consequence is the current “boy crisis” where the education disparity is growing, male suicide is increasing and the anti-male bias and bashing in society continues to become common practice. WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO REDUCE THESE ISSUE TO SIMPLY MEN NEEDING TO MAN UP IN 2012 WHILE WE CREEP TOWARDS 8IN 10 UNWED CHILDBIRTH! Im not excusing men but it is our turn to stop standing with our backs to the mirror. Our condition is getting progressively worse. I write to you as you have a voice that at the very least can invite more objective analysis of the problem to the mainstream. I beg of you as a mother of sons that you gein an egalitarian humanist discussion that truly considers the men and boys in our community. I may not have effectively articulated my thoughts but I pray you get the general conversation I ma trying to engage you in ..http://whitehouseboysmen.org/blog/ and tell me why our president wont move on this council?Natalie Jackson Ramirez, EdD., LMFTConcerned citizen, mother of sons, humanist activist and mental health counseling professional
Edited by staff.