Affectionate Black Mums: Where are you? (What I didn’t learn from The Cosby Show)

I've shared a couple of times* that before Ramona was born, I was really worried that I wouldn't know how to be a fun parent. I'm a pretty insecure person who is very physically awkward (after 30 years of telling myself that I'm too fat and gross for any and everything, that's not really surprising) and I had no idea where to even start. 

Growing up, my dad was the fun softie and ma was the tough one. Her mother, my grandmother, was a single mother raising 5 children in really awful circumstances: she didn't have the capacity for frivolity or affection, really (something she course-corrected with her grandchildren and great grandchildren).

So, I come from a long line of hardworking, dedicated and fairly serious women. I wanted to be all of that for Ramona but I also wanted to be the clown and the play horse but I didn't know how.

And so I looked to the media to see how other women like me manage it and, in what should be of no surprise to me or any of us, there was (and is) a massive black hole where representations of fun, affectionate and silly black mums should be.

Growing up, there was Clare Huxtable, Vivian Banks and Shirley Ambrose. And as glorious as these women were, they weren't crawling on the floor with their little ones. They weren't pulling faces or putting toy cars on their heads. I can't imagine Clare Huxtable hiding, crouched down, behind a door frame, trying not to giggle as their toddler stomps down the hallway to find them, before jumping out and making chimpanzee sounds.

They were strong and dedicated and loving. Disciplined, usually correct but never really carefree.

But we black women are all of those things. All of those things and so much more.

Intergenerational trauma is so real but we don't suffocate beneath it. We break those cycles for the sake of our children. We cook meals, do the laundry and clean out the cat tray and then we let our kids chase us around the garden, we do all of the silly voices in the board books and create magic with shadows on the bedroom wall.

 So, where are those women on TV or in books or on the cinema screen? 

Until we find them (until the decision makers understand the value of true representation of black women), let’s be them. If my daughter can’t see that version of a black mother in books or on TV, let her find the best and brightest version of that mother in her own home, in me. Until she is able to go out and discover it all for herself, let me be the mirror that reflects back all the different things that are possible for her. 

*on my Instagram account