by Dr. Boyce Watkins
Most of us know the narrative of the deadbeat dad: The man who shows up to make babies, but never comes by to take care of them. Maybe he doesn’t pay child support, doesn’t spend time with his children, or has more babies mamas than the local maternity ward. I get it, we’ve heard it. We know that horrible fathers exist, and that they should be confronted like the terrorists that they are to the black community.
But the untold story is that of the deadbeat mother. She often slips under the radar because the “******* ain’t s**t” rhetoric drowns out the voices of her defenseless children who are suffering under her regime of blatant selfishness and irresponsibility. Like former North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Il, the deadbeat mom reigns supreme over the lives of her kids, seeing them as possessions rather than real human beings. The words “my babies” come out of her mouth like a pimp claiming hookers on the corner, or a farmer talking about a flock of pigs that he keeps in his barn. Her children have become a weapon.
When it comes to the deadbeat mom, the non-existent father never had a chance, as she straps on male gεnitalia and demands that people send her a Father’s Day card every year. In fact, the father might have been dismissed before the baby shower. Yes, she’s doing it all by herself, but doesn’t know the difference between raising kids and teaching them to be successful, productive and well-balanced human beings. Since her kids don’t complain about the psychological damage being done during the parenting process, she presumes that everything must be OK.
When I participated in the Fatherhood tour with former NBA player Etan Thomas, I heard stories about fathers who might have been victims of the deadbeat mom. These were men who desperately wanted to see their children, but were blocked at every turn by a Maternal Security Force that had become convinced that she’d created the babies all by herself.
One man told me that he’d been required to pay child support for years, but that the courts wouldn’t even tell him where they were sending the money so he could track down the mother of his child in order to see his son. It appeared that his son’s mother had decided that she wanted access to his money, but was unwilling to share any of the parental power. This reminds me of how the Democrats convince black people to vote for them so they can ignore black issues and spend their time fighting for gay rights and immigration.
Another person reached out to tell me about a teen girl who’d been sexually a*******d by one of her mother’s boyfriends. As the endless parade of random men were being brought into the household and being asked to babysit, the child’s mother was oblivious to the idea that thousands of children are abused every year by their mother’s boyfriends. When the child mentioned the abuse to her mother, the little girl was punished for lying, and the mother continued to live her life as if everything were just fine. Few stories have ever made me want to use a gun as much as this one.
One of the greatest myths in the on-going conversation about the breakdown of the black family is that every woman with a functioning womb is equipped to be a good mom. That’s just flat out wrong, I don’t care how many ABC News specials try to blame everything on black men. The fact that your kids are in your home does not make you a good steward of their future.
Not acknowledging the need for strong male role models (preferably the dad) can lead you to raising your boys to remain little boys into adulthood, thus ruining another woman’s husband. You think you did a great job with your son, but notice that 20 years later, he’s a pants-sagging, uneducated, wannabe thug who sits in his mama’s basement playing Xbox all day in order to avoid paying child support. Even worse is that the deadbeat mom loves having her 30-year old son in the house because he has taken over the role of her missing husband.
Most of us know that bad parenting exists across both genders. We also know that bad parenting can be predicated on making really bad choices. The best way for men to overcome a deadbeat mother is to avoid choosing one. The idea that you should place your p*enis into any functioning v@gina attached to a pretty face is one of the easiest ways to end up stressed out because your child is being raised by a stripper.
Family planning should start with simply having a plan. That plan begins with being thoughtful about where you choose to place your seed. Yes, I know that rappers on the radio tell men that they should sleep with every girl who offers to give them what they want, but what rappers don’t tell you is that this is where unwanted babies come from. In fact, the easiest way for a man to spend his life financially devastated is to have a bunch of children out of wedlock. The courts will eat your bank account alive and not feel the least bit sorry for you, just ask fallen NFL star Terrell Owens.
When it comes to mothers, old and young, it’s always important to understand that you didn’t create the baby by yourself. You have a co-parent, and he has the same rights that you do. You may not like his girlfriend, where he lives, what he does for a living or how he disciplines your child, but he is your child’s father. You chose to sleep with him, and thus made a lifetime pact to share parental rights and responsibilities, even if he is not the father you’d like for him to be. Of course there are exceptions, but it seems that we live in an era where people are more likely to discard inconvenient relationships instead of working to improve them.
When I speak to my daughters about men, I tell them that “If a man doesn’t appear to be someone who’d make a good husband or father, don’t even give him your phone number. If you can’t tell if he’d be a good father, that means you don’t know him well enough to be sleeping with him, and you should probably keep your distance.” Your children should not be the product of a one night stand where you were seduced out of your clothes by “bad boy swag.” Our kids deserve better than that, and a tragic life is easily built on a pile of spontaneous mistakes.
Also, parents should realize that being ADDICTED to your child is not the same as LOVING your child. The “Motherholic addiction” is when you can’t live without your child, need your child nearby and snuggle with your child so your brain can be hit with constant fixes of the neurotransmitter Oxytocin (aka “the love drug”) necessary to keep you from feeling lonely in your life. Truly loving your child means making difficult sacrifices so your offspring can have a productive and positive future. It might mean putting up with a dad who differs from you in parenting style, or knowing the difference between being a parent to your child and being a buddy.
To men who find themselves locking horns with a deadbeat mom, I recommend securing your rights in the womb. That means going to court early to set up visitation, and fighting for space in the life of your kids. I also recommend being thoughtful about the women you share your body with. Your child is usually better off if you keep your family together in the first place – I don’t care what anyone else says, children are typically happier with two parents than they are with just one. I speak from personal experience after having a child at the age of 18 and paying a huge price for the next 25 years. We all make mistakes and I’ve surely made a share of my own.
It’s time to modify the story when it comes to the state of the black family in America. The whole idea that black men are ignorant, lazy cavemen who throw their offspring out with the trash is tired, inaccurate and ultimately disrespectful. This certainly doesn’t let men off the hook for the role we play in our personal and collective outcomes. But it does mean that we have to broaden the conversation.
