Black women often get the short end of the stick when it comes to ideal family representation. Many are positioned outside of what is considered a “traditional” family structure, which consists of a married mother and father and children in a single household. Black women do not always have this idealized household –- and plenty are very comfortable without it. In a positive light, Black women can be perceived as as single, independent, and hard-working. On the flip side, Black women are assumed to be single, unemployed baby-mamas.
But when exposed to images of single black women, does the general public assume the best – or the worst? This question was indirectly addressed earlier this week after a social media frenzy erupted over the design of a baby carrier package surfaced.
Popular baby-carrier brand, Baby K’Tan received a lot of negative attention after featuring a partnerless Black mother on its packaging. A shopper posted a photo to Twitter this Tuesday of two Baby K’Tan packages side-by-side.. On one package, there is an African American mother holding her child in a sling-like baby carrier. On the other package, there is a photo of what seems to be a white mother and father. Based on the response from Black Twitter, the packages insinuate that Black families are broken, Black women are single, and white parents are more likely to be together. The company was called out for being outright racist.
In an article published by NBC News in 2010, a study found that 72 percent of Black children are born to unwed mothers. That is an extremely high percentage, and shows that this ‘alternative’ family structure is the norm for a majority of Black mothers. These findings correlated to a September 2012 National Survey of Family Growth by the CDC. In this study, it was determined that only 26 percent of Black women were currently married, the lowest of the groups studied. This number was especially alarming when compared to the 51 percent of white women who were married.
In the NBC article, the author states that 70 percent of professional Black women are unmarried. The trend throughout is that most Black women, whether mothers or not, are unmarried.
With this known, what are the reasons that there should not be a single Black mother on this package? Her socioeconomic status is unknown, yet, negative assumptions were made from people of many different backgrounds.
One twitter user wrote: How dare you market & display something so racist @BabyKtan — This is shameful and disgusting!!!! – @_ProfessorX
Another said: Black people when we support marketing from companies like @BabyKtan we disempower ourselves and give our money to people who don’t honor us - @rebeccajackart
Really?
The brand has since responded to the Twitter outcry, calling the claims “baseless” and arguing that they embrace diversity and that the white family is actually a biracial family with a white mother and white Hispanic father. That, in my opinion, is beyond the point.
The question I am interested in answering is whether this portrayal of a single Black mother must be taken negatively, or if there are positives that can come out of this reality? After all, we know that many people would argue that the representation on the package with the lone Black mother and child is accurate and something they can relate to -– just take a look at the statistics.
For Black women, particularly those that have well-paying jobs and can afford to successfully, if not comfortably, take care of their children, the “Ms Independent” persona is a positive. Historically, Black women have always taken on the responsibility as the primary caregiver for their children. In a day and age where more opportunities are available for Black women, a steady job and ability to take care of the household without the need of a man, can bring about a sense of pride. This sense of pride and accomplishment may be found in any woman, regardless of race.
Perhaps the company said it best in their responding statement. Baby T’Kan published this to their website (which by the way shows a white father and son):
“Frankly, it’s insulting that some choose to infer that an African American woman alone with a baby is automatically a single mother -– that itself is a form of racism that has no place in our company whatsoever.”
Two parent households are placed on a pedestal in American society, but according to its statement, it seems that Baby T’Kan is trying to do away with this.
In a recent NY Times article, titled “Two-Parent Households Can Be Lethal,” it was said that even in domestic violence situations, mothers who are not with the father of their children are not respected. The author, Sara Shoener, argues that mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, judges and clergy members are more interested in keeping a two-parent family structure in place than the safety and security of a mother and child. Her fieldwork shows that dangerous, two-person household are perceived to be better than a household with a single mom. She cites a Pew report from 2010, which reveals almost 70 percent of Americans say single mothers without male partners to help raise their children are bad for society, reinforcing the notion that women outside of the the traditional narrative as happily married wives as failures to society.
So why is it so embedded in our minds that any instance of a lone Black mother is negative? The “Ms Independent” mother may embrace this as a sense of accomplishment, attempting to disregard the stigma that being partnerless means they are poor, or controlling, or downright miserable and lonely women. Companies will always have advertisements that someone is bound to disagree with – our society is just too diverse to please everyone. Instead of focusing on what black people feel bring shame to the community, we can focus on how these same images tell a different narrative – one that might actually accurately document someone’s black experience.