Avoiding Baby Momma Drama – The Hard Way ~ by DNLee of

“SouthernPlayalisticEvolutionMusic” [Essay]

 Avoiding Baby Momma Drama – the hard way by SouthernPlayalisticEvolutionMusic (DNLee) A few years ago I had a pregnancy scare. The three minutes one waits to see if there are two blue lines or one are long and scary. But before the outcome was known, I knew exactly how I felt about becoming a mother [...]

A few years ago I had a pregnancy scare. The three minutes one waits to see if there are two blue lines or one are long and scary. But before the outcome was known, I knew exactly how I felt about becoming a mother at that point in time, with that particular person. Regardless of the outcome, marriage was never on the table. It was a recreational relationship and he wasn’t much a catch in my opinion. Though, I was a far cry from where I wanted/needed to be, he just didn’t have his stuff together. It was in those moments of possibility that an image of my potential future flashed before me.

Anger and bitterness from futile attempts to get him to “do the right thing”. Resentment and hurt from being tethered to a man who did little to improve himself or help his offspring. Finally, shame. Shame from being interrogated by my teen age/young adult child (who I imagined would be highly intelligent and challenging like me) who would asked the obvious question – “What in the world were you smoking to have been with that fool?”

It was that last image that made it clear to me that it matters with whom and under what circumstances I have babies. It wasn’t that being someone’s baby Momma and not a wife, was problematic for me. No, it was my own selfish inclination to choose the best possible candidate to be my child’s father. I knew I had some great genes and smarts on my end. I didn’t want to flub all of that up with a crappy donor. Not anyone was good enough to be my brilliant children’s father. Moreover, my feminist sense of equity and fairness won’t let me rest easy knowing my children’s father isn’t capable or willing to do his fair share of the child-rearing, protecting, and providing.

Yeah, Old Boy was a Scrub. I knew that, but I saw no need to be tied down to him for the rest of my life. The quotable statistics say as many as 60+% of the black babies born in this nation are born to unmarried mothers. As important as this topic is, I don’t believe marriage is the panacea to this problem. I’m not anti-pre-marital-sex which some No Wedding No Womb bloggers obviously are. Neither am I a big pro-marriage person; but I do I believe in supporting the idea of emotionally and psychology healthy families. And I think that is the heart of this movement: Healthy Secure Adults Prepared for Parenthood.

I decided that I couldn’t bare/share children for/with a man who had – up until the point of conception – failed to demonstrate his capacity to be a good parent. And I was/am willing to take the necessary steps to live by this resolution. In essence, I decided that if necessary, I would exercise Post-copulatory or Cryptic Female Choice.

Like female moths or scorpionflies, I would selectively choose which male(s) will fertilize my eggs and which eggs I carry to full development and care for. And as much as this topic is sweeping the interwebz and the Black Blogosphere, most everyone is telling stories of love and compassionate sacrifice of matrimonial parenthood or the conscious decisions to love a child despite singleness. Who else is discussing the other reality: the right and responsibility to make some very, very hard decisions about unwanted/untimely pregnancies.

As much as No Wedding No Womb advocates for marriage before parenting, I contend it must also include:

educating and empowering young men and women to be sexually responsible; providing them every opportunity to embrace themselves sexually yet simultaneously provide them the tools to avoid pre-marture parenthood; and finally it must embrace and support women who decide not to have babies – after becoming pregnant.