In this day and age, when a black woman is smart, career-driven and even married, her family may still see her as a spinster if she doesn't have children. How is this possible? Black + Green Mama [5] blogger Kenrya Rankin Naasel writes that after following her life plan to perfection, she was happy, but her family had pegged her as an old maid, until she turned up pregnant.
When I was about 20 weeks into my pregnancy, I found out a little secret my family had been keeping from me: they didn't think I was ever going to have kids. A year later, I realize it bothered me more than I recognized at the time. In hindsight, I think it made me wonder if they really know me at all. I've always felt I was born to be a mom. I have broken up with more than one man because he didn't dream of gummy smiles and slobby kisses. Some women can't imagine being with a man who can't dance, or it's tall enough to grab the cereal from the top shelf in the grocery store, but my dealbreaker has always been wanting kids (among other things—that's another post). So it was a blower that they didn't think I wanted children.
And then there was the reason why they thought I'd be childless: I was getting old! At the ripe and rotten age of 29 (I had Babygirl a couple months after my 30th birthday), I was, in their minds, late to the game. But I had a plan—undergrad, work, grad school, marriage, couple time, baby—and I was actually right on schedule. But to the outside world, I looked like a workaholic spinster, permanently fused to my laptop. I guess compared to many of my family members who started their broods earlier, I was. Hell, at least they waited until I was pregnant to tell me.
Read Kenrya Rankin Naasel's entire column at Black + Green Mama [5].
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