When Halle Berry revealed that she was pregnant for the second time and having a child at forty-six out of wedlock, there must have been a brief collective gasp.
Sure, she is stunning, successful, and more than capable of taking care of her offspring. But there is so much about her story that goes against the grain of what many black women believe is the ideal path to motherhood.
Though twice married, Berry has also twice conceived within non-marital relationships. And, approaching 50, some would argue that she has missed her best reproductive years, putting both herself and her coming infant at risk for age-related health complications.
Yet, her story is hardly unique. And Halle’s way of producing and raising kids might be the wave of the future, as more and more women of all colors are having children without the support of marriage.
A doctor enjoys single motherhood
Dr. Dina D. Strachan, a New York City dermatologist, decided not to wait until a perfect Prince Charming placed a ring on her finger to jump into motherhood. Now 45, Strachan is pleased with her decision to raise her seven-year-old daughter on her own.
“It’s great to have a little soul to guide and love,” Strachan told theGrio. “It’s what I wanted. Sure, it would be great to have a supportive partner to share the experience with — the good and the bad. That may in fact come. In the meantime, I am enjoying being a mother.”
When her relationship with her daughter’s father was not developing positively, Strachan opted to forgo a marriage that did not feel right, even though some of her inner circle may have chosen to sacrifice personal happiness for a traditional family.
Raising her daughter independently has been met with supportive responses. Yet, for Strahan, the typical stigma that some attach to single motherhood is unwarranted, especially if the mother is capable of taking care of her child, as she was prepared to do as a successful physician.
“Married or single, it’s best if parents are emotionally and financially stable,” she stated. “Parents are never perfect or stable in those ways all of the time. It’s just a journey. Sometimes the single mother has more support and resources than the married mother.”
Single motherhood: a necessary option
For black women who want to become mothers, waiting for marriage might not be an option. Marriage rates overall are on a decline. Only 31 percent of blacks were married in 2011, compared to 55 percent of whites and 48 percent of Latinos.
Black women who know they want to be mothers have to be flexible and work realistically with their options.
“Sometimes you never know when that right opportunity will be, and you just have to be ready for the challenge whenever that challenge makes itself known,” said Titi Branch, co-founder of the Miss Jessie’s curly hairstyling empire with her sister, Miko Branch.
At 43 years old, Titi is planning to have a child with her committed partner, although she is not married, similar to Berry.
“Me personally, I don’t think that raising a child requires a traditional set-up,” Titi said. “Certainly it would be nice, but I think all the rules in terms of traditional families and parenting and structures have been thrown on their head recently.”
Currently, 40 percent of all births in America are to unwed mothers. While these moms often face a greater risk of poverty, particularly black women, Miko Branch saw the challenge of raising her son alone as an impetus to becoming financially prosperous.
Mothering alone makes a woman
“It turned me into a woman,” Miko, the 42-year-old Miss Jessie’s co-founder, told theGrio. “Before having my son I don’t think I took life as seriously as I do now that he’s here on the planet. Very early on before having him, I knew I was going to be a single parent. I knew I was going to be a single parent for real — with no dad present at all.”
Even though Miss Jessie’s is now an ubiquitous hair care brand available at every major retailer, the company was failing when Miko’s son was conceived.
“There was no cash flow, the mortgage was due,” Miko said. “We had just moved deeply into Brooklyn in 1999 to Bedford-Stuyvesant, and this was a time when Bedford-Stuyvesant was legitimately the hood. It was a new territory for us.”
Realizing she had to model the roles of both “Mom” and “Dad,” Miko wanted to defy the stereotypes and avoid the pitfalls that often befall women of color who become single parents. This meant making sure her business thrived.
To build Miss Jessie’s into a million-dollar company, Miko worked closely with her sister while being supported by their mother, who moved into the home that also housed the family firm. This team of women ensured Miko could balance motherhood and her career.
Planning single motherhood — correctly
Titi credits her sister for having the foresight to build familial and social support into her life while planning for her child’s birth, and believes that this kind of planning is critical to raising a child alone.
Now undergoing fertility treatments, Titi is thrilled to attempt to have a child of her own, even though being in her forties might make conception more difficult.
“I feel very excited about it,” Titi said. “If I have the opportunity to conceive naturally, that obviously would be my first choice, but since that’s not an option for me now, I do have to go through fertility treatments in order to achieve my dream of having my family. I’m just fortunate that I’m in a position financially where I can undergo fertility treatments because they are not inexpensive.”
Yes, money comes in handy when it comes to single motherhood, both in the conception and care-taking phases. In fact, some social scientists believe having enough financial support is critical to raising a child alone, offsetting the negative outcomes associated with raising a child without a father. Children raised by single mothers are prone to greater exposure to violence and lesser educational outcomes.
But Miko does not think material wealth alone ensures a child’s well-being.
“You really have to have a good foundation and a good center and really work on character building, both yourself, and to build and develop your child’s character,” Miko said. “Although money provides a lot of options — you can do more things than you could if you didn’t have it — really it’s about character development.”
Single motherhood builds character
Both Miko and Titi see their experiences creating a super-successful business as the source of their life-tested mettle, wisdom and maturity. Their drive towards financial empowerment honed them to be great mothers, with or without fathers in their children’s lives.
Miko works diligently to instill her son with the sense that he is “unique” and not at all disadvantaged for not being raised with a dad.
“It’s something that I tell my son all the time,” she said. “‘Faison, your dad is not around, but if you have one good one behind you, you’re ahead of the game.’ Some people have two parents who may be unavailable for whatever reason and there are some issues there. If a child has one person who is in their corner 100 percent, then there are no negatives to that situation.”
A fatherhood proponent speaks out
Filmmaker Kobie Brown, 40, does not agree. He created the 2012 documentary From Fatherless to Fatherhood to address the impact that single parent homes are having in the black community.
The northern New Jersey native believes that every single parenting situation is unique, but strongly asserts that the absence of a father in a child’s life cannot be ameliorated by even the most well-intended compensations.
“No amount of money can replace the value that both parents, or in this case, a prepared father or male figure can bring to a child’s life,” Brown told theGrio in an email. “The confluence of single female parents and absent fathers has resulted in far too many young people growing up having no relationship whatsoever with their dads. Many of our children are finding very few examples of what authentic fatherhood, manhood and family structure look like. I believe the absence of these examples has also impacted the rate at which successful nuclear families are being created.”
Brown says the violence of inner cities, plight of the incarcerated, and even the lackluster achievement of some young blacks of the middle class can be linked to the predicament of fatherless children, who are often less well-adapted.
Even though Brown’s parents divorced when he was young, he cites having strong male role models in his life as key to his positive development.
“Regardless of socioeconomic status, I firmly believe that a good parent is defined by his or her ability and unyielding desire to provide a child with the tools — food, shelter, education, and emotional, intellectual and spiritual development — to ensure the best outcomes for that child’s life,” Brown wrote. “Most of the well-developed adults, especially men, I’ve met who have grown up without their fathers recount with fondness the relationship they had and lessons that they learned from a grandfather, neighbor, teacher, coach or uncle who provided consistent examples of what it means to be a man.”
The permanent trend of single motherhood
Yet, times are inevitably changing. More than 70 percent of African-American children are being raised by single mothers, and for professional women, sometimes those children are coming at a time when they are better able mentally, emotionally, and financially to care for them. As single motherhood overall becomes the norm, the stigma associated with the label will need to be replaced with a solution-oriented approach to a new reality.
“I think that society is going to have to see it differently because there are more women emerging like myself who’ve taken whatever situation they are given and are turning it into a positive, and sometimes progressive situation,” Miko said. “My son has many opportunities that don’t fit into the stereotypes of kids that come from single parenting situations. I think society is going to have to change it’s thinking about a child coming from a single parent home.”
Indeed, single black mothers like Berry, and Nia Long, who recently had her second child out of wedlock in her forties, are forcing new definitions of motherhood and successful parenting into being.
It still takes a village
Brown accepts that this might be the new normal, yet encourages single moms to make sure their children have positive male role models, something that Miko has done for her son through his interactions with his grandfather.
“To the growing number of women who are choosing to go it alone, I implore you to take the time to make sure your child has as many examples of quality manhood and loving relationships as she or he has new clothes, books or trips to the museum,” Brown related. “You may not feel the immediate need for a man, but your child will. Providing children with tools to succeed begins with the understanding of that daddy hunger. The value of their exposure to authentic examples of manhood transcends all socioeconomic strata. Money can’t buy love.”
Strahan admits that material resources do not soothe all the stresses of single parenting. Just as Miko and Titi created a team, so must all black women embarking on parenting — with or without a man.
“Married or single, no one really parents alone,” Strahan concluded. “It always takes a village.”
Follow Alexis Garrett Stodghill on Twitter at @lexisb