How often do white women consider ways that motherhood differs for black women in the United States?
Watching Soledad O’Brien and CNN’s “The Black Woman and Family” made me consider this provocative question – and it’s one reason why you should watch it.
I thought motherhood was color blind until the first day I dropped my child at Johnson & Johnson’s employee daycare center. He’d been on the wait list since I was three months pregnant, so I was thrilled. But I was torn, too, to be leaving him with total strangers for what felt like the rest of his life. Especially since he’d been home with me, and then a nanny, since birth.
Outside the classroom, I befriended another mom also dropping off her firstborn for the first time. Marcus had been born three days before Max. His mom was my age and worked in a division near my office. The only difference between us seemed to be skin deep – she was black, I am white.
“Are you sad about leaving him here?” I asked, smiling at Marcus gurgling in his car seat.
“Are you kidding?” She answered. “I had to go back to work when he was only six weeks old. I’m a single mom and the only daycare I could find until his spot opened here was a place where they kept him strapped in his car seat in front of a tv for 10 hours a day. Some days they didn’t change his diaper. Today is one of the most joyous days of my life.”
What a reality check -- more like a punch. Here I had been, immersed in what was suddenly obviously an elite white mommy guilt sandstorm. I was close to tears – why? Because I had to leave my child at what is arguably the finest daycare center on the planet – a 22,000 square foot, I.M. Pei designed facility with a cafeteria, security desk, two nurses on staff full time, and a master’s degree requirement for all teachers. And did I mention the company subsidized 50% of the cost?
Marcus and his mom helped me realize how lucky we were. That was the beginning of my education into the different realities of motherhood in America. After writing Mommy Wars, I delved more deeply into the specific differences between the two majority ethnic groups in our country. The result was “Women in Black And White,” a survey created with a black colleague, Paula Penn-Nabrit.
Our findings were fascinating: Black and white women were eager to discuss issues of race and motherhood, with over 1,100 responding within 24 hours and 24% adding personal comments in addition to answering 100 survey questions. (It’s important to note that this survey reflected an educationally and economically elite set of black and white women: respondents self selected to take the survey and had to have Internet access to do so; 96% were college educated, and 82% had household incomes over $50,000. All statistics quoted below refer to this privileged slice of the U.S. female population.)
Leslie Morgan Steiner is the author of the best selling anthology: Mommy Wars: Stay at Home and Career Moms Face off on their Choices, their Lives, their Families. She writes the new Mommy Track'd column, Leslie Morgan Steiner's Two Cents on Working Motherhood and is a regular contributor on the subject of working motherhood to media outlets including The Today Show, MSNBC, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Parents, Parenting, and many others.
