I Don't Want to Be Called a Baby Mama I Want to Be

Bec Immature

From folders emblazoned with "Jojo's Mommy" to proper noun tattoos on necks and arms, hints of my students' children take always been present in my classroom. Without direct asking, by the end of the first week of schoolhouse I know the parenting status of nearly all of my students. In the culling school where I teach on Chicago'southward W Side, betwixt one-third and half of the students, depending on the semester, are significant or parenting. Although comments well-nigh parenting frequently wove their fashion into our classroom conversations, it wasn't until I became significant that I realized the potential richness and importance of bringing this theme into the curriculum.

When I announced my pregnancy to my students in the spring of my 5th year of educational activity here, I was expecting excitement, questions, and newfound opportunities to bond. I was not anticipating, notwithstanding, the means that my transition to motherhood would change my identity as a teacher and my relationship with my students. Sure, there were unsolicited daily comments on my changing body and suggestions for names. But, more surprising to me, students also showed farthermost business organization for my well-being, both physical (offers to carry materials) and mental ("Don't stress her out!"). A believer in the reciprocal nature of learning, I had already noticed ways my students educated me nearly the world, but at present many of them took on the expert role and filled me in on what I had to await forward to — both joyous and gross — about having a infant. Even students without children were very involved, as virtually of them lived with or oftentimes cared for young children. Perchance it was considering of the function reversal on this topic, but I started listening and responding to my students differently during this time.

I realized that parenting — specifically adolescent parenting — was what Paulo Freire called a "generative theme" of my students' lives. Fraught with contradictions and controversy, this topic is generally excluded from the official curriculum of schools, except in the context of abstinence-just sex educational activity. What, I wondered, would happen if schools embraced the messy realities instead of the usual deficit model? As an English language/language arts teacher and believer in critical pedagogy, I decided my students and I should try. I designed an instructional unit of measurement with 2 essential questions in mind: How are stereotypes of parents, especially teen mothers, presented and countered in fiction and nonfiction texts? How practice race, class, and gender intersect in discussions of parenthood? My learning goals focused on citing textual evidence to support claims about the representation of school-age mothers in U.S. civilisation, and analyzing texts of different genres and mediums for the portrayal of parents of different ages, races, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Maya Angelou's Alphabetic character to My Daughter

My schoolhouse is part of a larger network of culling high schools that enrolls 17- to 21-year-former students who have been kicked out, forced out, or dropped out of traditional loftier schools. Students attend for one semester, a year, or longer, depending on the number of credits they need to earn a diploma. The English language courses are not organized by form level or even skill level; instead, they are semester-long courses that resemble electives, with great teacher freedom to cull a genre or theme of focus. For several years, I accept been teaching variations of "Women's Literature," focusing primarily on texts past African American authors. I organize the course thematically; "motherhood" is the 2d major unit. Drawing on some of the lessons from previous years, I reframed the start half of the maternity unit to specifically explore adolescent motherhood.

Nosotros began the unit by journaling about birth. Students were invited to write about their own birth, giving birth, being nowadays for a birth, or a story well-nigh someone else's birth. Anybody had something to share, and nosotros spent some fourth dimension in a read-effectually. We listened equally Shakira shared that she was a "phenomenon babe," born extremely prematurely. Brandon made us laugh with his business relationship of beingness born at home in the bath. Adrienne read aloud: "June 5, 2011, was the day I met my babe, the happiest day of my life. . . . She makes me so happy to be a teen mom. This is the first time I can say I did something good with my life." Alisha described her niece's nascency equally "disgusting merely cute."

The showtime text of the unit was capacity three and 4 from Maya Angelou's Letter to My Girl, which describes her unplanned pregnancy at the age of 16. I chose to start there because information technology immediately presents a contrast to the common arrears-based narrative of teen parenting; Angelou was an extremely respected and successful woman, not identified past her status as a teen parent.

We began with a casual K-W-L (know, want to know, and learned brainstorming action) nearly Angelou. I had not yet explicitly shared that we were focusing on boyish parents, and none of my students knew this part of her story. Then we began reading the text aloud. Equally we read, students completed a double-entry journal (see Reading, Writing, and Rising Upwardly, a Rethinking Schools book past Linda Christensen). Students selected exact quotations to copy downward and then responded using starters: This reminds me of . . . , I can motion picture . . . ,
I wonder . . . , I agree/disagree because . . . , This is important considering. . . .

This strategy invites students to employ a range of reading strategies just, non surprisingly, many focused on personal connections. The most commonly selected quotation was "There is no reason to ruin iii lives; our family is going to have a wonderful baby." Students shared their understanding with this statement and their blessing of how Maya'southward mother handled finding out about the pregnancy. For instance, Deanna wrote, "This reminds me of when I thought my mom was going to be so mad when I told her I was meaning, only she was really really happy." Although students completed their double-entry journals independently, we paused along the mode to share passages we were marking and how nosotros were responding. Letter to My Daughter was my springboard into the topic of boyish motherhood, making it articulate that I was committed to approaching the theme from a nonpunitive angle. When we returned to our K-W-Fifty, students were enthusiastic well-nigh filling in details they learned about Angelou in relation to her pregnancy, her personality, and her human relationship with her own mother.

Although the passage is fewer than 1,200 words, it is rich with ideas, vocabulary, and style to analyze — plenty to challenge fifty-fifty the almost sophisticated readers. Her chapter on becoming pregnant is called "Revelations," and this Biblical reference serves as an anchoring metaphor. After we read, I directed students to the title and asked, "Where have you seen this give-and-take before?" Latisha was quick to answer that it was a church discussion, and Jamal was able to summarize the Book of Revelation as office of the New Testament in the Bible that talks near the finish of the world.

I and then asked: "Why would Maya Angelou cull this title?"

After a long pause Shakira inferred, "Well, I guess having a baby was like the end of the world as she knew it."

Marquita added, "Aye, or maybe even just losing her virginity, because then that changed everything."

I asked if they thought the title had a negative or positive connotation, and Bianca used her personal experience to answer: "Information technology'south kinda both. Like for me when I got meaning, information technology felt bad for a infinitesimal, merely then it turned out really great."

The grade agreed that whatsoever big change is hard and often seems negative at first, just obviously Angelou considered this to be a positive change in the end.

I concluded the class menstruation with students working in minor groups to respond open up-concluded and multiple-choice questions. For case, I asked students to utilise context clues to infer the connotation of the term "enormity" and the possible pregnant of "recalcitrant." I also asked students about genre conventions: "How practise yous know this is a memoir?" "How would you describe the narration?" In a course with a wide range of ability levels, my students do good from cooperative learning time and exercise quite a chip of teaching and learning amongst themselves. Listening in, I heard a pupil challenge his peer'southward assertion that "enormity" was obviously positive because it related to existence big; another grouping criticized my respond choices for "recalcitrant," but that created a hazard to talk over the shortcomings of multiple-choice assessments.

Imani All Mine

To set a contrast with the genre, way, and content of Letter of the alphabet to My Daughter, I selected the first chapter of the young developed novel Imani All Mine, by Connie Porter, as the second text. Most a 15-year-sometime narrator whose mother is not supportive of her pregnancy, Imani All Mine is written in a conversational manner, with consistent features of Blackness English language. The reading level fabricated it accessible to all my students to read independently, and they completed some other double-entry journal, forth with individual and pocket-sized grouping discussion questions. I was struck by the tensions that educatee responses revealed, from joy over a baby's birth to the challenges that come later. In response to the line "I wasn't expecting nothing for my altogether this year," Marquita wrote: "I don't be expecting nothing for my altogether e'er again because I accept a child." In response to the narrator's female parent saying she had it easy, Deanna reflected: "I disagree. Things exist hard on us. Having a baby immature ain't like shooting fish in a barrel. At all." When I read through their piece of work, I knew we had some interesting points for the next twenty-four hour period'southward word. Even the students without children were sympathetic toward the narrator and critical of her mother's lack of support.

Starting with the text, I asked: "Do yous recall the narrator is being a good mother? Explain, giving specific show from the text." All the students doggedly agreed she is a good mother, citing lines near how much she loves her daughter and how she takes intendance of her without help. This theme of responsibleness echoed once again and again as our discussion moved from this text to comparisons with Angelou to stories from our own lives. I typed upwards some of the near provocative responses from the double-entry journals, including Deanna's and Marquita's statements. The students, parents and non, articulated the double-edged nature of teen parenthood. Tiana candidly shared that even though she initially planned to get an ballgame, now she would probably impale herself if something happened to her baby: "She'south my whole world." The conversation turned to how students would handle information technology if their children or younger siblings became teen parents. Most students agreed that better parenting would forestall the likelihood of unplanned pregnancy, often blaming mothers for not talking honestly with their daughters and fathers for non setting good examples. Despite the frequent assertions that condign a parent was an entirely positive life change, my students withal considered pregnancies like mine, later in life and with a supportive partner, to exist the ideal. They — not I — pointed out the difference between u.s.. This conversation probably would not have happened in a previous semester, merely my new pregnant identity fabricated information technology easier. My classroom was a place where nosotros could exist honest and allow what was potentially uncomfortable to exist embraced, rather than avoided.

Imani All Mine concluded upwardly existence students' favorite text of the semester. I gave out all eight of my copies of the book later on we read the first affiliate for class, and I heard back from many students almost finishing the book later on. In retrospect, I wish I had included more of the book in order to provide a more complex moving picture of the baby'southward life that could have pushed the discussion deeper into bug of poverty and violence. Both of these themes came up in our discussions, but we did non pursue them with every bit much attention equally they deserve.

There are many other texts that could have easily been added into my unit or replaced the ones I chose. Later in the semester we read The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor, which features more than one example of an adolescent female parent. I like The First Office Last, by Angela Johnson, for its focus on an adolescent father. I worry that only focusing on African American characters perpetuates racial stereotypes, then in the future I might bring in Make Lemonade, past Virginia Euwer Wolff, or Slam, by Nick Hornby, to explore teen parenting in different racial and cultural contexts.

Baby Mamas and Baby's Mothers

With some topics, I would not take started with literary texts, but would have chosen a more artistic anticipatory set for the theme. However, this theme was already alive in my classroom and already present in my students' lives, and then I felt that we would exist best served by rooting our report in a shared text. Every bit we read, the stories of my students' lives came into the curriculum through discussion and shared writing.

Side by side, we were ready to move to a more than critical and political arroyo. I decided to starting time past unpacking some of the linguistic communication nearly adolescent parents that came up often in my classroom.

I passed out an anticipation guide with the following statements:

1. Is there a difference betwixt being chosen a infant mama and a female parent?
2. When you hear the term baby mama, do you acquaintance it with a sure race?
3. Is baby mama a negative term?
4. Practice yous use the term baby mama to refer to yourself, members of your family, your close friends, or your girlfriend?

Students could cull yes, non sure, or no for each statement, with a box for answering at the kickoff of class and a separate one for the finish of class. We tallied our initial yes and no votes, and the discussion was lively from the very beginning.

A few outspoken students were determined that they were mothers, not baby mamas. Brittney explained: "To me, a baby mama is someone that just has a babe. A female parent is someone that cares for their child, is responsible." Others disagreed, saying information technology was all the same affair. Tyrone argued that he uses the term in a positive way to differentiate his child'southward female parent from other females. Tiana'due south opinion was that babe mama referred to unmarried mothers, and some students agreed that peradventure age mattered. No ane argued that the term was racist. I let the initial word proceed without giving much input, although students pointed out that they would not phone call me a babe mother, leading a few students to question their initial reaction to the race divergence, since I am a white adult female and all of my students are Black. Brittney identified the difference as class, saying that maybe yous would call a poor white woman a baby mama, just non someone similar me.

So we listened to the song "Baby Mama," past Fantasia Barrino, and used highlighting and annotations on the lyrics to find statements we agreed with, disagreed with, or were confused past. Many of my students knew this song by heart and sang along with the lyrics:

This goes out to all my babe mamas
I got love for all my babe mamas.
It's nearly fourth dimension nosotros had our own song
Don't know what took and then long
Cause nowadays it's like a badge of award
To exist a baby mama
I see ya payin' your bills
I run into ya workin' your task
I see ya goin' to school
And daughter I know it's hard
Even though ya fed up
With makin' beds up
Daughter proceed ya caput upwards.

Although students primarily agreed with Fantasia, they were struck by the definitions of babe mama offered in Gregory Kane's commentary on Blackness America Spider web, which basically states that a baby mama is a woman who got pregnant by a loser. Kane compares embracing babe mama to calling yourself a thug, gangsta, or pimp: "The fact that so many of us embrace [these terms] shows the cultural shift that has occurred amid Black Americans. You wouldn't accept heard Blackness radio stations playing a song like 'Baby Mama' 50 years ago. Black folks wouldn't have tolerated information technology." The class certainly did not reach a consensus, but a few students did start to question the term's connotations. Donetta suggested: "Perchance in the commencement, like back in the day, baby mama was a more negative thing. And maybe when older folks say it, they mean it bad."

To address the potential racial implications of the term, I offered a 2d example: a video clip from Fox News in which Michelle Obama is referred to as "Obama's babe mama." "Bogus" was my students' mutual refrain, with many pointing out it seemed purposefully disrespectful.

Tony spoke up. "You know, I call up it can exist racist. I think Fox was being racist." Some of his classmates agreed.

I often discover that students do non share my belief that language is political. As in the showtime of the "baby mama" lesson, students push back on the power of specific words, even derogatory terms. This lesson, withal, elicited the virtually meaningful consideration of different viewpoints and even some changes in opinion. In the cavalcade for responses at the end of class, more one-third of the students changed at least one opinion.

In that location are many more layers to this upshot that could be explored, from consideration of Black English (infant mama versus babe's mama) to the similarities and differences with the term baby daddy. Later in the unit of measurement, nosotros looked at hip-hop songs about mothers, and certainly a class catamenia could be spent considering the contradiction between how some rappers talk about their own mothers versus the mothers of their children. Information technology would be worth specifically exploring how mothers of dissimilar races and cultures are portrayed in literature and popular culture (the MTV shows Teen Mom and Sixteen and Significant offer a potentially rich opportunity for exploration). In previous classes, I accept addressed adoption past pairing The First Role Last with a Xvi and Pregnant episode.

While teaching this mini-unit, I was struck by a series of New York Times articles reporting on a $400,000 anti-teen pregnancy ad campaign New York City launched on buses and in subway stations. I showed my students an example featuring a crying toddler (who is not white) and the text "I'm twice as probable not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen." I asked the students to reply in writing well-nigh how they felt.

Tiana wrote: "If I saw one, I would effort to rip down the sign. . . . The advertizing is a stereotype, and it'due south disrespectful to immature mothers."

Tony, who is not a parent, responded: "I think the ads are non a good idea because yous shouldn't downward someone. Yous should reach out and help somebody." He as well pointed out that his mother had been a teen mother, just he was going to graduate from loftier school.

The students were unanimous in finding the ads offensive and a waste of money that could exist spent in a positive mode. After the semester ended, I noticed that Chicago started a similar campaign on buses; I hope that when my students see these ads, afterward their initial anger they will be reminded of the conversations we shared this semester.

Reflections

After our consideration of boyish mothers, we moved into motherhood and parenting more broadly, and many of the aforementioned themes re-emerged. Ane thing I learned from my students was that being a parent, regardless of your historic period or marital status, brings with it universal emotions and experiences. Every school-age parent in my classroom was trying to be a good parent in spite of the ascendant discourses telling them they would not succeed.

Although the teen fathers in my classroom brought their perspectives to our dialogue, our discussions showed me I demand to reshape this unabridged unit with more attention to school-historic period fathers. In 1 class, I had four fathers of young girls who sabbatum virtually each other and humorously bounced stories off one some other. They ofttimes spoke from the parental role about how they will talk to their daughters about young men and prevent them from becoming teen mothers. The nature of the curriculum this time did non always push them to consider the contradictions in their positions or reflect on the meaning and portrayal of immature fathers. I know at that place are more important conversations we need to accept almost male person-female person relationships and the role of fathers; next time I will be sure to foster them.

When schools address single parenting at all, allow solitary teen parenting, it is almost inevitably linked to moralizing about "good choices" (Kelly 1998). As social justice educators, we need to recognize how the voices and identities of school-age parents are beingness silenced and denigrated by the curriculum and reframe the consequence as part of an investigation of the complexity of life and the web of power, gender, race, and grade.

References

• Angelou, Maya. 2008. Letter of the alphabet to My Daughter. Random House.
• Christensen, Linda. 2009. Didactics for Joy and Justice. Rethinking Schools.
• Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
• Kane, Gregory. April twenty, 2005. "Commentary: What Exactly Is a 'Baby Mama?' It Depends on How You Define Yourself." BlackAmericaWeb.com.
• Kelly, Deirdre M. 1998. "Teacher Discourses About a Young Parents Program: The Many Meanings of 'Good Choices,'" Teaching and Urban Club, thirty.
• Menconi, David. October. 21, 2005. "She's Notwithstanding an Idol: Recent Controversy Doesn't Tedious Fantasia," Raleigh News and Observer.
• Porter, Connie. 2000. Imani All Mine. Mariner Books.
• Taylor, Kate. March 6, 2013. "Posters on Teenage Pregnancy Describe Burn down," The New York Times.

Abby Kindelsperger is a PhD educatee in curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a graduate teaching assistant in the English Education programme. She is a erstwhile alternative loftier school English language teacher. Names have been changed.

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Source: https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/baby-mamas-in-literature-and-life/

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