‘Baby Mama Drama,’ Or Just A Figment Of The Imagination?
By John W. Fountain
By John W. Fountain
There’s no such thing as Baby Mama Drama. No mother, out of spite or scorn, would ever place impediments in the way of a man to be a loving father to his children. No way.
No woman would ever bend over backwards at every chance to make her baby daddy’s way hard and seek to turn his life into a living hell. Nope. Not true. Uh-uh.
And no woman would ever demean and provoke her children’s father with verbal insults, call police or the Department of Children and Family Services and make false accusations against him. Would never spend the child support on the absolutely frivolous or absurd while allowing the children to look ragged and tattered while she looks simply fabulous.
No woman would ever undermine a father’s sound advice, wisdom and plans for their children. Would never assault the institution called fatherhood with words like, “My son doesn’t need a father, I’m the mama and the daddy.”
Would never neglect her children, abandon them, not show up for parent-teacher’s conferences, school assemblies or sports games.
And surely no woman would ever use her children as pawns in a game of revenge against their father. Never curse and otherwise berate him publicly. Never lie to a judge about whether a man has given her financial support.
What is not as visible is “the struggle” — the sometimes-constant interferences and downright assault against a father’s relationship with his children at the hands of their mother
A woman would never seek to punish her children’s father because of the demise of love and their relationship, and time and circumstance that have necessitated that they move forward apart, despite the fact that they forever have a child or children between them.
Nope, that doesn’t happen. And men who think it does are simply party to one mass hallucination designed to malign women.
Except for so many men, we know it does happen. For many men, these are simply among the war stories of fatherhood. And this much I have discovered: It isn’t just a black thing.
Still, we brothers stand accused of stereotyping, in particular black women, should we dare mention experiencing this unnecessary hardship as fathers who live apart from our children after relationships with their mothers have ended. We are the scapegoats, the usual suspects, the perpetrators of familial dysfunction.
Black men wholesale are labeled as abandoners of our children. “Deadbeat dads,” so many sisters are quick to call us. “Dogs.” “Bums.” And worse, there are those words spoken by embittered women to their children:
“Your daddy ain’t sh — !”
“…Your no-good a — daddy!”
“Y’all daddy don’t care about y’all…”
“You black men are all the same…”
…And society drinks it all up because these descriptors fit their tainted assaultive paradigm of us. And society accepts, without pause or question, the sweeping generalizations about black men, which reflects America’s willingness to believe the worst about us, even despite evidence that says the narrative is not fact but fiction.
Indeed a 2013 Centers for Disease Control study found that of all races, black men are as involved or more involved in the lives of their children than men of all races. This is not news to us. Black men — whether living with or apart from their children — can be good fathers. And we are.
Indeed we see our fellow brothers being coaches and mentors, accompanying their little girls to daddy-daughter dances, at school assemblies and parent-teacher conferences and recitals, braiding hair and jumping rope and taking their children and grandchildren fishing, to parks and church and to myriad other places.
What is not as visible is “the struggle” — the sometimes-constant interferences and downright assault against a father’s relationship with his children at the hands of their mother. As if time constraints, geographical distances and the difficulties of being an involved parent weren’t already enough.
Brothers sometimes share the sordid details in each other’s company, sometimes with their mothers who have borne witness themselves and who encourage their sons to remain faithful. Sometimes one brother encourages another brother who is walking the road they’ve traveled to stay the course that sometimes can seem unbearable, unfair, unending.
And yet, although tempted to withdraw from fatherhood, even just for peace of mind, the thought of not being in their children’s lives has been many a brother’s saving grace.
Mostly, it has been for love — comforted along a sometimes pain-filled journey that comes from understanding the importance of this divine calling called fatherhood and the bittersweet reality that children ultimately grow up. That our time with our children is precious and short, and that we can’t afford to give up.
And yet, I — we — know brothers who did, who have.
I make no excuses for them. And I have written critically — having myself been an abandoned son — about men who abdicate their role as father. Written that whatever the reason or excuse to quit, fathers must endure.
Truth: Some brothers are simply deadbeats. Another truth: Some sisters are full of baby mama drama.
That was an argument I lost last year with my editors for a Father’s Day piece I wrote. So they decided to delete, without consultation, this passage:
“…Despite, for some of us, the inevitable bouts of ‘baby mama drama.’ Or having to endure public berating, the use of our children as pawns, the constant irrecoverable costs.
That’s not whining. It just is.”
And baby mama drama is no more a figment of some men’s imaginations than the fact that fat meat is greasy.
So to these bothers in particular I wish a very special Happy Father’s Day.
Email: Author@Johnwfountain.com
Website: www.johnwfountain.com
