Beyond Baby Mamas

a support and advocacy initiative for single mothers of color

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BBM Revisits: Black Adoptive Mother Nefertiti Austin In April of 2013, Nefertiti Austin wrote an essay for us about her choice to adopt a son as a single black woman.

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Love Quadrangles: Ciara, Future, Russell, and Co-Parenting While Dating.

Love Quadrangles: Ciara, Future, Russell, and Co-Parenting While Dating.

This weekend, singer-dancer-model Ciara became the latest celebrity subject of single-mom scrutiny after a photo that surfaced of her, her one-year-old son Future, and her new beau, NFL quarterback Russell Wilson made its way to Hot 97 host Ebro’s Instagram account: Ebro In The Morning Discussion: Do you think Ciara is doing too much exposing her son to Russell Wilson so early? A photo posted by…

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BBM Revisits: Yasmine McMorrin

Spelman graduate and single mother Yasmine McMorrin made her writing debut on the Beyond Baby Mamas nearly two years ago in August 2013. Her first post, “The Sometimey Guilt of Single Motherhood,” about her experiences as a young mom and law student with an estranged co-parent remains one of the site’s most-read posts. She followed up with an inspiring post seven months later, “Journey to…

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What to Do When You See Unaccompanied Black Children in Public Spaces.

Laura Browder/Source: Houston PD This weekend, a black single mother was arrested for leaving her 6-year-old daughter and two-year-old sitting unaccompanied at a table in the food court of  Memorial City Mall in Houston, TX. “My children weren’t even 30 yards away from me,” Laura Browder, a college student, wrote in a statement following her arrest. A potential employer scheduled a last-minute…

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Single-Mom Squad Goals.

When I started Beyond Baby Mamas in 2013, my daughter had just turned 3 and I was working part-time as an adjunct professor, trying to take my freelance writing career to the next level. I knew I wanted BBM to be an online support group for single mothers of color, and I thought I understood how very broad a category that was. I anticipated BBM drawing mothers of all ages with different…

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How to Help a Single-Parent Family Buy a Holiday Toy.

How to Help a Single-Parent Family Buy a Holiday Toy.

Looking for new ways to give to those in need this holiday season? Beyond Baby Mamas can help, by connecting you to a single parent who needs help buying a gift for their child.

Whether you were raised in a one-income household, had a few financially tight holiday seasons as a child, or have ever struggled to meet the needs or fulfill the desires of a child in your life, you can imagine how hard…

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Single Parents: Need Help With a Gift for Your Small Child? We Can Help!

Single Parents: Need Help With a Gift for Your Small Child? We Can Help!

Read all details and fill out of the form below if you and your child qualify. Happy holidays!

Beyond Baby Mamas understands that the holidays can be a stressful, financially-prohibitive time for many parents living on one income, and no families that celebrate a gift-exchanging holiday this time of year should have to explain to their children that they can’t have what they most desire.

Beyond…

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What Mali Music's Gospel Album Gets Right About Unmarried Parenting.

What Mali Music’s Gospel Album Gets Right About Unmarried Parenting.

It isn’t often that we get hopeful, even-tempered, nonjudgmental songs about unmarried parenting from gospel artists, but Mali Music’s latest album, Mali Is…, released this past Tuesday, gives us just that. The second to last track on the album, “Johnny & Donna,” tells the tale of a young unmarried couple who naively embark on the…

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I Am Recovering From Fatherless Daughter Syndrome.   The picture above is from 5th grade. It’s an important picture because my dad did my hair that day.

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Enter Beyond Baby Mamas' 2nd Mother’s Day Dinner Contest!

Enter Beyond Baby Mamas’ 2nd Mother’s Day Dinner Contest!

We want to help send you and yours to Mother’s Day dinner.

It’s that time of year again! Mother’s Day 2014 is on its way, and we want to show you how much we appreciate you. Beyond Baby Mamas is once again offering families led by single mothers of color the opportunity to win a gift certificate to a family-style restaurant.

Here’s our annual appeal:

For restaurants, Mother’s Day is big business.…

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"Why the poverty rates differ so much is not mysterious: it's almost entirely about transfers (i.e. welfare programs). You can see this by looking at the poverty rate of children in single parent homes prior to taxes and transfers compared to the same poverty rate after taxes and transfers. 

High poverty rates for children in single mother families is a policy choice. In the US, we decide in favor of it. In the Nordic social democracies, they decide against it.

Of course, it's not just children in single mother households that have elevated poverty rates in the US. The US has massively higher child poverty rates across all family types.

Given the overwhelming size of the category, there are actually more impoverished children in married families in the US than any other family category (at least in this 2000 dataset).

Thus, high child poverty in the US is not caused by some overwhelming crush of single mother parenting. The lowest of the low-poverty countries manage to get along in the world with similar levels of single mother parenting just fine."

Read "The Single Mother, Child Poverty Myth" in its entirety here. 

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Beyond Baby Mamas joins the family, friends and Orange, NJ communities of single mother Tanji Dewberry, 37, and her son, Evan Soler, 8, in mourning their untimely, tragic passing in a house fire on Sunday night. Dewberry was vice president of an investment firm and a children's book author. Her book, Oh, Fiddlesticks, was written to raise awareness about ADHD after her son was diagnosed with the condition. 

Read more here. 

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We Are the Ones We’ve Been Taught Not to Wait For: On Shanesha Taylor and Caring Communities. Last week, a black single mother dominated the national news cycle. In her mug shot, plastered above many a think-piece headline, Shanesha Taylor's tear-soaked cheeks and emptied eyes were offered to the world as a kind of apology, a kind of explanation, a kind of platform.

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'The Single Moms Club?' Thanks, But No Thanks.

‘The Single Moms Club?’ Thanks, But No Thanks.

Nicole Aghaaliandastjerdi, one of Beyond Baby Mamas’ most encouraging, inspiring and all-around awesome community members, saw The Single Moms Club — in an actual movie theater! — so you don’t have to. We asked her to review it for us and she graciously obliged. If you saw the film, too, we’d love your thoughts. Leave a comment below!

BBM community member Nicole Aghaaliandastjerdi’s shorter…

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Why 'Doing Everything Right' Doesn't Insulate Women From Single Motherhood.

Why ‘Doing Everything Right’ Doesn’t Insulate Women From Single Motherhood.

Professor Jen Jamison, with her gorgeous three-year-old twins.

Where I began my story as a single mother was at a time in my life when I felt like I had done everything the right way and in the correct order. I graduated from high school at the age of 18, followed by a bachelor of science degree in chemistry at the age of 22 and a Ph.D. in chemistry at the age of 28. During my postdoctoral…

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Three cheers for Sarah Huny Young, whose essay, "Beating Shame, Staying Trill," which went live on the Beyond Baby Mamas website around 5:30 PM EST Friday, Feb. 21, is the fastest clicked post in the history of our blog. It scored over 1,100 viewers in six hours, making it the second highest viewed post ever!

Congratulations, gangsterly, and thank you for sharing yourself with our community. :)

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Beating Shame, Staying Trill.

The author with her two gorgeous children

The last time I thought I had it all figured out was one year ago today, February 21, 2013. That was the day the man I loved told me he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore. I was eight months pregnant with our son.

It’s not been my intention to keep the anniversary in my head, but there are noteworthy dates in close proximity that built up…

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