Race Card: Single Black Women and the Motherhood Debate

If you haven't had your fill of stories about lonely, unwed black women, check out The Root's piece advising African-American ladies who've made marriage a prerequisite for childbirth to consider conceiving without a "ring on it," as Beyoncé would say.

In "Planning for Single Motherhood," contributing Root editor Jacque Reid describes her longing to have a child and recent connection to a single woman who entered motherhood a year ago with the help of a sperm donor. Predictably, the piece is filled with references to "failed relationships," "biological clocks," and grim marriage rates for black women.

Citing statistics from an Ebony article published way back in 2003, Reid reports that "only half of black women marry by the age of 30, compared with 81 percent of white women." However, a Yale study released in 2009 arguably has more reliable data on black women and marriage. According to the study 42 percent of black women have never married, compared to 23 percent of white women.

Whatever the true numbers are, Reid uses black women's seeming disadvantage in the marriage market as a platform to suggest that such women devise a plan about how they would manage motherhood alone.

"Go ahead and figure out how you want to become impregnated: have a baby with a friend or casual sexual partner, or use an anonymous donor?" she asks. "Better to have a plan in place than trying to throw one together under the pressure of possibly running out of time."

That last line is one of the reasons the article doesn't sit well with me. Like the other stories on black women and marriage, the impetus for the piece is fear. Not only should black women be scared about their marriage prospects, they should be scared that if they indeed end up "spinsters," they'll never bear children, so better act now and devise a motherhood plan before their ovaries dry up.

As Reid surely knows, not all black women want to marry and have children. Some married black women don't want children, and many single black women do have children. So, perhaps a more interesting perspective on this issue would be to examine why privileged African-American women who want children, such as Reid, hesitate to enter motherhood solo.

MSNBC.com contributor Brian Alexander reported in 2009, for example, that some elite African-American women worry about being stereotyped as "ghetto" if they become single mothers. After all, black women have largely been vilified as drains on the system for bearing children out of wedlock, while white women in popular culture—from Rachel on Friends to Bristol Palin—are applauded for having the courage to become single mothers.

In addition to the fear of being negatively stereotyped, there's also the religion factor. Black women of faith would likely face twice the stigma if they turned up at a church or mosque pregnant and unwed. But other than artificial insemination, Reid neglects to mention options for women forbidden by religion from engaging in sex outside of marriage. Adoption, for instance, is never raised as a possibility for these women.  

There's also no mention of lesbian women interested in having children. Certainly, these women aren't waiting for a husband to show up to decide if they can become mothers or not. What lessons can other women take from them?