Original post from The Culturalist
As of late I’ve seen a lot of activity in the African-American female online circles about a new movement entitled, “The No Wedding, No Womb”. I’m African-American, and female so I wanted to know what I was missing. Boy was I missing a lot! Its a movement to end fatherless children in African-American households. The meaning of the movement is for women to not to mate with men who do not want a long term relationship aka marriage. I don’t have the statistics in my head on why its important for children to be raised in two parent households, however, I know from a mental and emotional standpoint, its always better to have two people backing you instead of one.
So today, I joined the movement. I do desire marriage and children. However, if I don’t get married, I do not want children. This is my choice. I wonder why is fatherless children are so prominent in the African American race? As I mentioned above, I don’t have any statistics in front of me but I have seen that many women who have children out of wedlock never intended to marry the men they were having sex with. So when the women gets married, the woman has the kid, and the man goes on. Sure he may pay child support, and spend some time with the child, however, he’s not in the kids life 24/7.
To learn more about the No Wedding, No Womb Movement checkout the website below:
http://noweddingnowomb.com/
Mashawnda Dowell
Oh my! I just stumbled on this post
I wrote it and my English is horrible!!!!! Just say—I support #NWNW. I apologize about my grammar and wording in the sentence above!
http://www.culturatist.com
http://www.globalblackwomen.com
mona williams
I am of Caribbean culture and of African descent. I believe marriage must become respected on many deeper levels. My mother married and then had three children. I am the second. My dad deserted our family, changed his name so he could not be traced and sailed to England. We never received child support and Guyana (next door to Brazil) had no Welfare system. Our childhood lives were as bitter as gall and wormwood. I met my father for the first time when I was 23 and found his attitude to females particularly destructive;for example, he felt that High school and University education, which were not free in Guyana, were wasted on females because I would marry, so he had refused to give me one cent for either. I sent myself through High school and won a Fulbright scholarship to Stanford University in California. The removal of my father’s destructive attitude and conduct from our lives, ironically, enabled all of us, and Mum, to attend university in America and improve our lives. Dad, although quite clever, never went beyond Elementary school and hated our accomplishments. How awful that divorce was preferable to my parents’ marriage.
It is not enough to see marriage primarily as the means to facilitate reproduction, or women are reduced to being a legally available womb. Marriage must mean cherishing and supporting a spouse and being responsible to the utmost degree for offspring. Otherwise, unsupported legal children are exposed to the same horrors of poverty, exploitation, sickness and deprivation as any unsupported out-of-wedlock children. The single mother’s life can also be brutally difficult because of her poor choice in marriage. I speak from horrific experience. Mona Williams.
Christelyn Karazin
I absolutely agree. The ring is not “the thing.” It’s the commitment that it represents. Without it, then you might as well never have the ceremony.
BTW What an accomplishment–a Fulbright scholarship!