Written by Love Isn’t Enough Guest Contributor Thorn; Originally published at Mother Issues. Thorn provides some helpful background on this post here.
I don’t usually use disclaimers, but I’m feeling like I should go ahead and put a big disclaimer right here. The first part says that I’m just trying to write down some things I’ve been musing about and I may well be wrong and am only applying it to our situation anyway, so please don’t feel like I’m judging anyone who makes decisions different from ours. I know that all of us are trying to do what’s best for our kids and that’s going to differ based on each family’s specific situation. Part two of the disclaimer is a direct appeal to emotion. It’s my birthday, so please go easy on me if you are in fact offended or bothered! I’m happy to hear disagreements or challenges, but I don’t want people to think I’m being mean.
With that out of the way, it’s probably going to be a letdown to know that I’m just talking about hair, though that can in fact be a fairly explosive comment. After we’d done hair last weekend and ended up with a row of bantu knots along Mara’s hairline and then little puffs everywhere else, on Monday we had to deal with the reality of Mara needing to find something to do during the two hours of school naptime when she wasn’t napping. Apparently her idea was to rip every tiny rubber band out of her hair and then (she says) eat it. So now even rubber bands join fabric ponytail Os and beads and snaps on the list of things that have gone out of her hair and into her mouth and thus are on the banned list until they aren’t in that category anymore.
I’d been lucky enough to find a new parting technique on a new blog and used my version of the crescent parts to put between 45 and 50 little braids into Mara’s hair on Monday night. It took a long time — Babies and Ponyo, with many breaks included — but she’s got a solid style that I’m hoping will get us two weeks if I occasionally touch up any braids that come loose. With each braid shorter than my pinky finger, they stick up all over the place especially after she sleeps, but we’re just figuring she’s three and this is what you do with a child whose hair is less than three inches long. (And no one’s going to disagree with me when I say that it’s frustrating braiding hair that short, right? You’ve barely got any braid in when you’re running out of hair to hold and ending up with a puffy loose end! I actually twisted the ends with pomade and then left barettes in for that first night so the braids would at least be tempted to hang down, but I’m afraid to leave them in longer and risk having Mara rip them out and damage her hair. I left snaps in her “bangs” braids and those were gone after one day, so now she can’t have those either.)
This got me thinking again because I’m pretty sure this means Mara will be the only girl at the school with braids like that. All the other girls who have small braids will have them bound or adorned in some way and Mara’s version is more of a boy style, though perhaps that’s because girls tend not to spend much time with the hair length Mara has. So after saying I want to do what I can to help her look like the other kids, I’ve gone ahead and given her a style that probably doesn’t, that again (like loose hair) may look to her classmates like a “boy” style. (Her classmates generally have braided/ponytail styles that look like they’re being worn by active three-year-olds, though the “mean” girl in the class always had tiny, precise, perfect cornrows that never got mussed at all.) And here’s where I say that we’re doing what we need to for our family. I could have tried to do a whole-head flat twist style where I find ways to weave the ends into the flat twists like I did on the spiral. In fact, I think that’s what I’ll do next time it’s hair time. However, this time I wanted stability and something she couldnt easily pull, and so braids seemed like our best bet.
A post on another new-to-me adoptive mom’s hair blog got me thinking more, too. She mentioned something I really don’t see much on adoptive blogs, that her daughter’s classmates are mostly also black and that they all evaluate each other’s hairstyles. The classmates’ interest ended up undoing part of what her daughter had in, yet that was a real sign that the mom had done a good job. My impression — which I’m sure has many exceptions — is that a lot of the bloggers I read who are white moms of black kids like I am are sending their kids to schools where few of their classmates are black. That means their kids have hairstyles that are unlike what their white peers are wearing but also might not have enough black peers to make it clear what the local norms are there.
And there are parents who don’t care about norms, certainly. I assume we all know about the white moms who just love their children’s curly hair and get comments about how it’s inappropriate to keep it loose and yet do it anyway. I get that, I really do. If Mara were wiling to keep headbands in or keep from tugging her hair when it’s loose, we’d probably do more twistout-type styles so it doesn’t shrink completely. I love the way Mara’s hair coils and want her to be proud of it, but we don’t leave it loose for more than a day or so because that’s just asking for tangling and hair-pulling.
We’ve been going to a potluck in a part of town that’s largely poor and black mixed with gay and gentrifying. It’s where the church we attend is located and also where I’ve been serving meals on one Friday a month to people who need a meal, which is a pretty big group in that area. At the potluck, the parents bringing kids fall into several loose categories — I’m focusing on the hippiesh parents with a variety of family configurations who let their kids pretty much run free and the single black moms who expect their children to obey them — and it’s not entirely clear yet where we fit. You can look at a child and know which of these categories he or she will fall into, partly because of hair. The parents who let their kids run also tend to let the kids do their own hair or make hair choices, so there are lots of lopsided ponytails and loose hair that doesn’t look well-conditioned and so on. These are cute kids having fun and it’s fun to watch them, except a few who are so out-of-control we’re considering not going back, but that’s a different story. Also cute, though, are the kids whose moms clearly have a weekly hair day the way we do. Each week, the girls come back with hair precisely sectioned off into twists or braids. Sometimes a twist will come free after a night of playing and I assume the moms just fix those up before school the way I do with Mara. I do suspect that part of the reason that group of single moms has been so welcoming to me is that Mara’s hair looks styled and they respect that.
We also see a range of hairstyles when we’re at church on Sundays, where the congregation is fairly low-income on the whole with no one I know of exceeding what I’d think of as getting-by middle class. Almost all the couples at church are butch/femme with the stud or butch partner usually having natural hair, cut short or cornrowed or in locs and the femme partner having relaxed hair or wigs/weave, though there are some locs and a few small afros in there too. The little little girls get puffs and then braids or twists when they’re big enough. Little little boys get cornrows or braids if their hair isn’t being kept short. Hair straightening tends to happen at age 6 or 7 and even some of the girls in that age range are getting what looks to me like traction alopecia. Even the straightened hair is often in cornrow/flat twist styles, sometimes with beads for special occasions up to maybe age 10. Microbraids with extension hair are common in the whole school-age range, and teens also often have either shorter relaxed hair or cornrow styles with colorful extension hair. Oh, and there are some particularly unfortunate wigs, and it particularly bothers me to see a tween in a wig, I admit.
All of those last options I just mentioned are things that we don’t want to do for Mara. We don’t think they’re healthy for her hair (on the whole; I know all can be done in better or worse ways) but they also just aren’t about who we are as a family, what our cultural and class expectations are. Now, some of that may have evolved by the time Mara’s getting to the point where she wants those styles, but at this point they’d be a clear Nope. We’ve told her it’s a mom job to take care of her hair and that’s going to be old enough until she’s truly old enough to do the job herself.
Even if we do keep going to the church, I don’t think we’ll follow the hairstyle norms of the church because they aren’t our norms. Lee hasn’t said that she thinks some of the styles signal that the wearer is lower-class, but I do think that’s part of her mindset and I do think it’s a realistic thought. Black hair sends a hell of a lot of messages, some intended and many assumed probably incorrectly by the person reading the message. I mean, Lee doesn’t have locs because she’s Afrocentric, more because she realized it meant she would never again have to comb her hair. And because it’s a fashion decision rather than a more spiritual one, we’d think and talk a lot before letting Mara have locs if that’s what she wanted. I believe in the end (if she were out of foster care; we’re not making permanent choices while she’s in care) we’d agree to let her look like Mama and it might be a good choice for her if she does end up as sporty as she seems now. But it wouldn’t be our first choice for a hairstyle unless she asked, and that’s partly because around here the only people we see whose kids are locked seem to be either white adoptive parents (signal: can’t handle the hair otherwise) and black parents who are themselves locked (signal: has some sort of cultural familial importance). Now that she has locs herself, Lee doesn’t believe any of the stigma about how locs are nasty or unwashed, but I know she doesn’t want anyone thinking that about Mara.
And if we do send Mara to the Waldorf school, she’ll be in class with the potluck kids with hippie-ish parents. The school norms will be kind of anything-goes (as long as there are no logos on the clothes; another point of difference) and yet just as we’d never relax Mara’s hair when she hits first grade, we’d wouldn’t start letting her styling it herself by making random pigtails and leaving the rest loose. (And I will say, the kids in this group who have black moms living with them have more of a style underpinning the freedom than the kids who don’t, though in all of this I’m dealing with a very small sample size!) Around school age, we’ll probably stop using beads in her braids. She’ll have more choice about what style she wants, but we still anticipate weekly hair time as the norm.
Basically, we’re middle-class people and trying to figure out what that means for this girl who will become middle-class by living with us. I said in the last post on this topic that I don’t want Mara to feel like she was rescued from economic or style inadequacy to join our family, silly as that may sound. I don’t want her to look down on the styles her siblings probably have (and I would guess they’re pretty much like the church crowd) but I also don’t necessarily want her to sport them herself, though we may find ways around that at times. Black culture is not monolithic at all and I’m describing the dynamic in our little midwestern city, but I think anywhere you go you’ll see some differences in hairstyle that do relate to whether a child is being raised by immigrants, African-American parents, or white parents, whether those families are wealthy, middle-class of some sort, working-class, or basically poor. I know the kids to whom I serve free dinners have their hair styled too, though on a Friday evening it’s often not fresh or neat.
I put up the disclaimer at the top because it’s hard to talk about class, and here I am as a middle-class white girl (age 31!) talking about it in ways that make broad generalizations. I realize that’s risky, but the point I’m trying to make is that we don’t make decisions about things like hair in a vacuum and I think it’s worth trying to gradually tease out how we do it, what goes into those choices. And we all know that “teasing out” is a phrase that holds a lot of meaning for people who do detangle coily-kinky hair like Mara’s, that it takes time and patience and gentleness. I’m afraid I may have failed on all three counts here, but I’m taking a stab at it.
So if you’re still reading this and you’re the white mom of a black child, don’t think this means I have some kind of magical answer about how you should choose to style your child’s hair. I’m only talking about our little bubble here, where we get to see what the professors who are Lee’s peers choose for their daughters as well as all the kids mentioned above and whatever’s on the hair blogs and what Sasha and Malia might be sporting at any given photo op. We’ve made our decisions (no relaxers being the key one) and are working out from that to figure out what we want to do. But unless you know the real diversity in your own community, you don’t know what kinds of things your child’s hair might be saying. And maybe you don’t care and just want your child to look cute by your standards, which is fine. I’ve gotten criticism for spending so much time on Mara’s hair because I shouldn’t care what other people think of it, and it’s hard to explain that to some extent I don’t care, but I only don’t care as long as I feel like I’m doing my part in the bargain and making it look like she is being cared for. She’s not a child who can be stigmatized because her hair signals that she’s not being loved, that she’s not having her blackness nurtured, that she’s getting lesser treatment because she’s in foster care. And this may seem ridiculous to people, but to me it’s meaningful and necessary and definitely one of my mom jobs.
I’m writing this now because I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, and now it’s time to shower and wake Mara and put some leave-in conditioner on her braids and then eat one of the mini-cupcakes she and I made last night with breakfast. Then tonight Lee and I get to go out all by ourselves for dinner while Mara stays with some friends. Perhaps we’ll talk about hair. I know we’ll talk about Mara and the future and the choices we’re making. I really am so grateful I have this blog to let me figure out and talk through my own choices, but also to learn from others. This has probably been the best year of my life thanks to Mara’s introduction and I’m looking forward to more growth ahead.
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Hi Thorn,
I was fascinated by your article because as I read it, I had to solve the mystery of:
a. who you are (what your race is)
b. what your socio-economic class is
c. what type of mother you are (adoptive/biological/foster/transracial adoptive)
As I read your blog and checked off lists in my head, I found myself with more questions such as:
What is your socio-economic class? and wheres the comparison of your family to the Black families who have the same socio-economic class as you?
How do they style their children’s hair? (although I do feel I know the answer to how middle and upper middle class Blacks style their children’s hair,)
I still wasn’t sure of your socio-economic class–because you left very minimal clues of that…for instance I do not know what your family history background is, what your employment status is, what your educational background is, nor who you know and socialize with outside of the people in church and school for me to know your socio-economic status.
The reason for that is many Black people I know (I know you’re not Black but Im comparing as we are talking about hair and socio-economic class and the majority of parents of Black children whom I know, are themselves Black–White parents of Black children are a minority in my world–please bear with me as I share my thoughts)..the reason for that is many Black people I know no matter their socio-economic status, they often have family, sometimes have friends, who are of a higher or lower socio-economic background. It is common for us to navigate different socio-economic worlds.
On the hair issue and socio-economics–I didn’t see you comparing your family to Black families of the same socio-economic status–just to the ones of a “lower” socio-economic status as yours.
Another thing is that the hairstyles children wear DO reflect whether the parents know how to take care of natural hair, or fully understand the damage of certain styling methods to their child’s hair. Also teenagers tend to pick what they wish to wear on their head–the free spirited parents are probably also the parents who let tweens get a weave or wear a wig…or maybe the tween damaged their own hair when they were allowed to style it themselves, and ended up wearing wigs or weaves to cover bald spots.
And to be clear traction alopecia, hair loss from relaxers go across socio-economic lines–Ive seen the same in families who are higher up the socio-economic ladder–whose children have hair loss, hair damage because they were introduced to weaves and relaxers at such young ages, and by the time they were tween or teens the damage was done.
Another thing I noticed..the reason why other people’s children will not pull barrettes and ponytail holders out of their hair is because their parents told them not to and said there would be consequences for removing stuff from their hair after hours of washing, conditioning, braiding. The parents told the child this is the hairstyle we are doing for you, we need your help, please do not take your braids, barettes or ponytails out of your head. And the child learned to listen to their parents on that. I’m not in any way saying that’s what you should do–but as a Black mother it struck me how alot of time and angst about hair can be reduced if the parent and child talk about the hair issue and come to an agreement they both are happy with.
Children have opinions…you write about what you and your partner want and do not want with your daughter’s hair, yet puberty is a mother. I remember at 12 begging for a relaxer, every day relentlessly until my mother finally gave in. I started styling my own hair and it looked okay but not great because I was 12 trying to do what hairdressers are trained to do and dealing with relaxed hair with its fragileness. I had classmates whose hair looked worse, because again, we were kids whose parents finally let us do our own hair after that trip to the hairdresser for a touchup.
I guess my point is socio-economic class may have little to do with the hair thing so much as what is considered the style. Right now weaves have invaded the heads of tweens and teenagers. They want to mimic the hairstyles they see on grown women.
I personally do not like hair added to children’s heads (whether its synthetic or human hair). I understand why some moms do it–some do not have the hour or hours to devote to hairstyling everyday and prefer the cornrowed and braided styles with the added hair. I prefer children rock their own hair, whatever it is. So I do understand what you were saying. I just don’t think socio-economic status is what “it” is, so much as hair awareness, hair knowledge. Not everyone understands how to tell if hair is healthy, and how to maintain that hair health.
Alex, thanks for the long comment. I wondered if they’d have me write some sort of intro when they republished this here because unlike for people following on my blog, you are left with a lot of gaps about who we are! I hadn’t known when publication would be and you’re right that even what I threw together doesn’t answer all your questions.
We’re an educated middle-class household, above average income for the middle-class town where we live. We don’t have contact with a whole lot of children Mara’s age from our same class, mostly because we weren’t expecting to have a three-year-old and have just been scrambling to deal with parenting for these last four months. The younger middle-class black girls we do know all have hair much longer than Mara’s and tend to wear braids, twists, puffs. Most of them seem to use relaxers as they get older. Weaves for kids before puberty seem unusual here, but we live in a pretty conservative area in general.
Mara’s pulling at her hair is mostly related to anxiety, we think, and has also become a self-soothing habit when she’s scared or nervous, and eating things like beads serves a similar function. We’re working with a therapist on ways to stop it, but basically I think she’s going to need to feel more comfortable and she’s going to need to find healthier alternatives to replace the hair-pulling. Her bald spots have completely grown in and she hasn’t done any significant damage to her hair since she’s been with us, but she does still tug when she’s feeling sick or extra anxious. I also think it’s related that she clearly likes her looks and hair and skin a lot more than she did when she moved in with us from an all-white family where she didn’t get positive encouragement about that, and when she’s feeling that she’s a pretty girl with pretty hair she’s less likely to be destructive toward her hairstyles. She knows she has to earn her bead privileges back and I’m going to go ahead and let her try again this weekend because she’s been good about leaving her hair alone lately!
I don’t think I really was able to point this post in the direction I wanted to go, though your comment has lots of really interesting stuff about navigating class structures. I would agree that Lee’s extended family has a lot more class range (low low low to high high high) than mine (middle to very high) and that our black friends from church and otherwise span a much bigger class range than do our white friends.
I was mostly writing for other white moms of black kids who are trying to navigate hair politics, because I think too many of them are doing it in a relative vacuum. I’ve met so many little transracially adopted black kids whose black friends all also have white parents, and while it’s good that they have that connection, it’s not really the same as being part of the larger black community. I was trying to encourage people to really look at what the community norms are and what the local signals and style preferences are rather than just go by what they see on hair blogs (often a lot more dramatic than what most kids wear in everyday life) or among other transracially adopted kids. Maybe there’s an irony in having a white transracial parent point that out, but I also have the privilege of being part of that group and was hoping to encourage people to think rather than give an exhaustive breakdown of what I see. I can’t tell anyone what to do with their kids’ hair, but I can talk about what we’re doing with Mara’s and why, and that’s what I was trying to do here.
Wow, what an interesting post…you make me glad that I have boys!
Though come to think of it, I do take them to my hairdresser, who is Chinese (both boys were born in Korea) I don’t know if a non-Asian would give them a different haircut?
When I take my son to preschool tomorrow, I am totally going to check out all the girls’ hair.
I’m one of those people in a vacuum, so thanks.
This is a great place to point people who say (I should clarify, WHITE people who say) “You shouldn’t care so much what other people think of her hair.”
There are excellent reasons for considering what other people think.
That said, we knew we would lock Nat’s hair from an early age. Part of me is squeamish that some will think it’s because I can’t take care of her hair (I have taken total care of the locs since they were put in on her one and only trip to a salon), but most of me looks around our incredibly diverse neighborhood, church and school and says “I will never send all good signals to every demographic here.” So we choose. We choose based on our values and our aesthetics and our lifestyle. Nat pulls things out of her hair and chews them too, and though I take Alex’s point about it being a discipline issue, I’m unwilling to give her too much harshness about her hair. (I will be super harsh about her behavior in public/towards others, etc.)
I have gotten a little more chill about the gentle criticism from some Black women and take it in stride while enjoying the praise I get from natural hair cheerleaders who love her locs.
And you have some excellent points about the norms at school too. Our church is mixed race and mixed income, our neighborhood is very much the same (with lots of African immigrants in addition to African Americans, so the hair is across the spectrum), but our school is definitely majority upper-class and white (although much more mixed racially and economically than most private schools in our area). This means there are fewer children comparing Black hairstyles and everyone is always expressing love for our girls’ hair.
We are lucky that Nat’s Black teacher wears very short natural hair and that there is a teacher in the elementary grades who is white, but has (well-cared-for) locks to her ankles. Yes, her ankles. (She is my exception to the white-people-shouldn’t-have-locs rule.)
Anyway, I guess my bottom line is good for sticking with what’s right for Mara, because you will never please everyone all the time–of any race or class, let alone all of them.
The key to me is that my girls love their hair and are not alienated from its care–that they can handle their hair alone and thus if they choose salon styles in the future it will be a choice–not a default because they don’t know what to do with their hair.
Thorn, You have visited my blog. I think you commented on the post where I explained my decision to loc my youngest daughter’s hair. In the end, I did what was right for my daughter. Even when her hair was just in little twists (I am sure a lot like you describe having fixed Mara’s hair in this post), I overheard an older, white woman say that was how black people fix their hair when they don’t want to take care of it anymore. When I first locked her hair, I was worried what the black community would think. I have had two positive comments. And, two people asking me if I had done that. When I said yes, one smiled and said, “It looks really cute on her. You did a good job.” The other touched her hair, lifted a few of her locs and didn’t say anything. I did not confuse her response as something positive.
I can take care of her hair and I enjoyed it. We made the decision to loc her hair because my daughter arrived from Haiti with Hepatitis B and scalp ringworm. Because of the extent of her liver problems, the doctors have not treated her ringworm with oral medication. It is too hard on the liver. We have managed her scalp infection — kept her from shedding live fungus and infecting others and kept her from itching and being uncomfortable — with frequent (sometimes daily) medicated shampoos. And, I just don’t feel like explaining my decision to every person who doesn’t approve of the hairstyle. Parenting a child with an infectious disease is tricky, I don’t feel the need to disclose to a random stranger who thinks they understand that I locked her hair to avoid hassling with it. Besides, I put her locs in, I tighten her locs and do loc repairs. I am still in her hair way more often than she would like. She doesn’t like to sit still for hair care either. I let her watch a movie of her choice, you think that would help! I didn’t get to that place overnight. I used to be very self conscious about my daughters’ hair.
Besides, my daughter LOVES her locs. She decorates them with beads, barrettes and bling. Oh, and they go nicely under bike helmets which is a major plus in her book. The locs fit her personality.
Yes that’s the thing, in general in the Black community if you are aware of the sheer amount of time and energy put into grooming your daughter’s hair (whether its locs, braids, a press and curl, whatever) you are more likely to see it as hair that’s well cared for.
The myths about locs prevail in some circles and in others, people are aware that it is NOT a low maintence hairstyle even though it seems to be. The time and energy put into a daughter’s hair = love. So I do understand.
My mother has spine and neck issues as well as hand issues and chose to wear her hair cut in a short natural. She wasn’t interested in the caustic experience to her scalp that relaxers bring and didnt want to have to worry about putting lots of products on her hair and curling it with hot curlers. So a natural it was.
One bonus to choosing the hairstyles we wish for our children is the opportunity to BE COMFORTABLE with our choice. Even if our child is the only Black child in a class of Black children with their particular hairstyle. And to KNOW we did a great job of taking care of the hair and styling it.
Thanks for your disclaimer. My thoughts are all over the place. So I will do like my parents taught me, if I don’t have anything nice to say. Don’t say anything at all. :-/
Wow, it must be hard to do a kid’s hair when you can’t use beads, barrettes, ballies or even elastics…
Maybe you could talk to her teachers and tell them you understand its a problem for Mara to be putting stuff in her mouth, but see if there are other ways they could deal with it (like, I don’t know, maybe they could pay attention to what she’s doing…).
Also, Happy birthday! Very non-offensive hair post.
Last thing, I love natural hair, it’s healthy, it’s beautiful, etc.
But don’t be too hard on the kids with perms (or their parents) they are reacting to living in a racist world, but they didn’t create it. Know what I mean?
I actually found this site because I am the blogger that was mentioned at the beginning of the post. Let me start by saying I’m glad you liked the parting method you saw on my site!
I have a few opinions about the things written above, although I can only speak based on my own experiences in my personal life.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say certain hairstyles signal a specific economic status. My child is 11 years old and she has worn her hair in every way possible without adding hair. Sometimes her parts are perfect and precise; other times her hair is in one big, frizzy pontytail (her choice). There have been beads and barrettes, and there have been styles as “boyish” as 6 thick cornrows going straight back. There was even a time when she wanted to wear 2 french braids EVERY DAY for weeks at a time. I got bored with it, but it made her happy and she was confident, so I was happy to give her the desired hairstyle. And most recently, she has begun to embrace the “big hair” look. If people were to try to draw conclusions about my economic status based on her hairstyles, their assumptions would likely change constantly. And I never worry about things like that.
My point is, sometimes I think you just need to let a little girl be herself. It doesn’t have as much to do with what category of parent you fall into are as it does with what type of kid you are raising. In my personal situation, my daughter actually enjoys being different than the rest of the kids at school (which is hard to do because she goes to the single most diverse school in our city). She strives to be unique, so I let her choose hairstyles that she likes, even though they may look nothing like the majority of the kids at her school.
After your daughter reaches a certain age, I think it’s important to ask for her input when styling hair. If your child is wanting to fit in with the kids around her, she is going to request styles similar to those she sees in school. If your child likes standing out, she’s likely going to request things she doesn’t see on the other girls. Either way, as long as SHE’S comfortable with the way she looks and you take care to make sure her hair is HEALTHY, I say don’t let the opinions of others influence the way you raise her.
A previous comment stated: “This is a great place to point people who say (I should clarify, WHITE people who say) “You shouldn’t care so much what other people think of her hair.” There are excellent reasons for considering what other people think.”
I fall into that category of white people who say that, and I completely stand by that opinion. In my opinion, there are NO excellent reasons for considering what other people think. I am raising a child who is happy and comfortable with who she is and doesn’t look for validation from anyone else. I have done my best to teach her that striving to be accepted by others is an exhausting way to live. She makes choices based on what SHE likes…not what anyone else thinks she should like. This not only applies to hair, but also the clothes she wears, the music she listens to, and so on. I think it would be very difficult to teach a little girl to be confident with who she is if you as her parent are worried about what other people think about her hair.
I appreciate all the comments. I redid Mara’s hairstyle last night and one month after I wrote this post initially, she did get her beads back for the two braids that are hanging down as bangs. The rest of her hair is in puffs because she’s shown she can handle rubber bands again, and I put little flower fabric Os on the two top front puffs so she can look like Kai-Lan, as requested. At three, she’s happy with any style we do and loves to see herself with a new hairstyle, but she’s also starting to express preferences and I’ll do what I can to make sure she gets what she wants. Giving her what she wants is also a way to help her learn not to mess with her hair, because she understands that she only gets to keep wearing Kai-Lan flowers as long as she doesn’t “hurt her hair” by pulling them out.
I hope the post didn’t come off as dismissive of people like Shannon and Julie who choose locs for their daughters or of children with relaxed hair. I think all parents to make the decision that’s best for their family situation and their child’s needs, and those answers are going to differ. The long straight hair = best beauty standard is not going anywhere any time soon, and all of us parenting daughters of any race are going to have to confront it. If Mara gets to puberty and wants her hair relaxed because it gets tangled easily and isn’t long and smooth, well, we’d probably try to talk her into locs before giving in to that, but at some point we’re going to say that what she does with her hair is her choice. I went from waist-length hair to hair a few inches long when I was in high school and I think that kind of reinvention is part of what high school’s for!
I guess I come down somewhere between Shannon and Rae in how I’d talk about what I think about Mara’s hair. It definitely matters what Lee thinks about her hairstyle, and at this point the social workers matter too, because thanks to her hair-pulling history her hair health is something that gets noted in reports that go to the judge. Beyond that, though, being aware of what messages people might draw from her hair doesn’t mean I’m styling her hair with the intention of meeting or undermining those messages, just that I’m aware of them. I don’t worry as much as Shannon seems to about making sure she’s presentable from head to toe every time we leave the house. I let her make some of her own decisions about dressing and offer plenty of boys’ clothes as options since that’s her general preference, though she went with a dress today.
Maybe the reason I wasn’t clear enough in my original post was because I can’t be clear or don’t see or think about all of this clearly. I definitely didn’t want to imply that you can look at a girl’s hair and make accurate assumptions about her socioeconomic status, but I don’t think I was entirely off-base in saying that you can do the opposite and look at various groups of girls and see commonalities, whether those are class-based or in athletics versus arts or whatever. I was mostly trying to encourage parents to do that, to make sure they’re looking at a lot of bigger pictures. I can’t promise it will bring clarity, though, because I don’t think it does to me.
Thorn, I won’t speak for Shannon, but I understood you weren’t being dismissive. I have read your blog enough to know that you process your thoughts through your writing. Maybe I was being defensive. As much as we would all like to feel that we have arrived and no longer care about the opinions of others, I suspect that isn’t always true.
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While reading your post i couldnt help but think of all the stereotypes and stigmas we put on each other for being different. we all know what the standards of beauty are in this country, and i believe we all know they are wrong. most of us dont fit them, white are black. as a parent it is not your job to judge others (especially disecting a parents choice on a hair style and how it looks by friday), your job is to love and nuture your child. not to worry about what people are thinking of her or you as a parent. you mentioned you were middle-class, thats great, so am I. what does that have to do with your daughters hair or other black childrens hair? what you are doing and will be doing by focusing so much on your daughters hair and how people perceive it is to teach her how to be concerned with how people perceive her hair and she wont be proud of how beautiful it is. I think you should appreciate and stress to her how unique, beautiful, and diverse black hair is (which has a lot to do with the different hair style you see). dont do to her what this country has did to so many little black girls, which is tell them their is unattractive, nappy, abnormal. that is horrible to feel that the way your hair grows out of your head is wrong. it is the reason so many black women feel their hair isnt beautiful because it doesnt fit the european look. Use the best products for her hair because black hair is the most sensitive hair on this planet and all we have ever been told is to dye and fry it. it is a new day though and there are black women who are finally proud of just being beutiful and unique. raise your daughter to be that way, not by class, hair, or what color parents she has. just being beautiful and unique. oh yeah i am a black woman who is natural with amazingly beautiful long hair, i dont have locks but i think they are beautiful. my three year daughter is natural and wears her hair in twist and french braids, sometimes she wears it naturally free. all she know is that she is beautiful and how pretty her hair is. i stress to her how soft it is and how pretty her little curls are ( some people say coils). a good trick for me is to use a little bit of coconut oil or castro oil on her hair, a little bit of moisture (water is fine) and to braid her hair in all differnt directions at night. you dont have to part it and make it all neat. in the morning take her braids down add a little leave in conditioner or whatever you prefer and let it flow. That works for me but there are a million textures to black hair so you have to do what works best for you. good luck to you and your family. also try not to look too deep into her hair, just take care of it, there are so many more important things to focuse on. As a black woman i can tell you one of the things we hate (what anyone would hate) is constantly being look at as these strange abnormal women that cant be figured out. we are women like all women, we just use different hair care products. your raising one of those women, make it as simple as possible.
I think the interesting this about this post isn’t really about which hair style is best, worst, etc. I don’t think the author is putting more value on one hairstyle or less value on another either. Really, I don’t think the point is hair at all. One thing about learning more about another culture is the more you learn and the longer you’ve “been in”, the easier it is to look back and realize the mistakes you made and how much you were unable to see without the experience and context you now have as someone who has been around longer.
Class is something that North Americans don’t like to talk about and I notice that even people who are comfortable discussing race and gender issues often feel uncomfortable discussing class. Because we are supposed to be a class-less society? Because no one wants to be “lower class”? Does working-class or low SES imply a deficit in people so classified so we shouldn’t use that label? I am not suggesting I have the answer to these questions. However much we don’t want to talk about class we all make judgements every day about the people we meet based on appearances, language use, occupation etc. Hair styles in little girls, children’s given names, clothing and shoes, what’s in their lunch bag, their after-school activities…. all these things give us clues that we consciously or unconsciously absorb and use to make judgments about “who” this child is – (their class, their family’s economic status, education level, values, etc).
So what? Well, when you are new to a culture, it is harder to make these judgements. You aren’t as familiar with the significance of certain details, the markers of parental care, the cues that convey important social information. You don’t know what to look for and if you are caring for a child from that culture, the way you send them out the door in the morning may be sending unintentional social signals/misinformation.
That’s why I think this post is valuable and also really interesting. I have never thought about the social messages hair styles can send. But it also reminds me to look broader in my daily life when I am in cross-cultural environments. What else am I missing?
To clarify a bit:
Black girls’ and women’s hair has cultural and political and social meanings that most people outside the Black subculture can’t begin to understand. There are excellent reasons to care what people think of my daughters’ hair.
Don’t mistake this for teaching them to look to others for approval. That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
My children choose what to do with their hair on a daily basis, (headbands, barrettes, one poof or three, braids or loose–my younger daughter has long, loosely curling hair) pick out their own clothes (choosing from both boys’ and girls’ styles–as long as it’s clean, they can wear what they like) and have utter confidence that they are beautiful, smart, funny, and loved.
What I am talking about is the fact that hair sends complex messages in Black communities–just the messages Thorn is navigating in her original post–and those messages will absolutely matter to how my girls are perceived and even treated by other people. When we chose locs, we knew it would send a certain message. For some people that’s a positive message, for some it’s negative. But it is important to know what the message is.
Being ignorant of what hair means in Black history and culture is no more helpful than being “colorblind.” I consider it good parenting to be aware of everything that is wrapped up in my girls’ hair.