Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 6:46 am
By: Jackie Jones, BlackAmericaWeb.com
It was a few suggestions here and there to parents while watching her son’s tee ball games and practices that led Kelly Williams to share her experiences with a wider audience.
“My son was 10 years old, and I was working as a TV news reporter in Tampa,” she recalled. “The wife of the coach at his tee ball games heard me talking to the other mothers, and she said, ‘You should write a book.’”
So, Williams sat down and started writing some mother-to-mother advice and took the tome to an agent, who told her there were a lot of parenting books out there, “but there was nothing written for African-American single moms. And I said, ‘Well, I’m an African-American single mom.’”
That book, “Single Mamahood: Advice and Wisdom for the African-American Single Mother,” was published in 1998 and gradually – through speaking engagements, workshops and articles – evolved to SingleMamahood.com, a Web site that debuted in 2006 with the stated mission of “reducing drama for the single mama.”
In addition to advice from Williams, the site features a bulletin board so that participants can share what they learned from their mistakes, as well as their triumphs. There also are regular SingleMamahood.com polls to determine what events and issues most affect single mothers.
Williams said her primary mission is to reassure black single mothers that they can raise well-balanced, high-achieving children, and they don’t have to accept the argument that they cannot provide a healthy home because they don’t have a man in the house.
“I’ve heard mothers who’ve bought into that, who speak of their homes as though they’re broken. Your home is as whole as you make it,” Williams told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
The problem, she said, stems from buying into news and, out of desperation, behaving as though the management of your home is out of your control. Children sense it and will look for a comfortable, secure environment, whether they try to create it for themselves at home or seek it out elsewhere.
“If they are looking for home elsewhere when home isn’t (working), what you need is a disciplined household,” she said. “‘You get up at a certain time. You eat at a certain time. You do these chores. You go to bed at a certain time.’ They feel safe because things are expected of them.”
After leaving television, Williams worked for a public relations firm, an advertising firm, then struck out on her own in public relations while raising her son, Winston, who went on to Morehouse College and now is working and living on his own.
Since the Web page launched, Williams said, she has dealt with an ever-increasing range of issues.
“I get these e-mails where someone is going through some kind of drama with their baby daddy or just going through issues with their children, married to a guy who was incarcerated and got involved with somebody else,” she said. “I tell them I’m just a mom, but this is what I think, and here are some resources. I’ve sent people to the YMCA, told them how to get free groceries from the food bank.”
The majority of the problems, however, stem from relationships gone awry and their ultimate impact on the children.
“They are upset, hurt,” Williams said. “If you think about it, most of them became single moms because of a relationship that didn’t work out. But I tell them …..
