Maternal Curse?

"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." Sethe says this to Paul D when he tells her that her love is too thick. I feel like black mothers try to prevent their children, especially their daughters, from experiencing the hardships that they experienced growing up. My mother tells me all the time, "I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be better." While this is sweet and all, the "thick love" that black mothers have toward their children is not always good. This "thick love," also known as tough love can harm the mother-child relationship. An example of this could be Sethe and her children. Sethe's two sons left her. Her relationship with Denver was only going ok because they were all each other had. Sethe's choice to love her child enough  to kill her haunted her. When Beloved arrived her thick love flipped on her.










My personal story is that I always told my mom that I would be a totally different mother than my mother. I wanted my children to know that I love them and I was going to show and tell them all the time. I was going to be the kind of mother who didn't yell too much, but made sure that my children respected me and did what they were supposed to do. This seemed to be the perfect mother. When I had my daughter, I just couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to hold her all the time, but my mother would tell me to put her down because she would expect for someone to hold her all the time. Is that so bad? Now that my daughter is almost 2 years old, she's learning new things and her mind is wandering. I find myself yelling and "being mean" toward my daughter when she's being hard headed. It's hard not to because that's what my mother did toward me. I tend to feel bad afterward, but at the same time I look at how I show my daughter more affection than my mom does.










Black mothers often imitate how their mothers raised them. A quote from class that stood out to me was, "The black mother is a lost child." I feel like this is true because not many black mothers got to experience true "motherly love." The love that they experienced was that "thick love" that Sethe had toward their children. They try to prepare their children for what is possible to happen, but they don't know if it can or will happen. This "thick love" seems to be passed down from generation to generation, but when will it stop? If we can't find a way to balance love and affection with preparing our children to be great adults, then our plan will continue to fail. Times seem to be getting worse, and instead of our daughters becoming queens and doing something with their lives, they will continue to make our community looks bad. Is thick love a maternal curse? Or will it some day benefit us and our community?


Here is a video about what it can do to us.
http://youtu.be/_AdRs5fEy-k