Not Like Halle Berry and Not Like Me

As parents we discuss many things with other mothers. Sometimes publicly, to be overheard by anyone within a 10 foot radius of our cell phone conversation. But there are moments when talks are held within the confines of a safe space that shields us from the judgment of others as we speak our verities. Truth is complicated, not easily agreed upon or understood but in it we find strength. In this piece mom Padua Nevins speaks her truth and this I doubt you will overhear in any cell phone conversation. Here's her story:

Not Like Halle Berry and Not Like Me

by Padua Nevins

Padua's daughter sleeping under mommy's hand at 3 months old

We parents fantasize about having Mixed Heritage children who look like exotic mixtures of both parents: The Euro-Asian child with cream-colored skin, straight, thick, black hair and large almondo eyes; the Afri-Caucasian child with Caramel complexion, green eyes and flowing, loose curly hair to the middle of their back; the Euro-Indian child with a light bronze complexion, hazel eyes and reddish-brown, wavy hair. And others fantasize for us—If I had three more sets of hands, I still would not have enough fingers to count the number of times while I was pregnant that other people gushed, “Oh, your baby’s gonna have the prettiest hair; Mixed kids are so gorgeous; your baby is going to be so beautiful like (insert name of famous person here.)”

But what happens in the minds and sometimes hearts of parents when their children don’t look so obviously and exotically like the combination of their racial heritages?

What happens emotionally to parents when their child just looks like an average kid and only resembles the race/ethnicity of one parent? Recently I participated in a curly hair group on Facebook— the majority of whose members are in interracial families— and on two separate occasions within one week, a straight-haired mother posted about her disappointment in her daughter’s curly hair.

“Disappointment” is not what the post statements declared but one was a plea for help over her month old baby’s hair turning curly and not getting straight again, the other post audaciously read, “… for all the mommies waiting for your kids’ hair to grow down instead of out—when my daughter was four it was like the photo on the left; now that she’s 11, it is beautiful—a real hair dream come true. Keep the faith and practice your moisture techniques and your daughter’s hair will be beautiful, too!” What followed were beautiful photos--one of her daughter’s well-coiffed afro at four-years-old and the other of her daughter’s wavy via braid-out hair hanging below her shoulder blades at eleven-years-old.

Looking over granny's shoulder

I thought this issue over and I worried about something that seems to be more common than I’d previously believed:  children being raised by parents disappointed in their children’s physical features. But disappointment in one’s child having features typical to a certain race is more expansive than not wanting a kid with a certain hair texture whether that hair texture is your own or your mate’s.

It became obvious to me that whether parents are hoping for their genes to be mediated, or their spouse’s to be obscured, by an interracial union, that there are often instances of parents being disappointed that their child did not fulfill their fantasy of what a mixed child should look like. While we may express such disappointment casually or wrapped in exuberant celebration of having conquered the offending physical traits in the perceived safety of an online discussion forum, if we truly feel disappointed that our children have certain features, inevitably, whether through the spoken word or body language, we will express that disappointment to our children and their self-esteem will be compromised.

I have been in this place of disappointment and I hope I changed it before my daughter’s self-esteem was affected. I conceived and carried my child thinking I’d give birth to a little Halle Berry possibly with hair like my own cotton-soft, afro-ringlets instead of Halle’s loose-wavy curls. When I was pregnant, I had locs and knew that if I had a daughter with hair like mine. I was so convinced of the dominance of my African Diaspora genes that I planned for the baby I was going to have as if her father’s genes were irrelevant. Thinking only of the most celebrated Mixed Heritage woman of the past two decades—Halle Berry—as the standard for what a Black and White parent produce, during my pregnancy I planned practically and emotionally for the kid who would come out looking like me and Halle.

Padua's daughter at just a few months old

My daughter was born with no Halle Berry-like characteristics— she was pink with white splotches, a bald head, and grey eyes—I was disappointed—largely because I’d just gone through nine months of uncomfortable pregnancy and 22 hours of unmedicated, indescribably painful labor only to—as was my first thought when I saw her— “have his child.” Yes, most African Diaspora people grow up with the adage that ‘we create the rainbow’ but when the people who looked white in your family died generations before you were born, that adage is just a hollow statement of racial pride; your expectation and comfort level is with having children who have some physical trait common in the black race like skin tone, hair texture, or facial features.

So, when you are expecting a child to be born looking like Halle Berry or maybe Lisa Bonet and the child born is more like Nicole Richie, it is a shock to the mind and for some, like me, the emotions. Every day in New York, having strangers who encounter me with my daughter constantly assume I am the nanny, expressing their surprise that I am her mother, or telling me how lucky I am to have a white child only served to make me feel more like an outsider in my daughter’s world.

Even after time passed I was often disappointed that my daughter’s racial phenotype made her so obviously her father’s child and not at all obviously mine. There were days when I was all anger and tears despite how my body had been breaking for her since conception. I’ve never spoken to my daughter of my disappointment and now that I’m over it, I never will. But I look at the way that I treat her now that I’m used to having a daughter who is a green-eyed, creamy complexioned girl with silky, reddish-brown ringlets for hair, about whom strangers ask if I’m the nanny versus how I treated her when I felt alienated by the absence of my racial traits in her phenotype.

Before acceptance, I was a proficient enough, non-possessive mother, dedicated to my daughter’s health and education, caring for her in accordance with the books and articles I read on child rearing, afraid to punish her, therefore afraid to give her necessary and healthy limits. Now that I’m used to my baby being mine, I am passionate about her belonging to me.

Padua's daughter at age 3

I'm doting, gushy, often a sappy pushover, but not afraid to discipline her. I no longer feel like I’m a racial ambassador in her world, politely, and at a distance, allowing her to independently figure out the world with me as a non-intrusive friend in order to make a good impression on behalf of all black people. While I still braid her hair sometimes, I’ve given up on braiding her hair every day, and now style it in accordance with its natural slippery texture—usually in two curly pig tails. I am so thankful that as I was getting used to my daughter, I was the only one in our close circle surprised at her “whiteness”, and while it took time for her to grow on me, she has always been surrounded by my other family members who are cool beans about her physical appearance.

It is important to recognize sooner rather than later that there is no guarantee of any way that genes will come together and express themselves. For those of us parents who are monoracial, achieving peace with our children looking racially like anyone in our ancestral line or anyone in our mate’s ancestral line means being realistic about feelings we may harbor about our children having certain features; it means doing whatever we can to learn to look favorably upon those features that we may not like or with which we may feel uncomfortable.

It also means recognizing that the Mixed Heritage people often featured in social and mass media are like most people who receive great fanfare for their looks— people of exceptional physical beauty and not necessarily indicative of the average Mixed Heritage person. We need to be at peace with the idea of our children looking like any “regular” person of either parent’s race because, if we get too invested in our children having a phenotype that obviously and breathtakingly displays their interracial parentage, our disappointment in what they actually look like can damage our children’s self-esteem.

A Day of Play: Mother and Daughter

I am thankful that I am now able to focus on her confusion regarding our different color and physical traits, and not my disappointment. I told her she would probably never be brown like me but she would probably grow up to look like one of her Caucasian aunts or light skinned African American Aunts and that she would be talented, smart, and beautiful. At the time, she yearned to figure out how she fit with the women in her household who were all brown, and I had to give her an answer that allowed her to see how much she was in the right place in the family even if she and I would never be the same color. Her sense of belonging was dependent on my answer and if I’d answered from my chagrin, she would have felt like there was something wrong with her. Although knowledge cannot dictate emotions, it can prepare us parents to emotionally embrace, accept, come to peace with, and hopefully, feel a close bond with the full range of phenotypes that our children’s genes can express.

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