I Am Not Your Baby Mother Book Summary - I Am Not Your Baby Mother Book explained in key points

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I Am Not Your Baby Mother summary

Name: I Am Not Your Baby Mother
Rating: 4.1 (17 reviews)
Author: Candice Brathwaite

Candice Brathwaite

What it's like to be a Black British mother

4.1 (17 ratings)

24 mins

Brief summary

I Am Not Your Baby Mother by Candice Brathwaite is a powerful memoir that explores the experiences of Black motherhood in the UK. Brathwaite challenges stereotypes and speaks candidly about racism, mental health and the complexities of parenting in the modern world.

Topics

Memoirs Black Lives Matter Race Women's Stories

Table of Contents

I Am Not Your Baby Mother
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What's in it for me? Discover a refreshingly honest account of motherhood as a Black woman.

When Candice Brathwaite found herself pregnant, she was ravenous for information about the parenting journey ahead. But she soon realized that, as a Black woman, she was completely missing from mainstream media representations of motherhood. She could only find negative representations that were steeped in stereotypes and prejudice.

While Candice could relate to some of the information from white “mummy bloggers” and book authors, a lot of what she found seemed to come from another planet. Black British mothers have worries that their white counterparts wouldn’t even imagine. Will they get the right medical care to survive childbirth? Will their newborn’s name prevent her from getting a job interview? How will they prepare their son to endure racist microaggressions or avoid being stabbed on the way to school?

In these blinks, you'll learn everything Candice wished she knew when she first became pregnant. If you're a Black parent-to-be, you'll gain insights from the authentic stories of someone who’s been there before. If you're white, you'll gain insights into how racial justice is still needed to fight inequality.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why the stereotype of the “baby mother” is so harmful;
how medical negligence nearly led to Candice’s death after the birth of her daughter; and
why she became obsessed with acquiring a Bugaboo stroller at any cost.

Influenced by her childhood, Candice Brathwaite was deeply ambivalent about becoming a mother.

Growing up as the eldest child of a single mother of three, Candice Brathwaite saw just how difficult it was for her mother to raise children alone. Struggling with depression and overwork, her mother wasn’t always available for her children. So, at just 11 years old, Candice had to pick up the slack, caring for her younger siblings and helping to run the household.

That experience, coupled with countless negative stereotypes she’d grown up with about Black mothers in Britain, made Candice decide not to have children of her own.

Media representations of Black fatherhood are harmful, inaccurate, and perpetuate stereotypes.

At a time usually filled with anticipation and excitement, one of Candice’s first check-ups was soured by a racist microaggression. The doctor asked skeptically where the baby’s father was – the implication being that, clearly, he didn’t believe the father would have an active role in the child’s life.

Candice boiled with rage. She knew for certain that the doctor would never have asked a white woman that question. He was echoing all the racist stereotypes she had feared – the “baby mother” with a partner who absconded from his responsibilities as a father.

Candice and Bode were broke, but they wanted to give their baby a different future.

As soon as she decided to have a baby, Candice became fixated on just one thing: acquiring a Bugaboo pushchair. Bugaboos were sleek and beautifully designed. They were the Rolls Royce of pushchairs.

The problem? All that style didn't come cheap. With all the accessories, a Bugaboo pushchair cost over a thousand pounds – money that Candice and Bode definitely didn't have. They were just making rent and often subsisted on meals of canned salmon and rice to cut costs.

A Black child's name can affect how they move through the world, as well as the opportunities they’re afforded.

One of Candice's earliest memories is of watching with her father the movie Roots about the life of Kunta Kinte, a Gambian boy who was captured and enslaved. In one particularly distressing scene, Kunta is repeatedly whipped by the plantation owner because he won't accept the new name he’s been assigned. As he nears death after being brutally beaten, he finally accepts the name “Toby.” It's the ultimate loss of his identity.

Even then, Candice knew that Kunta's transformation into “Toby” had some relation to her own white-sounding name. Being Black meant assimilating into white society, taking on names that blend in with those who are oppressing you.

Candice nearly died after giving birth to her daughter because, as a Black woman, her concerns were not taken seriously.

After giving birth to her daughter, Candice knew that something was wrong. She was sweating through the sheets every night, felt very dizzy, and couldn't even walk up a flight of stairs. What's more, an ominous lump swelled below the scar of her caesarean.

She told the midwives who came to check on her, but they insisted that everything was normal. According to them, her body was simply recovering from childbirth. The lump was nothing more than scar tissue.

Like many other mothers, Candice had postnatal depression after the birth of her daughter.

If the glossy magazines and cheerful Instagram photos are to be believed, motherhood is a joyful honeymoon. You get to stare into your baby's eyes, breastfeed in flowing smocks, and craft organic baby foods for your little one.

The reality for many women is jarringly different. Candice was overcome by a dark depression on her return from the hospital. She'd been through an extremely traumatic medical crisis and was still physically recovering. She also felt completely alienated from her tiny daughter, Esmé. After all, she had missed out on the first month of her life – a vital time for bonding between mother and child.

Candice couldn’t safely raise her children in London, but moving created new challenges.

Candice is a city girl. She knows London like the back of her hand. Her history is etched into the city streets. She can tell you exactly how to flag down a cab and where to find the most delectable foods.

London has always been her home, but when she became pregnant with her son in 2017, she realized that it could no longer be her family’s home. Austerity measures, or government cutbacks, meant that community centers and youth programs were being shuttered, and school budgets were being cut. These changes disproportionately affected Black families, who plunged further into poverty.

Due to lack of representation, Candice became galvanized into sharing diverse stories about motherhood.

Social media is supposed to be a democratic space for everyone to freely share their stories. But as she browsed through forums like Mumsnet or saw artfully staged Instagram photos, Candice became sick of seeing one-dimensional representations of motherhood. There were plenty of skinny white women doing yoga, but where were the women of color?

Seeing the need to fill a gap, Candice decided that she didn’t want to wait for those stories to come along. Instead, she would use her own voice to challenge the media’s lack of representation for diverse mothers – starting a new, empowering journey of her own.

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What is I Am Not Your Baby Mother about?

I Am Not Your Baby Mother (2020) is part memoir and part manifesto about life as a Black British mother. Drawing on Candice Brathwaite’s own journey to parenthood, it describes how she survived everything from postnatal depression to the realization that she could never protect her children from racism. These events motivated her to create space for representations of diverse experiences of motherhood online.

Who should read I Am Not Your Baby Mother?

Black mothers looking for narratives of parenthood that more closely reflect their own
Activists wanting to learn more about inequality in Britain
White parents who want to confront their own privilege and learn about institutionalized racism

About the Author

Candice Brathwaite is the founder of Make Motherhood Diverse, a hugely popular campaign to make representations of motherhood in the media more representative. As a leading voice on modern motherhood, she has appeared on countless panels, and her writing has been featured in publications like Stylist, Metro, and the Huffington Post.

Categories with I Am Not Your Baby Mother

Biography & Memoir Society & Culture Parenting

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