“You are beautiful! You are smart! And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!” These are the words that I say to my daughter on a daily basis. There are so many things that come at our young girls that can make them hate themselves. I have seen many headlines about schools banning natural hair styles or their peers making fun of their darker skin complexion. As a mother, I have always made it a point to let my daughter know that the skin she is in is awesome just the way it is. She loves her natural hair and I believe that I am raising her to be positive and self-loving. But what about the young women who do not have this kind of support at home?
Growing up, I had the mentality that whatever they say I can’t do, I will because I believed in myself. I want the same for young women that are coming up today. No matter what life throws at you, if you can believe that you can do something, there is nothing that can stop you from doing it. Many times, when we fail at something, it is because we gave up. Most of us have the drive to do anything we put our hearts and our minds to. The problem comes, when we get tired, overwhelmed, or it starts to get tough. That is when the self-doubt and defeat kicks in.
It is so important that we began to surround our young women with positive role models that can begin to foster and uplift them in all their endeavors in life. Black females are most educated but when we look at small towns ravaged by economic factors; we can see a different picture. I came from a small county in Southern New Jersey and it had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the state. I remember talking to a young lady who was on her third baby before she graduated high school. Even more alarming is the fact that her mother encouraged it because of the benefits that came with her giving birth to another child. “I can receive support for up to three children.” I remember her saying as a reason for continuing to have babies.
As sad as this statistic is, this is the norm for so many in struggling communities. Many young women have come up in homes where there have been generations of poverty and they follow the path that was set before them because as far as they can see, it worked for their mothers. These young women are not encouraged to want more but rather they are encouraged to procreate so that they can let the system support them and their seed. But what would happen if the same way, these generations of welfare recipiency were encouraged, we begin to encourage young women to pursue degrees? What would happen if we better equipped them to not be single mothers but instead quality wives? What if we pushed resume writing and test preparation instead of WIC appointments and sex education classes?
If we can reach these young women and give them something to believe in, then we can change these roving statistics in hard hit economic areas. We could begin to see teen pregnancy rates decline and start to see flourishing and influx of educational goals and fulfillment because one thing about it, when a woman puts her all into something, the sky is the limit. What if we put our all into the young women that are coming behind us?
All it takes is for one person to show interest in one of these precious children. If we could just tell them that they are able to do anything that they put their mind too, they will start to believe in something bigger. They will begin to dream beyond these little rural communities that do not have much to offer them, but instead, they will see the world and all of the potential it has to offer them. They will believe they can, and guess what; they WILL!
