This crazy thing happens when you become a parent: Everyone thinks they know how to do it better. Despite the fact that we’re the ones shelling out the cash, pulling the late nights, and bracing through temper tantrums, the outside world seems to believe it has the secret to raising our own children better. The same holds true for adoptive parents, and especially those in interracial families.
Being a celebrity, Charlize Theron already finds herself under a microscope. The latest row about her parenting comes after Theron’s four-year-old son was seen out and about wearing a dress and an Elsa hat with an attached blonde braid. In response to photos of her son in this costume, here’s a sampling of a few of the tweets about the toddler and his mother:
@CharlizeAfrica this is a lil black boy, not a lil white girl with blonde hair. U need ur ass kicked 4 this
— Bridget McDonald (@marqbrit) August 24, 2016
https://twitter.com/lesboja1978/status/768482277848383488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/HRap_Brian/status/768848923435888640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
More than a few of the tweets expressed the opinion that custody should be taken away from Theron. To be clear: this isn’t about a poor choice of costume in the eyes of the beholder, but a fundamental belief that a white woman has no business raising a black child, especially a male child. Would Theron had received the same level of vitriol about a white son dressed as Elsa? Or a biological child? Considering that the above tweets also made reference to his race as a reason why the costume was especially unacceptable, yeah, their objections were racial in nature.
A paper on transracial adoption published by Harvard Blackletter Law Journal by Andrew Morrison, a student of the University of Colorado School of Law, opens with the following quote from the white father of the author who had adopted transracially:
The quickest cure for racism would be to have everyone in the country adopt a child of another race. No matter what your beliefs, when you hold a four-day- old infant, love him, and care for him, you don’t see skin color, you see a little person that is very much in need of your love. —Robert Dale Morrison
Theron didn’t see herself dressing up a black child as Elsa; she saw her son dressed as one. While people on Twitter might see him as an adopted black boy, Theron sees him just as her son. Objecting to the manner in which he is dressed based on just his race and that of his mother is textbook racism.
On the other side of the coin, there were, of course, those cheering Theron for “not limiting her son with a binary gender construct”—whatever that means.
Every aspect of our lives has now become politicized, every moment in public subject to scrutiny. No longer can a parent say yes to a toddler’s simple request to wear a costume outside for fear of a tantrum or fight. Now, even a game of dress-up is a political statement. Did Theron intend to emasculate her son or make a statement about gender by running an errand with him dressed as Elsa?
Sometimes an errand is just that: an errand. And most parents of toddlers know some fundamental truths about dressing them: sometimes they will only wear pajamas, Halloween costumes or seasonally inappropriate attire; and sometimes there’s just no point in fighting them on it. There is no forcing a four-year-old into a dress and a hat of parents’ choosing; nor did Theron’s son seem particularly distressed to be dressed as Elsa. Had the outfit been of Theron’s choosing instead of his choosing, most parents of toddlers know the hat would have been on the ground, not on his head.
Celebrity or not, parents of all kinds could use less input from the peanut gallery when it comes to how we’re raising our kids. No amount of supposed expertise, including being the same race as a child, is a substitute for their parent’s decision-making.
Bethany Mandel is a stay-at-home mother and a Senior Contributor to The Federalist. You can follow her on Twitter @bethanyshondark.
