She Begat This by Joan Morgan

Author:Joan Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria / 37 Ink

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That reactions to Hill’s pregnancy were mixed is not surprising. Navigating the fraught relationship between motherhood and career is an ongoing staple of both feminism and contemporary womanhood. In the 1960s, a good three decades before Hill’s pregnancy, seminal Black Arts Movement writers Sonia Sanchez and Alice Walker both dealt with unsolicited speculations about their ability to be mothers and successfully continue doing “the work.” It was presumed “the work” would stop, Lynnée Denise explains. “Evidently they were surrounded by folks who equated motherhood with a kind of sloth.” And when they didn’t stop working, “they were demonized for not being maternal enough.” These attitudes are particularly true of industries that are male-dominated. “I did a comparative look at Nina Simone and Lauryn Hill,” Lynnée Denise said. “When Nina got pregnant in 1961 with her daughter, Lisa, the record company told her they would have to hide the pregnancy. They were like, ‘No. Women don’t have children this early in their careers.’ That Lauryn came back almost forty years later and said, ‘The record company told me not to do this,’ is really important because it speaks to the toxic Harvey Weinstein environment that the music industry functions in and its attitudes around gender.”

Valid point, but the negative reactions to Hill’s pregnancy can’t all simply be relegated to good ol’ boy sexism. Twenty years later those attitudes haven’t disappeared, and many of them are held by women. Despite rapper Cardi B’s gorgeous and relatively well-received baby bump reveal during her April 2018 Saturday Night Live performance, there was plenty of online criticism from women who questioned the wisdom of having a child at a high point in her early career. The twenty-five-year-old rapper shared her disappointment in an April 11 episode of radio station Hot 97’s morning show The Breakfast Club. “It really bothers me and disgusts me,” she said. “I see a lot of women online like, ‘Oh, I feel sorry for you. Oh, your career is over.’ And it’s like, why can’t I have both? As a woman, why can’t I have both? Why do I gotta choose a career or a baby? I want both.” She positioned her choice as not only a personal one, “I just didn’t want to deal with the whole abortion thing,” but a responsible one that she was more than equipped to handle. “You know what, I’m a grown woman. I’m twenty-five years old. I’m gonna say this in the most humblest way: I’m a shmillionaire. And I’m prepared for this.”

Most of the women I asked to share their initial reactions to Hill’s pregnancy remembered being less than enthused. Some of those responses were certainly classed and shaped by a good dose of respectability politics. For many fans, Lauryn was seen as the desirable antidote to Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown’s hypersexuality. A smart, hyperarticulate Ivy Leaguer who came from a two-parent home, Hill was the kind of “good” black girl who didn’t have a baby out of wedlock. Even

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