“From Asia to Atlanta to Alberta”: Online Community Celebrates Black Motherhood

The familiar adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” literally applies to the founder of one of the world’s most popular online communities for Black mothers, Black Moms Connection, and it all began with a search for sunscreen.

“In 2015 I was at a splash pad with my son, who was about two-years-old, and I wondered to myself if they make sunscreen for black skin because regular sunscreen doesn’t really mesh with black skin,” recalls Tanya Hayles.

Hayles, who is Canadian, knew she wasn’t the only mom who needed answers to questions that were culturally specific. She turned to her friends and social media.

“I started a Facebook group with 12 of my friends and figured if you build it they will come,” she states. “In Spring 2016, we went from 400 to 4000 members in two months.”

A former professional at a nonprofit who turned to entrepreneurship, Hayles wondered where the rapid growth originated and traced it to the burgeoning influence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the years following the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown. Recognizing the fear Black mothers felt for their children, Hayles took bold steps to expand the group.

She explains, “In the fall of 2016 we turned into a nonprofit organization … to really provide tangible ways to help Black women raise their children. Since then we’ve done conferences and focused on various topics that are important to black motherhood: education, fostering and adoption, and financial literacy.”  

As Hayles quickly points out there are some parenting fundamentals, but mothers of African American children often face challenges created by persistent stereotypes and racial tropes.

“Sexualization of Black girls or the criminalization of young Black boys, those are very different things we have to deal with as Black mothers that other motherhood groups don’t have to deal with necessarily,” she emphasizes.

Hayles has parenting role models which include former First Lady Michelle Obama who raised ” two girls in their formative years in the glass bowl of the White House.” She remembers the day she met Mrs. Obama along with Sophie Trudeau, wife of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,  at a Toronto event that offered a meet-and-greet. She returned to BMC even more inspired.

Today BMC has 20,000 members, 70 percent of whom are married. In the United States, there are chapters in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta with a combined total of 12,000 moms. And when the coronavirus pandemic upended lives, Hayles and her organization were ready to help Black mothers regardless of location.

“The great thing is we were a global village before the pandemic … the pivot wasn’t as stark. In the beginning there was a ton of sharing of resources,” she remembers. “I think there’s a U.S.-based study that in the month of December, most of the jobs lost were held by Black women.”

Because many Black women are essential workers, they faced a disproportionate economic burden and faced a higher risk of exposure to COVID-19 without jobs that offered the “luxury and privilege to work from home.”

Hayles saw an opportunity to help and began providing financial grants to mothers, distributing more than $45,000 last year to mothers in North America she says. 

“When L’Oreal gave me a Woman-of-Worth award,  We used that full 10k to launch our emergency grant … you apply we find a way to get you the money. We launched the rent-based grant where we were paying the rent or mortgage. house insecurity was a really big deal especially during.”

But, perhaps, the grant that epitomizes the deep love for which mothers are celebrated on Mother’s Day involved the Wellness grant.

“We said, ‘Moms, please take care of yourselves, and here’s the money to do that.’ They used it to take care of their children at Christmastime. And that’s just the story of what moms do. even in the face of so much need to take care of ourselves, we place ourselves second or third on the list if at all,” says the mom who has devoted much of herself to empowering other mothers.