Hair Care = Love

Photographer Apelöga

This is a subject I've written about before, but it needs to be mentioned again. 

If you are a parent to a brown skinned child with curly/kinky/afro hair regardless of your own race or hair texture you are responsible of teaching your child how to love themselves fully. This means you are responsible to teach them how to care for their body including their hair. It may be so that you don't have any interest in hair care and don't want to be bothered with taking so much time to care for your child's hair. But you are a parent, and with being a parent we have committed to parenting our children. Sometimes we have to compromise, sometimes we have to sacrifice. 

What I want to say is, even if you don't care about your own hair and you are not interested in caring for your child's hair do it anyway. Do it for that child who you love the most who is growing up in a world that has media telling him or her that he/she is not beautiful enough. By caring for your child's hair and helping your child have a healthy relationship to his or her hair you are empowering your child. You are teaching your child self love which in turn will make him or her a stronger person. 

Yes, hair is just hair. But for us who grew up as children with parents that didn't want to or couldn't care for our hair it's so much more. It's something that defines us and limited us. Even if you as a parent have not experienced this first hand I'm sure you have experienced being limited by something: your ethnicity, your weight, your socioeconomic status, etc. Don't think about your child's hair from your own perspective, think about your child's hair from your child's perspective. Care for your child's hair to show your child that you love all of her/him.

For more on this topic read Thoughts on Being Exotic and Role Models.