'The Mamas' and the cult of mom groups

Today on “Post Reports,” Helena Andrews-Dyer on her new book, “The Mamas” and what it takes to be an authentic Black mother in a mostly White mom group.

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Washington Post culture writer Helena Andrews-Dyer talks about her latest book “The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race from Moms Not Like Me.”

The book is a memoir of Andrews-Dyer’s personal experience of what it was like to be the only Black woman in her neighborhood’s mom group. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to join at first.

“I think for me as a Black mother, immediately just instantly the image that comes up in your head is White women,” Andrews-Dyer said. “It's like strollers taking over the local cafe, going to baby yoga, baby music class in their yoga pants. It's just like all of these images and stereotypes pop into your head and you immediately think, as a Black woman and woman of color, ‘Oh, that's not for me.’”

But in some ways, Andrews-Dyer writes, “I needed this space as much as they did.” Andrews-Dyer is a middle-class, Black professional woman living in a rapidly gentrified neighborhood in Washington, D.C., with two little girls and a husband.

But she “had not seen a story about motherhood that looked like me. … And so I had to tell it.”

“The Mamas” was released by Crown Publishing this week.