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Child, Please: How Mama’s Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself Before I Wrecked Myself
“We are different—white moms and me. Very different. More or less kindred as women, but as mothers we are disparate souls. Snaps and cusses of Twitter-trending ‘Stuff black moms say’ don’t even scratch the surface.” —from Child, Please
In this wise and funny memoir, Ylonda Gault Caviness describes her journey to the realization that all the parenting advice she was obsessively devouring as a new parent (and sharing with the world as a parenting expert on NPR, Today, in The Huffington Post, and elsewhere) didn’t mean scratch compared to her mama’s old school wisdom as a strong black woman and mother.
With child number one, Caviness set her course: to give her children everything she had. Child number two came along and she patiently persisted. But when her third kid arrived, she was finally so exhausted that she decided to listen to what her mother had been saying to her for years: Give them everything they want, and there’ll be nothing left of you. In Child, Please, Caviness describes the road back to embracing a more sane—not to mention loving—way of raising children. Her mother had it right all along.
In this wise and funny memoir, Ylonda Gault Caviness describes her journey to the realization that all the parenting advice she was obsessively devouring as a new parent (and sharing with the world as a parenting expert on NPR, Today, in The Huffington Post, and elsewhere) didn’t mean scratch compared to her mama’s old school wisdom as a strong black woman and mother.
With child number one, Caviness set her course: to give her children everything she had. Child number two came along and she patiently persisted. But when her third kid arrived, she was finally so exhausted that she decided to listen to what her mother had been saying to her for years: Give them everything they want, and there’ll be nothing left of you. In Child, Please, Caviness describes the road back to embracing a more sane—not to mention loving—way of raising children. Her mother had it right all along.
- GenresParentingNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 14, 2015
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504 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 4, 2017
I really wanted this book to be good. I enjoyed the first couple chapters and then it got rambly and long-winded. I couldn't even finish it.
January 5, 2018
A good, quick, easy read. I was expecting a “parenting manual,” but it was actually an enjoyable memoir about being both a mother and a daughter.
December 26, 2015
A collection of essays about parenting, what's changed about it over time, and what hasn't, as seen through the lens of the author's own experience.
When Caviness has her first child, a lot of old baggage between herself and her mother comes to light, prompting her to examine how she was parented, how her mom was parented, and how all that affects her as she raises her own children (by the end of the book there are 3, all of whom have unusual birth stories that are described in what is hilarious detail if you've ever given birth). This is a lot more amusing than it sounds: Caviness's tone is laid-back and light, even when discussing difficult things, and she tends to take every challenging experience and turn it into a lesson. Comforting stuff for moms at the end of their rope.
The essays are also very much about Caviness coping with being a mom and still having time for herself and her work, something else a lot of mothers will be able to relate to. The target reader here, however, is definitely Black mothers, for whom she keeps it decidedly real. White moms and some of the things they do are held up for ridicule, so if you're the kind of person who gets upset when your own foibles are pointed out to you, either grow a spine or put this one aside. Caviness speaks bluntly about postpartum depression, racism, and class snobbery, and there's also an entire chapter about haircare, which will strike a deep chord with women of color. The essays near the end, which take place at a family reunion, are a nice change of pace from the suburban mom setting, and ground both the reader and the writer in what is, in the end, of most importance: family.
As somebody who was frequently on the wrong side of the belt and the wooden spoon, I found Caviness's writing true to life and funny as hell. The book will have most appeal, however, for Black moms trying to get everything right and not always pulling it off. A take-a-break read for busy women who could use a little more support than they get.
When Caviness has her first child, a lot of old baggage between herself and her mother comes to light, prompting her to examine how she was parented, how her mom was parented, and how all that affects her as she raises her own children (by the end of the book there are 3, all of whom have unusual birth stories that are described in what is hilarious detail if you've ever given birth). This is a lot more amusing than it sounds: Caviness's tone is laid-back and light, even when discussing difficult things, and she tends to take every challenging experience and turn it into a lesson. Comforting stuff for moms at the end of their rope.
The essays are also very much about Caviness coping with being a mom and still having time for herself and her work, something else a lot of mothers will be able to relate to. The target reader here, however, is definitely Black mothers, for whom she keeps it decidedly real. White moms and some of the things they do are held up for ridicule, so if you're the kind of person who gets upset when your own foibles are pointed out to you, either grow a spine or put this one aside. Caviness speaks bluntly about postpartum depression, racism, and class snobbery, and there's also an entire chapter about haircare, which will strike a deep chord with women of color. The essays near the end, which take place at a family reunion, are a nice change of pace from the suburban mom setting, and ground both the reader and the writer in what is, in the end, of most importance: family.
As somebody who was frequently on the wrong side of the belt and the wooden spoon, I found Caviness's writing true to life and funny as hell. The book will have most appeal, however, for Black moms trying to get everything right and not always pulling it off. A take-a-break read for busy women who could use a little more support than they get.
August 19, 2020
Like many modern mothers, Ylonda Gault Caviness started out with a “self-flagellating, all-consuming obsession to raise a child in a fashion akin to a recipe-perfect soufflé.”
"I was far, far away from family who could support and ground me. Had I been back in Buffalo, Sugar—Mama’s best friend and my godmother—would’ve simply sat me down and said, 'Baby, you need JESUS!' Instead I thought I needed T. Berry Brazelton’s Touchpoints: Birth to Three and a baby monitor with audio and motion sensors. At the time, I was simply trying to raise my kid in a more enlightened fashion."
But then she realized something. Her own mother’s dismissive response to children’s entreaties, “Child, please,” had been all about boundaries: “Without saying so, she let us know we kids could sometimes rock her world, but we couldn’t be her world.” That “not studying you” method isn’t just acceptable, Gault Caviness decides, it’s better at fostering independence and self-reliance in children and emotional wholeness in mothers.
Child, Please is a memoir of the backstory and unfolding of this epiphany.
In it, Gault Caviness transitions with ease from the heavy and potentially inflammatory to the trivial and universally relatable. Ease, in fact—an assertive ease—is what characterizes her tone. She’s the straight shooter you can trust to be as loving and open as she is tough and opinionated: “White parents are punks,” Gault Caviness writes, before consoling a few pages later: “I have seen for myself that many of you are not at all punks. You are, to be sure, far more, um, flexible, than most black parents. We simply have different expectations and discipline styles.”
Race is always relevant in Child, Please, and yet, in some ways also completely irrelevant: “Somewhere in my idyllic view of life with a nice family, a nice life, I pictured myself being happy. At the very least approaching a modicum of contentment. Instead, most every day I feel like I’m not enough of this, too much of that.” Gault Caviness acknowledges dissonance between suburban mom life and blackness, yet simultaneously rejects it. In her words, the two coexist: “I find visits to joints like the Container Store to be near-orgasmic experiences.”
I developed a bit of a friend crush on Gault Caviness, I’ll admit. Who wouldn’t want to hangout with this mama?
"One of them will start in with something asinine like, 'We don’t have any orange juice, Mommy?' And I’ll have to just snap. Both good humor and good sense will momentarily take leave and I’ll scream, 'Do you SEE any orange juice? Do I look like a Florida citrus tree to you? Do I? Well, it looks like you’re in for a day without sunshine, boo. Okay? Deal with it!' Of course, their eyes will get all big and spooked and they will be emotionally scarred—for life, or at least until I apologize fifteen minutes later. Dang. I really hate it when this blues comes on me. It is in these moments that the cat is let out of the proverbial bag. And my children know, really know, their otherwise loving and devoted mother is all kinds of cray-cray. I should probably lie down. That would help. I need, um . . . honestly, I don’t know what I need. But sleep does work wonders."
It’s not me, kids, it’s you. Okay, fine, actually maybe it is me. (But also it’s you.)
But Gault Caviness doesn’t just describe the condition of feeling not “like a mother so much as … the sum of my to-do list.” She doles out an answer:
"My ultimate Me Time fix involves a simple little flip of the switch I do in my head from time to time. It’s handy-dandy and needs no scheduling, planning, or calling in favors…. When various and sundry people get in your ear—kids, spouses, coworkers, family—about their needs and wants, pay them no mind. Repeat as needed."
What could be better than a friend whose company you enjoy even as she points out your flaws and bosses you around?
This review first appeared on readymommy.wordpress.com.
"I was far, far away from family who could support and ground me. Had I been back in Buffalo, Sugar—Mama’s best friend and my godmother—would’ve simply sat me down and said, 'Baby, you need JESUS!' Instead I thought I needed T. Berry Brazelton’s Touchpoints: Birth to Three and a baby monitor with audio and motion sensors. At the time, I was simply trying to raise my kid in a more enlightened fashion."
But then she realized something. Her own mother’s dismissive response to children’s entreaties, “Child, please,” had been all about boundaries: “Without saying so, she let us know we kids could sometimes rock her world, but we couldn’t be her world.” That “not studying you” method isn’t just acceptable, Gault Caviness decides, it’s better at fostering independence and self-reliance in children and emotional wholeness in mothers.
Child, Please is a memoir of the backstory and unfolding of this epiphany.
In it, Gault Caviness transitions with ease from the heavy and potentially inflammatory to the trivial and universally relatable. Ease, in fact—an assertive ease—is what characterizes her tone. She’s the straight shooter you can trust to be as loving and open as she is tough and opinionated: “White parents are punks,” Gault Caviness writes, before consoling a few pages later: “I have seen for myself that many of you are not at all punks. You are, to be sure, far more, um, flexible, than most black parents. We simply have different expectations and discipline styles.”
Race is always relevant in Child, Please, and yet, in some ways also completely irrelevant: “Somewhere in my idyllic view of life with a nice family, a nice life, I pictured myself being happy. At the very least approaching a modicum of contentment. Instead, most every day I feel like I’m not enough of this, too much of that.” Gault Caviness acknowledges dissonance between suburban mom life and blackness, yet simultaneously rejects it. In her words, the two coexist: “I find visits to joints like the Container Store to be near-orgasmic experiences.”
I developed a bit of a friend crush on Gault Caviness, I’ll admit. Who wouldn’t want to hangout with this mama?
"One of them will start in with something asinine like, 'We don’t have any orange juice, Mommy?' And I’ll have to just snap. Both good humor and good sense will momentarily take leave and I’ll scream, 'Do you SEE any orange juice? Do I look like a Florida citrus tree to you? Do I? Well, it looks like you’re in for a day without sunshine, boo. Okay? Deal with it!' Of course, their eyes will get all big and spooked and they will be emotionally scarred—for life, or at least until I apologize fifteen minutes later. Dang. I really hate it when this blues comes on me. It is in these moments that the cat is let out of the proverbial bag. And my children know, really know, their otherwise loving and devoted mother is all kinds of cray-cray. I should probably lie down. That would help. I need, um . . . honestly, I don’t know what I need. But sleep does work wonders."
It’s not me, kids, it’s you. Okay, fine, actually maybe it is me. (But also it’s you.)
But Gault Caviness doesn’t just describe the condition of feeling not “like a mother so much as … the sum of my to-do list.” She doles out an answer:
"My ultimate Me Time fix involves a simple little flip of the switch I do in my head from time to time. It’s handy-dandy and needs no scheduling, planning, or calling in favors…. When various and sundry people get in your ear—kids, spouses, coworkers, family—about their needs and wants, pay them no mind. Repeat as needed."
What could be better than a friend whose company you enjoy even as she points out your flaws and bosses you around?
This review first appeared on readymommy.wordpress.com.
March 5, 2019
Okay, this messy, sprawling book doesn't deserve five stars when I compare it with many that I have ranked as three star books. But five stars is what it is going to get from me.
Child, Please
happened to come along at the right time and right place. I don't remember the last book that had me laughing out loud so often. That alone has earned the book this rating in my scheme of things at the moment.
I also enjoyed the peek Ms. Caviness gave me into a black family and a culture very different than my own Midwestern Northern European background (now with almost half a century of Eastern Seaboard sensitivities). Typical, I can't say. But certainly unlike the one I have traversed, yet with many shared values of integrity, hard work, and discipline. This author has an outrageous way with words. One could occasionally choose to be a bit scandalized by them. But other times, I just sat back in my chair and asked myself how did she see and capture that comparison, that simile, into words on the page. She knows a lot more about television shows and rock stars and certain music than I am ever interested in learning, but one can get enough sense of what is going on, that the author is plotting authenticity and color and perhaps putting you on a bit, to not be put off as the reader.
Spoiler example of the fun Ylonda creates:
An sample passage, far from the most amusing, is here:
http://motherhoodlater.com/posts/gues...
Yolanda doesn't hesitate to take the reader, perhaps sitcom style, inside the drama of coordinating soccer game day frenzy in finding those home team socks (with a husband willing to take the lead) with wiping down the bathroom fixtures, before leaving, to the spick and span level that assuages Mom, even if perhaps not quite to the standards of her mother. Yes, teenagers, husband, family reunions, discrimination, love, hope, despair, expectations, ..., get rolled together in this rollicking memoir.
I also enjoyed the peek Ms. Caviness gave me into a black family and a culture very different than my own Midwestern Northern European background (now with almost half a century of Eastern Seaboard sensitivities). Typical, I can't say. But certainly unlike the one I have traversed, yet with many shared values of integrity, hard work, and discipline. This author has an outrageous way with words. One could occasionally choose to be a bit scandalized by them. But other times, I just sat back in my chair and asked myself how did she see and capture that comparison, that simile, into words on the page. She knows a lot more about television shows and rock stars and certain music than I am ever interested in learning, but one can get enough sense of what is going on, that the author is plotting authenticity and color and perhaps putting you on a bit, to not be put off as the reader.
Spoiler example of the fun Ylonda creates:
An sample passage, far from the most amusing, is here:
http://motherhoodlater.com/posts/gues...
Yolanda doesn't hesitate to take the reader, perhaps sitcom style, inside the drama of coordinating soccer game day frenzy in finding those home team socks (with a husband willing to take the lead) with wiping down the bathroom fixtures, before leaving, to the spick and span level that assuages Mom, even if perhaps not quite to the standards of her mother. Yes, teenagers, husband, family reunions, discrimination, love, hope, despair, expectations, ..., get rolled together in this rollicking memoir.
August 29, 2023
Nothing new under the sun here. We understand the historical forces of slavery and segregation in this country shaped the lives of Black mothers, so, nothing new. But, what is refreshing in her book is the discussion of early trauma (both within and outside of race) that impacted the life of her mother and influenced who she became. These are important issues that we need to continue to explore to understand where we are now and where we have come from.
October 3, 2025
A memoir that showed her struggle with the parenting culture she experienced as a child with her mother's Black Southern style which she described as often harsh and hands-off and her own more child-centered family gentler approaches. I did not see a resolution, just a struggle to see how her bringing up affected her and what way to take.
April 4, 2019
I enjoyed her chapter on "mother-suckers." There isn't a great lesson to be learned from this book, and that's what I enjoyed. She takes a more laid back approach because of the lessons she learned from her mom and family, and encourages others to slow down to do the same.
August 18, 2018
It was a pretty good read...
January 17, 2016
There were times I enjoyed this collection of essays from family and parenting columnist and blogger Ylonda Gault Caviness. Her personal and funny perspective on being a black American woman, wife and mother is interesting. But as a whole the collection is weakened by meandering, sort of pointless anecdotes about past conversations or family members' personalties. For instance, blow by blow of a conversation she had with her hair stylist...complete with the "hilarious" songs they would just bust out with. Well...laughing with friends is fun to experience, but a big yawn to read about. Perhaps a 300-page book is just not the best vehicle for this witty mom/writer to really shine and share her voice.
July 23, 2015
This book was a hilarious look at pop culture, "black" African-American culture, and parenting. I laughed out loud at some parts, and could not stop smiling while reading this book. I could "hear" the dialect and accent in my mind, and it was great. What a wonderful book! I really enjoyed the light-hearted look at parenting and dealing with children and other issues mothers have. I especially liked reading the author's opinions on "Mommy groups." Hilarious!
July 6, 2015
I loved this book! The Author decides to raise her first child based on everything she has researched by current standards. By the time she has her third child she decides to go back to raising children the way her mother said to. The personal stories and down to earth writing make for a great read.
January 6, 2016
It was not what I expected. I wanted a book with childrearing tips. ironically, the very thing she warns against. instead I got more of a biography. that being said, I still really enjoyed the book. it made me laugh out loud several times. kindof reminded me of an erma bombeck style of writing. I didn't feel like I wasted my time.
June 29, 2016
Rated PG-13 for language. I disagreed with the author on most issues, except that mothers should make themselves a priority rather than giving all of themselves all the time to their children (take time to workout, dress in something other than sweats, etc.) and that mothers know best (they should follow their own intuition rather than stressing about what all the latest experts say).
August 3, 2015
Caviness had me at her article in the New York Times and I knew I had to read this book. It was a breath of fresh air. More of a memoir than an 'advice' book, which made it that much more enjoyable to read.
April 12, 2016
Just hilarious! Even though I am obviously not an African American mother, I appreciated Ylonda's writing and her perspective on motherhood. I loved her phrase "mothersuckers" and I appreciated that she grew up in Buffalo.
May 27, 2015
Very funny and very true. Ylonda pushes back against the over parenting some feel is necessary.
July 25, 2015
Refreshing and tough, if a bit rambling and disorganized at times.
March 27, 2017
At times too focused on race, but nice to add a diverse voice to the sea of mommy memoirs written by middle class, white moms. Quick read, written from a fresh perspective.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews