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Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby

Denene Millner is a parenting and relationship expert who’s written or co-written 18 books exploring all manifestations of love -- between men and women, parents and children, siblings, and friends. She also pens a monthly column for Parenting as a member of the magazine’s Mom Squad of experts, who help women negotiate the ins and outs of motherhood.

When she isn’t penning her column or writing entertainment, relationship, and travel features for magazines like Essence, Odyssey Couleur, and Heart & Soul, she’s working on her blog, MyBrownBaby (www.mybrownbaby.blogspot.com), where she provides thought-provoking, insightful, wickedly funny commentary on motherhood, for and by moms of color. Through her posts, Denene lifts the voices of African-American moms looking for the 411 / advice / a high-five on everything from pregnancy and childrearing to sex, work and relationships -- all filtered through the lens of the African American experience.

She’s also ridiculously obsessed with African American art and children’s books, and, in her next life, will be an interior designer with the astonishing ability to whip up drapes and fancy pillows. Denene lives in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, three children, and super cute goldendoodle, Teddy.


Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 23:46
Seriously—Keep Your Chocolate.
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
So I just opened Lila’s homework folder and sweet Mother of God, there’s an order form for yet another fundraiser. This one for what is billed the world’s finest chocolate. Deluxe Cashew Clusters, Malted Milk Balls, and Mint Meltaways for $5 a pop—half of the cash for the school. If my kid sells five boxes, she gets an 8ft rocket balloon! Twenty boxes gets her a crazy hat! Forty boxes? Somebody takes her to lunch in a Hummer limousine! And what do I get for my trouble? Ten boxes of mediocre chocolate, nasty emails from my fundraising-weary family members, and neighbors who get all, “Hide ya wife, hide ya kids, Lila’s selling stuff out here again” when they see me and the kid coming.

Oh, and about five extra pounds on my birthing hips.

Right.

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Thursday, February 24, 2011 - 15:06
Help! My Bootylicious Daughter Hates Her Butt
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
A new study conducted by a popular beauty magazine says that women, on average, have at least 13 negative thoughts about their bodies during the course of the day—one for every waking hour. That sounds about right. I had at least four during the 15 minute stretch between the time I got out of bed and the time I towel dried after my shower. Still, I was surprised to find that my tween does the same thing. At age 11. And I'm struggling to find the words to let her know that her body—all curves, all bootylicious, even at this tender age—is just fine the way it is. Any and all help to find the right words? Greatly appreciated.Read Full Post
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 02:37
Dear Michele Bachmann, et. al: Please Shut Up and Sit Down
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
Here’s what I’m gonna need: I’m gonna need Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Michele Malkin and Fox contributor Sandy Rios and them to sit down and hush. Like, now. Because their particular brand of ignorance, particularly as it relates to breastfeeding mothers and childhood obesity, is wearing on my one last good Mama Grizzly nerve.Read Full Post
Friday, February 11, 2011 - 00:29
A Mother's Love
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
In my mind, I like to think of my birth mother as selfless. After all, she could have easily given birth to me in secret, ashamed and scared and in deep denial—a pain so searing that she saw no other way out but to take my life.  Or she could have found herself on a table in the backroom of an illegal abortion clinic, desperate for a way to end my life to save her own. Instead, this woman gave me life by giving me away. It could be that my vision of what led her to give me away is more romantic than the truth. Or maybe it’s spot on. Whatever it is, I know this much is true: I am forever grateful to her, this woman who gave me life, for letting me live and loving me enough not only to want for me what she knew she couldn’t provide but having the strength to find someone who could.Read Full Post
Friday, February 4, 2011 - 01:05
I Heart Kid Art
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
Clearly, I need more people. And wall space. Because when it comes to my kids’ artwork, I fall somewhere between discerning, deliberate Studio Museum of Harlem art curator and can’t-part-with-it-even-if-it-is-just-scribbles star of an episode of Hoarders. And er, um—yeah. Let’s just say that I fall more toward the latter on that spectrum. Way more to the latter.Read Full Post
Friday, January 28, 2011 - 01:37
My Kid, Queen of Band-Aids & Boo Boos
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
I’m not sure why we always fall for the okey-doke. I mean, the kid is all drama all the time—bumps into a chair and acts like she broke a kneecap, purposely Jim Carey falls on the floor and screams like she fell down a Chilean mine shaft. She gets a splinter and demands a sling. And runs through Sponge Bob band-aids like she owns stock in Johnson & Johnson. No blood required. By now, we should know not to take Lila’s frequent and frantic “Kid down—someone call 911!” antics so seriously. But somehow, we got suckered into a three-hour visit to the ER last weekend. We should have known better than to get suckered by the Band-Aid queen. Alas, we did. And three ER room hours, two doctor's examinations and on X-ray later, we feel like Bobo the Boo Boo Fool.Read Full Post
Friday, January 21, 2011 - 00:44
Smack Talking Over the Michael Jackson Wii Dance Game
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
I’ve kinda always been of the mindset that letting the kids win is a self-esteem booster—and also a nifty way of avoiding teary outbursts and tantrums and stuff. But then, Michael Jackson came into our lives. More specifically, the new Michael Jackson Experience for Wii game. It’s got a sparkly glove and “Workin’ Day and Night” dances featuring MJ when he was cute and fresh and not weird and I wanted to be his girlfriend. Plus, you get to do crotch-grabbing and lots of random twirls without having to explain yourself. Crotch-grabbing and twirls, people! I’m just saying, when that music comes on and the Michael Jackson with the afro starts strutting across the screen and I get to waving that Wii controller and the points start racking up? Yeah—I don’t really care if you’re eight or 11 or I pushed you through my loins or your mouth is poked out because Mommy, who watched and danced to the original “Remember the Time” video with Eddie Murphy and Iman, like, a gazillion times, has a distinct advantage over the little people in the room. It is what it is. Get your weight up, son! Mommy’s the dance master.

 

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Friday, January 14, 2011 - 01:10
My Tiger Mom is Better Than Yours
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
I don’t know—maybe her balls were just hanging low that day. How else to explain how easily it rolled off her tongue? “You’re not like all the other black men. You go to work and pay your bills. You’re not lazy like the rest of them.”

That was the pearl that Ms. Pearl, our former nanny, dropped on Nick one cold winter morning, as he stooped down to kiss our Mari and rub my pregnant belly and make his way to his job as the editor-in-chief of a travel magazine. Surely, Nick’s back stiffened. I know mine did. Silence clung to the air between us like a nor’easter—thick and frigid and heavy and gray. This sweet little old Guyanese lady, charged with caring for my African-American girl pie while we, the married, loving, accomplished parents toiled away our day earning cash to pay the mortgage and the nanny's salary, had managed to, in one breath, slap the crap out of us (and black people in general) with insult, stereotype and backhanded praise. Like, how do you even begin to respond to a “you’re not like the rest of them” statement and then leave your baby in your insulter’s care? And if she was willing to say that to the faces of her employers, what other stereotypes—certainly more bruising in their insult—did Ms. Pearl have tucked away in the recesses of her brain? And how much of it seeped out of her mouth when we weren’t around—in earshot of our impressionable little black girl?

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Friday, January 7, 2011 - 02:52
Princess Boy
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post
This little boy who fancies hot pink dresses and remarkable ruffles and sparkly, pretty things—he makes me giggly and hopeful and wishful that the world could be as evolved as his mama and his daddy, who allow him the indulgence of prancing like a princess not just in the family playroom but out on the playground at his elementary school.

But mostly, he makes me worry. Scared even. And when I’m not applauding her for going all the way hard for her son’s right to just, like, be, I’m wondering just what in the hell was she thinking buying pink dresses, purple tutus and ballet slippers for her son and telling the world he’s a “princess boy?”

 

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Friday, December 17, 2010 - 08:16
11-Year-Old Gangstas—And Especially Their Parents—Suck
by Denene Millner of MyBrownBaby
The Parenting Post

The other day while volunteering at my Lila’s school, I had a most disturbing conversation with a friend of mine, a mom of an 11-year-old. Her older daughter, a sixth-grader, was under all kinds of stress because she was being bullied at school, for… wait on it… not wearing make-up, having only one hole in each ear and none in her lip, and not being allowed to go to PG-13 movies. With boys. Alone.

Um, lip piercings?

Maybeline?

Dates?

At age 11?

Where they do that at?

Apparently at a middle school not too far away from our place.

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