Race-Related Stress, Reparenting, and the Right to Rest

Jason Miller

What does it actually feel like to be a Black parent in America right now? Not just the love, the joy, the pride — but the weight. The worry. The mental load that never quite turns off.

Unknown Speaker

That’s the conversation we’re diving into today. Welcome back to the Parenting While Black recap. I’m Emily Carter.

Jason Miller

And I’m Jason Miller, continuing a series on Nurturing Legacy, Love, and Liberation. Our conversation on Black Parents and Black Mental Health. Discusses the challenges of raising Black children in today’s world and the mental stress of the parenting journey.

Unknown Speaker

This podcast summarizes a full conversation held as part of the Brazelton Touchpoints Center's Family to Family Real Talk Program in March 2025. That conversation was hosted by Kimya Barden, a parenting scholar and associate professor of Urban Community studies at Northeastern Illinois University Chicago.

Jason Miller

Kimya was joined by Dr. Quenette Walton and Dewtron Kabebu. Quenette is a licensed clinical social worker for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. With over 20 years of experience, Quenette has helped women suffering with depression, deal with factors such as race, class, gender and discrimination in an effort to improve their mental health.

Unknown Speaker

Dewtron is the founder and executive director of Mentors Driving Change for Boys, Men, and Dads. He’s led research and community outreach on supporting father involvement in collaboration with UC Berkeley and Yale University. He’s dedicated to bringing positive change for boys, men, fathers, and families.

Jason Miller

Kimya grounded the conversation with a working definition of mental health — borrowed from the World Health Organization — as a state of well-being that allows you to activate coping mechanisms, especially during times of stress. She immediately layered in something specific to Black families: race-related stress. Kimya described it as the emotional, physical, even spiritual strain that comes from experiencing an adverse racial encounter — microaggressions, macroaggressions, harassment, invalidation, even intergenerational trauma.

Unknown Speaker

And Quenette jumped right in with something really important: this stress doesn’t just land on the parent. It travels. Paraphrasing, she said that when she experiences racial discrimination, it doesn’t miss her daughter. It’s collective. It moves through the household. Quenette talked about the layers: feeling overwhelmed, increased anxiety, signs of depression, wanting to be overprotective.

Jason Miller

Dewtron brought his own version of this. His daughter came home asking why her hair wasn’t straight. She’s eight years old and already navigating colorism and questions about belonging. He talked about that self-consciousness Black parents carry in public — worrying that if you’re too stern, people are watching you, judging you. Dewtron described it as a forty-pound gorilla on his shoulder that he has to consciously shrug off every single day. And he reflected on his own mom — a single Black woman who carried enormous mental health burdens silently, because back then it was taboo. He said she had so much going on that nobody ever talked about.

Unknown Speaker

Going deeper into the mental health piece, Quenette talked about this idea of overexerting yourself to overcompensate. As Black parents, there’s this pressure to be excellent not just at work, but at parenting too. Because someone’s always watching, always ready to make assumptions.

Jason Miller

Quenette who is actually writing a book on depression in Black women, brought up the Strong Black woman trope— the idea that Black women must put everyone’s needs before their own. It is historically rooted but deeply harmful when it becomes the only way black women feel they can exist.

Unknown Speaker

She called it a mask. Something that protects you in the world, but costs you inside. And the research backs this up — she referenced the concept of weathering, developed by scholar Arlene Geronimus at the University of Michigan. The idea is that sustained race-related stress literally wears the body down over time — leading to higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and accelerated aging.

Jason Miller

And she made a really important linguistic point: a lot of Black women won’t say ‘I have depression.’ They’ll say, ‘I’m tired. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.’ So how do we meet people where they are, in the language they actually use, and still get them real support?

Unknown Speaker

Quenette also talked about reparenting — this idea that in the process of raising our children differently than we were raised, we’re healing ourselves too. She shared that she disciplines her daughter in ways her own mother never did — giving her space, letting her use her voice, letting her say ‘Mommy, I don’t like that.’ And that felt like healing to her.

Jason Miller

Dewtron echoed that. Concluding that ‘We’re reparenting ourselves in a better version.’

Unknown Speaker

Kimya shifted the conversation to family structure. Stating how not all Black families look the same, and the stressors vary a lot depending on what your household looks like. Dewtron talked about the nuclear family, single-parent households, multigenerational households, and co-parenting. He works with a lot of single dads saying they can’t see their kids, they’re fighting in court, and meanwhile the children are acting out at school because home life is unstable.

Jason Miller

He also talked about multigenerational households and the tension that can come when your mother-in-law is in the home and has her own ideas about how children should be raised. The answer? honor your elders while asserting your own parenting style.

Unknown Speaker

But here’s where both Quenette and Dewtron really pushed back against deficit thinking. They said: stop pathologizing these families. A single parent with a strong community network might have more support than a nuclear family that’s isolated and struggling.

Jason Miller

Quenette explained how she’s a single mom, but her mother moved in right before her daughter was born. She has a niece who helps. Her daughter’s father steps in when he can. She has a network of chosen family friends across the country — women her daughter calls ‘Titi’ — who all contribute to her daughter’s well-being.

Unknown Speaker

And she said something that I think we all need to hear: we need to broaden our definition of what family is. Chosen family counts. And the stress relief that comes from being in genuine community — where you trust people, where your child is known and loved — that’s not a luxury. That’s mental health infrastructure.

Jason Miller

Dewtron brought it down to this: when you invite your neighbor’s kid to dinner so the single mom doesn’t have to cook that night, that’s respite care. That’s community showing up. Don’t ask ‘Do you need help?’ Just include them.

Unknown Speaker

Now, no conversation about Black mental health in 2025 can ignore the political climate. And Kimya asked them directly: how is this current sociopolitical moment impacting Black parents and their kids? Quenette talked about choosing rest. After the election, she said, she intentionally decided she is done pouring her energy into systems that don’t protect her or her daughter. She said, ‘We told y’all. Now this is the find out phase.’

Jason Miller

Quenette described rest not as giving up, but as a form of protection. She’s not putting the burden of systemic change on her daughter’s back. She’s choosing to invest that energy into her own well-being and her child’s. She even wears a pin that says ‘92%’ as a quiet act of personal clarity. The 92% representing that she’s giving nearly all of her energy, but not all of it.

Unknown Speaker

Dewtron was honest that he’s not fully there yet. He’s still in a pendulum swing. He works with Black and brown boys in the community, and he sees their stress up close. He can’t always leave that at the door. But he’s trying. He’s stopped watching the news at home. He’s walking in nature. He’s going to concerts. He’s making space for joy.

Jason Miller

He was also really honest about how chaotic uncertainty makes it hard to rest. He said, ‘Just when you feel like you’re resting, the ground moves under you and you’re falling again.’ And Quenette acknowledged the gendered and class dimensions of rest, too. She has a flexible academic schedule and a clinical license to fall back on. That gives her a kind of safety net that not everyone has. Rest looks different depending on your resources.

Unknown Speaker

In closing— Kimya asked them both: what are the self-care tools that actually help Black parents activate positive mental health right now?

Jason Miller

Dewtron got personal here. He went to see a favorite band the Friday before this conversation. Just three hours of dancing and live music. And he said it felt like a month-long vacation. He talked about how movement and music are primal, culturally rooted tools that don’t require a prescription or a copay. He also talked about normalizing brotherhood and sisterhood circles — safe spaces where people can just exist together without needing to problem-solve or perform. He was honest that therapy still carries stigma for him personally, but he’s chipping away at that. And he named connecting to nature as another free, accessible resource.

Unknown Speaker

Quenette championed therapy — specifically culturally responsive therapy, where you can show up as your full self. She said clients have come to her expecting to lie on a couch, and she takes them outside for a walk instead. She believes deeply in meeting people where they are. She also listed free tools that work: walking, dancing — she and her daughter have dance battles at home — deep breathing, apps like Headspace or Calm, shared meals with friends, and leveraging your community. She said, ‘We are communal people. How do we use that to heal?’

Jason Miller

And she ended on a strengths-based note: we always lead with what’s wrong with these families. Let’s shift that. Let’s ask what are people doing right that we can learn from and build on.

Unknown Speaker

The three main takeaways from this conversation are: one — race-related stress is real, it’s collective, and it affects the whole family. Two — family structure is not a deficit. Community, chosen family, and village-building are legitimate forms of mental health support. And three — rest is not passive. For Black parents right now, rest is an act of intentional self-preservation.

Jason Miller

The language we use matters. Meet people where they are. ‘I’m tired’ is a cry for help. ‘I need community’ is an opening for an intervention. ‘I’m reparenting myself’ is healing in action.

Unknown Speaker

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Thank you for listening to The Parenting While Black recap.

Jason Miller

To learn more about the Parenting While Black conversation series, follow the link in the episode description on this page. Until next time. Take care, everyone.