Oddly enough, the most consistently visited posts on this blog are the ones relating to hair. They no longer come out top everyday as they did last year, but they get at least 20-30 hits daily. Moreso lately because one was linked by Feministe (hi there!). Since I’ve been given this soapbox to stand on and folks are obviously interested in the topic, I thought I’d share my views on another aspect of ethnic hair issues: kids hair.

As I said before, my mother started relaxing my hair from the time I was about 5 or 6 because that’s what most black people do. It’s a cultural thing. Once a girl’s hair gets to a certain stage and it’s deemed ‘safe’ to do so, parents make the first important step in defining their child’s hair for years to come.

At the risk of bringing on an inundation of hate mail and hate comments, I must say what I feel: Don’t Do It. Don’t relax your daughter’s hair. Please, please, please, for the love of follicles, Just Don’t Do It.

Why? you ask. There are many reasons. Ranging from the social and cultural to the personal.

One of the reasons parents start relaxing their child’s (more specifically, daughter’s) hair is because of their own ideas about what is attractive, acceptable, and easy to manage. Most kids under 8 or 9 don’t do their own hair. Most can’t, and that’s okay. So it falls to Mom or Dad to take care of it. I’ll wager most parents don’t have a lot of time to devote to a kid’s hair, especially if they do it in the morning before school and work. Naturally, they want a style that is quick and neat. Most kids want a style that will make them look good, emulates the styles other girls have, and won’t get them laughed at or teased. Sometimes these desires match up nicely. Sometimes the parent’s desires are given precedence because they are the parent. Nothing wrong with that thinking, except the parent isn’t the one who has to walk around with the hair all day. And, eventually, the parent isn’t the one who will have to deal with the consequences of their choice once the child is old enough to do their own hair.

The kind of styles parents encourage or force upon their children sends a strong message. What kind of message depends on the style or the language used. Relaxing indicates that straight hair is more desirable, regardless of how much it hurts or how horrible it may turn out. Calling natural hair Dirty, Nappy, or Ugly may give a little girl a really fucked up sense of self-esteem. In order to look pretty, acceptable, or right, she has to fundamentally change a part of her body from its natural state.

The message that natural/kinky/nappy hair is bad doesn’t only come from parents — kids at school, teachers, television, movies, books, any social or media entity a child may come in contact with might perpetuate this idea. Those factors are even harder to fight than familial indoctrination. But when this message comes from both ends, a girl doesn’t stand a chance.

Beyond the fact that any notion of natural hair being ugly and wrong is complete bullshit, there is the pervasive opinion that it’s harder to take care of. Running a comb through some kinky hair can be painful for both parent and child. Keeping frizzy curls looking neat feels like an uphill battle, especially on a humid day. But I’m willing to bet most parents don’t do a lick of research on how to care for natural hair before deciding to relax. They probably don’t feel they need to when the traditional solution works just fine. Truth is, natural hair care for kids can be easy and inexpensive. One just has to find the right combination of product and technique.

Granted, this is much easier to do now then when I was a kid. Due to the explosion in natural styles and care, more companies and small businesses are generating products and how-tos to make dealing with hair less time consuming and healthier. Most of the knowledge gleaned from dealing with adult natural hair can be applied to kid’s hair. And if you start them early with learning quick and easy ways to get their hair done, the earlier they’ll be able to do it on their own, freeing up valuable morning time for you.

There are plenty of folks who don’t want natural hair. Relaxed/straight is better, they feel. And that’s fine, too. However, I still ask that you not relax your daughter’s hair. Not at first.

As I said before, though you may feel that your daughter is an extension/reflection of yourself and want her to look good, she is the one who has to wear and take care of that hair. Therefore, shouldn’t she be the one to make the decision to relax? And shouldn’t that decision be based on a healthy attitude about herself? It should definitely be based on the knowledge of what she’s in for.

When my hair was relaxed, it took a lot of time to get it looking decent in the morning. And never really looked all that good in the end. When I finally decided to grow the relaxed bits out, it took almost a year. I didn’t want to cut it all off and start fresh because that would make me look terrible, so I had to deal with 2 – 3 different textures on my head for all that time. Plus, relaxer makes hair unhealthy right out of the gate. It breaks easily and therefore doesn’t seem to grow as fast. I’m sure there are other drawbacks that a hair dresser could point out. Girls should know this information before deciding to take that path.

Ease of care isn’t the only issue to deal with here. There’s also the social/cultural aspect: the messages black kids get about “good hair” and what is “neat”, “clean” or “acceptable”. They get it from all sides–home, school, society, media. And most outside forces are definitely on the side of the relaxed and unnatural. Some parents may say it’s better to relax their child’s hair until she’s mentally ready to deal with some of the larger issues. Like it or not, the larger issues will present themselves at the earliest opportunity. You need to prepare your child for them as soon as possible.

One of my cousins has a 7-year-old daughter who, though she has beautiful curly hair like mine, insists that she needs to have straight hair because it’s prettier. She didn’t get that idea from her home, but from school. At 7. You can’t wait.

It seems to me that if you’re going to raise a daughter in the present era who is proud of herself and her heritage, she needs to be proud of every aspect. Just as you’d want to bolster her from feeling that she’s inferior because of her skin color, race, religion, culture, or language, she should never feel inferior because of her hair. Women especially cannot divorce their sense of self-worth from their hair because American culture puts so much emphasis on it. Being ashamed of one’s natural hair is intrinsically linked with being ashamed of any other part of self. It’s growing out of the head, as much a part you as your skin, nails, or eye color. Therefore, it is imperative that hair becomes just as much a consideration in the self-worth building process as anything else. And it should go without saying (though it can’t) that brown girls growing up in America need all the help they can get in developing a strong sense of self-esteem.

So I’m asking again: please don’t relax your daughter’s hair as a matter of course. Learn how to take care of her hair as it is. Teach her to help you do so. Find a beautiful, natural style that will make her proud and is easy to do. And, when she’s ready to go it on her own, make sure she understands the choices before her. They will affect her for life.

Related Posts: Good Hair, Kinky Hair | Black Hair Etiquette Guide

Here are some posts (on another site) specifically about hair care and good products that folks might find useful: African American Hair Care (applies to anyone with curly hair, really) | 15 Minutes to Perfect Curls