With Mother’s Day’s just around the corner and a year since the murder of Trayvon Martin, it didn’t surprise me to see the joys of motherhood and the perilous state of black children being weighed in the May edition of Ebony magazine.

However, in between the political commentary and photos spreads about the latest fashion and make-up trends, I did find some refreshing honesty about the challenges of single parenting from their cover girl Jill Scott.

In the article, which features shots of the regal beauty with her cutie-pie four-year-old Jett, the 41-year-old Grammy-Award-winning singer, songwriter, author and actress admits that she can only teach her youngster so much and had to swallow some “humble pie” to make sure that Jett’s father, former fiance ‘Lil John’ Roberts, is able to offer that much-needed guidance in the daily life of their son.

“Although I’m the primary caregiver, I have to humble myself and recognize that this is my son’s father,” she says, “so his choices may not be my own, but I have to respect them. I have to be patient and informative, and let his dad know what’s going on with him, even if I don’t feel like it.”

Scott also takes her perspective into a rare realm by debunking the all-too-prevalent “Superwoman Single Mom” mentality that, in too many cases, negates the importance of the father’s role in the lives of their kids. “No matter what I’ll do, I’ll never be a man. Ever. I cannot show him how to be a man….I think that single moms are really glorified to the point where a lot of young women have decided to have children without having a father around. [They are] making decisions about who they have children with based on something that won’t last.That ‘I-can-do-it-by-myself’ mentality is a lie. I’m sorry if I hurt anybody’s feelings, but you cannot do it all by yourself.”

My appreciation of those words isn’t solely about my being a fan of Scott, but because they mirror my own views on raising kids. In a society that puts motherhood on a pedestal while fostering lowered expectations about marriage and family, it’s good to see that even the rich and famous have the same struggles that everyday citizens do when it comes to raising kids.

It was also a welcome contrast to the views that actress Nia Long expressed in her controversial 2012 feature story with Essence magazine, where she expounded on the joys and risks of her Hollywood career and raising two boys in a long-distance relationship with her youngest child’s father, yet dismissed marriage as a priority for them just because she’s never personally seen a successful union.

Many canceled their subscriptions to Essence in disgust and accused Long of helping to sabotage the already-precarious image of black families, but her supporters championed the right of the Long as a ‘grown woman’ to do as she pleases since she can financially support them all. Why, however, would one not be as willing to put the hard work into a monogamous day-to-day relationship as you are into molding the lives that were created? Why go out of one’s way to perpetuate such selfishness and low expectations on a daily basis in your own home? The fact that so many choose to do one over the other remains beyond my scope of understanding.

Parenting remains, no matter what our ethnicities or income levels, a daunting task. Whether or not they’re planned or unplanned, our children challenge us in every way imaginable and the answers to the dilemmas they create usually aren’t easy. But what Scott helped to illustrate is that even if Mom is a megastar, she isn’t an omnipotent Superwoman who gets it all done in her way and on her terms.
That is, not if she wants her child to earn rave reviews in the one-time performance known as Life.