A mom questioned if she made the right decision or acted hastily after her mother shaved her biracial daughter’s hair was while she was at work.
Posting to the subreddit r/AITAH, the 30-year-old woman explained that her mom acted irresponsibly by shaving her biracial daughter’s hair, so she decided to take matters into her own hands and call the police.
The poster revealed that she called the police on her mom for shaving her biracial daughter’s hair because she didn’t know how to manage her curls.
“I am married to my husband, Tyler, and we have a beautiful 5-year-old daughter, Zoe. Zoe is biracial — I’m white, and Tyler is black. Zoe has the most gorgeous curly hair, and I’ve always taken great care of it,” she began in her Reddit post. “She loves her curls, and we’ve made it a fun bonding experience to style her hair together every week.”
She explained that her mom, Susan, has always had a problem with doing Zoe’s hair. She’s made different comments in the past about how “wild” her hair is, that it’s “too much” to maintain, and that it would be better if it were just straight.
Whenever her mom made these comments, she simply brushed them off and just assumed it was harmless ignorance until the latest incident.
During a work emergency that forced her to run into the office, she called her mom to watch Zoe while she was gone. It was only a couple of hours, and upon returning, she was horrified to see that her daughter’s hair had been shaved off completely. When she confronted her mom and asked why she would do such a thing, her mom responded, “I did her a favor. Now she looks tidy and presentable. Besides, it will grow back straight.”
The woman was rightfully furious with her mom for her ignorance.
There are so many products, tutorials, and guides for white parents or grandparents to teach them how to take care of and nourish Black curly hair. It doesn’t have to be exhausting, and to completely shave off a little girl’s hair just because you don’t know how to do it is incredibly irresponsible and downright racist.
The same would not have been done if this woman’s daughter was white instead of biracial.
“I was shaking with rage. I grabbed Zoe, who was in tears and left immediately. When we got home, I couldn’t calm down. Zoe kept touching her head, saying she didn’t feel like herself anymore.”
“I was livid and on [the] verge of tears, feeling like my mother had violated my daughter and her sense of self. I decided to call the police and report the incident as assault.”
The police came to her house, and she made a statement about what her mother had done.
After taking her statement, the police ended up taking her mom in for questioning. The entire debacle caused a bit of a rift in the family, with her dad accusing her of taking it too far when all her mom was doing was trying to “help” by doing Zoe’s hair.
She argued that her mom completely disrespected both her and her daughter, and she refused to stand for it.
She wrote, “Meanwhile, Tyler and his parents are fully on my side. My in-laws are horrified by what my mom did and have been incredibly supportive. They keep telling me I did the right thing by standing up for Zoe and that my mom was way out of line.”
She admitted that she’s conflicted with how her family is handling it versus how her in-laws have handled it. There’s no question that her mom crossed a serious line, but she worries that calling the police might have been too extreme.