The Impact of Motherhood on Fatherhood

In this heartfelt episode, AJ Adams reflects on the powerful influence his mother—and the strong women around him—had on shaping his values and parenting style. Growing up without a father figure, AJ shares personal stories of being raised by his mother and aunts, highlighting the love, discipline, and wisdom they poured into him.

He opens up about the challenges of single parenting, the importance of a strong family foundation, and the gratitude he feels for the women who helped guide him into manhood.

Tune in for a vulnerable, inspiring tribute to the mothers and matriarchs who hold it all together.

#JustMyBabyDaddyPodcast #MotherhoodMatters #SingleParenting #RaisedByQueens #BlackFamilies #FatherhoodJourney #FamilyFirst #ParentingWithLove #MatriarchsMatter

00:00 The Influence of Motherhood on Fatherhood
03:02 Lessons Learned from a Single Parent
05:59 The Role of Family in Shaping Values
08:49 Gratitude for Maternal Guidance

Transcript

AJ Adams (00:10)
Welcome to another episode of Just My Baby Daddy Podcast. It's your favorite baby daddy AJ. And today we're gonna do something a little different. I built this platform based upon fatherhood and a lot of dads that are now dads like myself grew up without dads, but we had our mom there. And I thought at a time like this, we're just coming off of Mother's Day weekend, it would be a good time to speak about how my mother

influence how I parent. Because there's no other parenting influence, no other role model I can go off of besides the person that raised me. And the person that raised me, there was no male influence. There was no seeing how to grow up to be a man. The person that raised me was a woman. The person that raised me was my mom. The person that I got my ambition from, the person that I learned.

to hustle, to person that I learned that no matter what happens, these bills gotta be paid, food's gotta be on the table, things gotta be done. That type of work ethic, to work in multiple jobs and making sure, hey, money's here, making sure that you don't have to necessarily want for anything. Not saying that I grew, definitely grew up with an abundance of things, but I didn't need for anything. I never really was the type to need or ask for much.

But just the example of making sure to provide, that was my mother. And it's so weird and it's so odd that we always talk about the role of a dad as a provider, as a disciplinarian, all these different things. as I've gotten older, I respect even more the role that my mother has played because my mother was all of that.

And that is something that I have given a lot more grace to and a lot more understanding to, not just with my mother, but just other moms, single moms that go through it because just being in the space that I am now, When I have my children with me, it's just me. There is no tag team, anybody else help.

when it's my time. Now granted it's completely different. I don't have any of my children 24 seven, 365, no relief. That's not my reality. I never want that to be my reality. Would I love to have my kids 365? Of course, but there will always be a sense of relief because there's always gonna be another parent there because no matter what the mothers of my children will always be.

mothers of my children always be in my children's lives. never gonna be a point even if I were to take my children that they just wouldn't be around. you know it's a different aspect when it comes to that and I really want to want to give a special thanks to my mother because you know when it comes to certain things like little things as a man that I do that my mother taught me

just off of what she thought a man should do. And it ended up being the right thing. Like, you know, I talk to my son now about, when you talk to somebody, you look them directly in the eye. You know, when you shake a man's hand, you look him in the eye, you give a firm handshake. Stuff like this, man, this is something that I learned from my mother. You know? And I would feel like it's, I would hate for my kids.

to have to try to learn that from their mother instead of me being the person there from them, being the person there to teach them that. You know, there's so many, I remember just little things like when I first moved back, how my son would be peeing sitting down. And I had to tell him like, yo, like we don't do that. You gotta, you pee standing up. I don't care if you're getting your tippy toes and you missed the toilet. I don't care. You figure it out.

You peace standing up. But yet now I think about it like I had nobody teach me that. Make sure that I did that, you know. I just had my mom. And she did the best that she could to try to mold me into a respectable young man. Now, was she effective in that? Yeah, in the end. mean, I am who I am now. those formative years, I was an asshole.

I might not be the... I'm still a little bit of an asshole now to some people, but you know, back then it was rough. It was rough. And it's not just my mother because, you know, I talk about the fatherhood village and we talk about, we hear about women and their girls trips and things like that. Well, for me, it wasn't even just my mom and her friend group. It's my aunt.

And I tell them this all the time, like there's no me without them. And I pick up little things from all my aunts who all had boys. I have five aunts. All of them had boys. And a lot of them, know, to dad wasn't necessarily there, so I had to see how they tried to raise their boys.

boys, my cousins, I call my cousin brothers because we all grew up like brothers, them raising them into respectable men and them doing it on their own. And you know, it's a lot and you know, when you hear that a woman can't raise a man,

I'm not totally sure I'm into that or opposed, but I do think a woman can definitely help guide a man into the right direction and where she should go. And I'm a living testament of that. I'm living testament of that because of my mother. I'm living testament of that because of my aunts. you know, seeing the... I know I sat back and I...

at times where I worked multiple jobs in order to maintain, to make sure I can provide for my family. And I thought about, you know, how hard and I talked about how hard I worked to do this and stuff like that. And I remember sitting there and talking to my aunt about, you know, she said, how you been? And I was talking to her about the balance of things and it put in perspective what hard work is and making sure you do for your family. Because she said, yeah.

If work in two jobs. I remember how I did that and I did that for years. And it made me think like, I never heard a complaint. Of course, I'm a child, right? So I don't, if there are complaints, I'm not gonna hear it or they're not gonna come to me. But I hear no complaints. I hear no, we're about to get put out. I hear, I heard none of that from them. It's, we gotta do what we gotta do to make sure this family thrives.

make sure this family continues on. And that is something that, you know, I have lived by and try to pursue myself. Like I'm really big on making sure family connection is there. And a lot of that again has come from not just my aunt, but really from my mother. Because my mother, when we eventually moved into the house that we moved into when I got to high school, all the events would always be like...

it'd be Christmas at the house, especially when the grandparents moved in. It'd be like Christmas at the house or Thanksgiving at the house or, you know, it's always been a very hospitable place. And that's something that I've taken in my parents' style as well. So I've been hospitalized where I'm like, hey, kids, if you want your friends, you let them come over. Your cousins, come to the house. I'd rather everybody come to my house in a more controlled environment.

And we all have fun together there as a family. And that is something that was never, you know, my mother ever said, hey, I want to make sure we get this family time. It was just something that she did. Now I've become more intentional with it because she always spent the time with her sisters. So they always make sure it was family time. But growing up in that type of atmosphere made me fall in love with my family even more. And it makes me want to.

build that type of atmosphere for my children. Like I said all the time, I talk to my cousins all the time, like, hey, I understand we can't move the same way our mothers moved with us because a lot of them were moving that way. There was no other half. There is no mom and dad side of the family. Whereas now my kids have both sides of the family. So there's, you know, time and place for each thing, but we still need to make sure there's a time where, hey, when it's dad's side of the family.

We need to make sure it's dad's side for me, dad's side for you, dad's side for you. And we all make sure that these kids make sure that they have time, that they can have real family time together because as we continue to move on throughout life, we shouldn't just have to depend on our mothers to be the foundation to make sure to keep the family together. And that's something that's really big and that's stuck with me is

I don't know, again, if I was just raised with just my father or just me in general, if I would have that strong, strong sense of family that I have now. And a lot of that could be, it's definitely tied to the women in my family and I'm forever grateful for them. I play loud music in a

Sunday mornings Saturday mornings. I don't care if my kids want to hear it or not Get that from my parents style from my from my aunt's and my mother's If there's certain things I know that needs to be done and I know for the fact that it's for the best of you It's not time for conversation You know why because I know what's best and I know down the road what's gonna happen and I learned that from who? my mother I learned that

from my aunt's now my kids are learning that as an extension of my mother. you know, it's always been, especially for me, she hates it when I talk like that, but it never was a...

a wonderful, loving, just embraced all the time. Me and my mom, we were never that type. But through me having children, I can say I understand her more. I appreciate her more. And the love that I see that she has for her grandchildren, I can see that same love she had for me. She just couldn't display it at that time because

One, I'm much harder than my grandkids, than the grandkids were. And two, you know, it's a lot trying to do it all on your own. And so I'm grateful and I'm thankful because I would not be prepared to be able to handle this journey that I'm taking right now without my mother. And so even though it's Mother's Day has passed,

I gotta say happy Mother's Day to my mother and thank you to my mother because if my kids enjoyed me as a father and as a parent, they wouldn't be able to do that if wasn't for my mother. So thank you.