By Kenneth L. Hardin

When I was a youngin’ growing up in the AME Zion Church, I remember hearing a loud sweaty fella stomping around in the pulpit imploring those in the congregation to grow up as they yelled back at him to “go on and preach, preacher.” At that young impressionable age, I didn’t understand the wisdom he was trying to impart. Now that I have less hair on top of my head and more gray than black in my goatee, I understand what he meant when he read these words from that big book resting up in the pulpit. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

As I shave more often now than I care to, I realize there are some people who have neither heard those words or they’re  stuck in a “Groundhog Day” movie version of the numerous adaptations of where grown folk magically return to an adolescent state. Unlike in those movies where they can enjoy all the fun and frivolity with minimal consequences for 90 minutes, grown folks with responsibilities, but who remain mired in an adolescent mindset, aren’t just hurting themselves. If they have kids who rely on them, they’re causing irreparable damage for generations to come.

Unlike so many social media keyboard warriors who’ve established themselves as professional online thought and self-help gurus, I’ll never preach to anyone or tell them how to live their lives. But, I have no use or respect for any man or woman who creates a life and then runs away from the responsibility of loving, caring and developing that life to adulthood. If you abandon or fail to nurture that life you had a part in creating, I view you as no different than what I accidentally step in when walking my dog and then have to stop to rub it off the bottom of my shoe in the grass nearby. Can I get a “go on and preach, preacher” from anyone?

As I wipe my sweaty brow with a handkerchief for effect, I’ll go on in an old southern Baptist preacher cadence and say that regardless of your relationship with the baby’s mom or dad, why punish the child? I recall having a conversation with a friend, who is the mother of three children of different ages and all three from different fathers. She was excoriating the character of the three men she had the children with, calling them things I can’t repeat in a respectful publication such as this. After listening to her drone on about their lack of parental involvement while continuing to impugn their characters, I interrupted her and asked, “If these men were that awful, then why did you sleep with them and get pregnant by them?” Well, we’re no longer friends.

I’ve always believed the truth doesn’t hurt unless it’s supposed to, and I refuse to caress people with a lie who shirk or abandon their parental responsibilities. My son unfortunately fell victim to what countless other couples too young to get married and start a family do. He met a woman, they wed, produced a child, and a year later found neither was ready for the monumental responsibility, so they separated and divorced. He hasn’t avoided any parental responsibility, but I recall having a strong conversation with him early on and saying unapologetically in an aggrieved and direct tone, “You need to grow the h*** up!”  I probably could’ve put on my Ward Cleaver blazer, sat this version of  the Beaver down and placed my hand on his shoulder while reciting that passage from I Corinthians 13:11. The only problem is I don’t get down like Ward when it comes to ensuring my kids or the many I’ve acted as a foster dad to feel that someone genuinely cares about them and their future. Like Shaq on the basketball court, I go hard in the paint and care little if feelings are hurt.

I’m more James Evans from the “Good Times” TV show, who is willing to pull off his belt and use it metaphorically to get his point across. Evidently it worked because my son has been a very attentive and involved dad to my grandson. I’ve also had conversations with women who’ve walked away and left their child with the father or relatives because they weren’t ready for the responsibility, things were too difficult to deal with in the relationship and they wanted to live a little. You too are equally disgusting in my eyes. If you were grown enough to lay down and make the baby, that was the party and you already lived it up.

As parents, we can’t turn our backs on our offspring, fail to instill ethics, morals and values and then wonder why these young people are out here wildin’ out, joining gangs, shooting and killing. But therein lies the root of all the problems with many of these wayward, out-of-control and violent young folks. Until we solve the issue of babies having babies, none of these youth societal ills will be resolved. If the parent is only 13-15 years older than the child, they don’t know how to instill ethics and values themselves because no one taught them. We have to break this cycle.

We praise celebrities like Nick Cannon for creating all these lives with so many different women and revel in the idiocy of shows like MTV’s “16 and Pregnant.” I see nothing admirable about what he’s doing or anything redeemable about that show. It’s all just sad to me. OK, my sermon is done, and I’ve left the pulpit.

Kenneth L. (Kenny) Hardin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.