What happens when the issues you’ve spent your life fighting for suddenly become the world your children have to live in?
In this episode, Katia sits down with Jumaane D. Williams, New York City Public Advocate, activist, husband, and proud girl dad, for a deeply personal conversation about how fatherhood has changed the way he sees his work, himself, and the world he hopes to leave his daughters.
Jumaane opens up about having to explain racism to his daughter at just three years old, intentionally surrounding his girls with representation that reflects their beauty, and raising them to understand both the realities of the world and their own power within it. He also shares his family’s harrowing experience with cervical cancer, pregnancy, premature birth and the NICU—and why that experience reinforced for him the importance of listening to and believing Black women in healthcare.
The conversation also turns inward as Jumaane reflects on therapy, fatherhood, male vulnerability, positive masculinity and breaking generational trauma—including his belief that successful parenting isn’t about making no mistakes, but making new ones instead of passing the same wounds from one generation to the next.
A vulnerable conversation about fatherhood, racism, Black maternal health, raising daughters, representation, masculinity, mental health and healing generational trauma.
Follow Jumaane D. Williams:
@jumaane.williams
@nycpublicadvocate
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The Unaparent Podcast is a Studio Dama production. For production, sponsorship, and ad inquiries contact marina@studiodamadesign.com or send a DM to @studio.dama.design
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 — Intro
04:54 — Jumaane’s unapparent truth about fatherhood
06:37 — How becoming a father changed the way he sees the world
09:45 — When activism becomes personal after having children
13:31 — Black maternal health and the importance of believing women
14:40 — Cervical cancer, pregnancy, and the story of their “miracle baby”
17:35 — The importance of advocating for yourself in the medical system
18:23 — How to talk to our children about racism
19:28 — “My dad is an activist”: raising Black daughters with awareness and confidence
20:09 — Representation, beauty, and teaching children to love their skin and hair
25:53 — Balancing activism, fatherhood, and making space for joy
28:46 — The impact fathers can have on their daughters’ self-worth
31:32 — Being a proud “girl dad”
33:15 — Male vulnerability, therapy, and redefining masculinity
35:21 — Healing our younger selves so we can parent differently
37:13 — Breaking generational cycles: “make new mistakes”
39:13 — Heart-led speed round
41:46 — What Jumaane is working on and where to follow him
42:35 — “Be who you needed when you were younger”: Jumaane on living with Tourette syndrome
