Watch for an upcoming announcement for our First New York Zero-to-Three Winter Gala with special guest Dr. Stacey Patton! (This event has been rescheduled but watch out for an upcoming date)

Dr. Patton will share the historical roots of corporal punishment–plantation violence and post slavery dynamics–and its impact on African American parenting. She will also discuss the parent to prison pipeline, how parents who hit their children not only risk catching the attention of child protective services which are over-concentrated in communities of color, but of also having their children placed in foster care, which is a pipeline to the juvenile justice system and other types of traps that disproportionately impact black youth.

Attendees will gain new perspectives on the topic, increase their cultural awareness and sensitivity and will receive resources on best parenting practices that do not involve physical punishment. Attendees will also receive a signed copy of Dr. Patton’s “Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and will have an opportunity to join a private session with Dr. Patton.

“Spare the Kids may very well prove as powerfully corrective as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was upon the acceptance of chattel slavery.” — David Levering Lewis, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for biographies on W.E.B.Du Bois

Stacey Patton, PhD, is an award-winning author and journalist who writes about race, politics, popular culture, child welfare issues, diversity in media ,and higher education. Through her workshops, keynote addresses, and multi-media presentations, Dr. Patton blends the power of her personal narrative with her expert knowledge of the history of American race relations.

Patton teaches journalism at Howard University in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications and is a research associate at the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University.

As an adoptee, child abuse survivor, and former foster youth, Patton is a nationally-recognized child advocate whose research focuses on the intersections of race and childhood. She is the author of That Mean Old Yesterday – A Memoir (Simon and Schuster), Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America (Beacon Press), and the forthcoming book, Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children and Teenagers in America, 1880-1968 (Beacon Press)