For those who don’t know, No Wedding No Womb is a movement started by Christelyn D. Karazin and Lorraine Spencer to encourage responsible relationships and parenting (broadly speaking). Karazin is now married but spent some time as a single mother and has stated that she wishes she’d made some different choices in the past, especially as it pertains to having a child out of wedlock. You can find more information here, but the gist of it is both women and men need to make smart decisions and try very hard not to produce children outside of marriage.

As far as I can see, there’s nothing wrong with that message—there’s also nothing groundbreaking about it either. Many bloggers, personalities, and media outlets signed on to be a part of No Wedding No Womb which officially launched on September 22.

I’m used to choruses of “Amens” any time black people are taken to task whether fairly or not. But this time, things weren’t quite so simple. No Wedding No Womb seems to be getting just as much, if not more, blow back as it is getting support.

There are a couple of reasons why I think the movement hasn’t been well received across the board.

Much of the success of any movement is largely predicated on timing. We are coming off of a year when black women have had it very hard in the media. From stories about how they will never be married to stories about how they will never have any money—there’s been one piece of bad news after another.

By and large, black women are shouldering the blame alone and this movement feels like piling on. Though No Wedding No Womb explicitly states they are advocating responsibility by both men and women alike, male reproductive organs aren’t mentioned in the title.

In the midst of a time when black women are achieving more than ever before, having less children than ever before, and feeling more divided from black men than ever, No Wedding, No Womb as a concept just seems tone deaf.

It’s also a bit Reaganesque in that it takes a snapshot of a certain group of people and presents it as the norm in order to achieve a desired goal with no regard for the image of the larger group. In Reagan’s case, his motives were malicious. By singling out poor black women as a drain on society, he created a lasting image of black women in general being deficient. That being said, it’s no wonder that Conservative web sites like The Daily Caller dialed in their agenda-laden support.

I don’t think that No Wedding No Womb is malicious, but I do think its needlessly damaging. For many, No Wedding No Womb immediately conjures up images of the myth of the welfare queen and other unfair stereotypes bandied about regarding single mothers. The underlying assumption is that there is an epidemic of black women who don’t understand that marriage is ideal. There’s no evidence beyond confusing and easily manipulated statistics that hint at that being a fact. It’s hard to get behind something that drums up such bad feelings, no matter how noble the cause, when there are only flimsy statistics to back it up.

When it comes to the title, using the term No Wedding No Womb, while catchy and direct, completely sacrifices nuance. You have to go to the web site in order to find out that their goals are not absolute e.g. they aren’t advocating for everyone get married even if you hate the person you’re with. I can assume that the title was conceived to get a reaction and draw interest. Unfortunately, sometimes you get a reaction and no real interest. And the reaction from many single mothers was an instinctual urge to defend their own personal decisions, not to go to the web site and find out more.

The creators of No Wedding No Womb have themselves to blame for their awful presentation. However, that doesn’t excuse entire written blog posts and twitter timelines that skew the intention of this initiative. In fact, I even had to stop myself from discussing it because I felt I was uninformed.

For those who are interested in a pretty substantive discussion on this subject and why the stats are so misleading, I recommend you read this post and this post over at The Atlantic. FYI: Census reports should be out fairly soon, and the numbers are likely to take this conversation in a different direction.