Workingmother.com| august/september 2019 23
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that he was about to hit his friend. So Cree stepped
in front of the child and got hit in the chest,” Tia
recounts sadly.
Her “gentle giant” was very upset. “It was hard
for me to see that my son was a victim of someone
bullying another child. It’s really sad that you can’t
protect your child from these environments. That’s
the hardest thing about being a parent: You con-
stantly worry, no matter what school you’re at, no
matter your child’s gender. When they leave the
house, you can’t always control the situation.”
It’s a topic that Family Reunion, which has an
all-black writing staff , confronts when police
accost the black McKellan kids for being in “the
wrong neighborhood.”
“I remember the line: ‘I didn’t think that we
would need to have this conversation right now.’
And that’s exactly what I was saying to Cree.”
When he was 6, he told his parents he was scared
the police would shoot him, a feeling prompted by
numerous headlines about young black men who
were shot by offi cers. Tia tweeted about it and got a
big response—thousands of angry replies, mostly
from white people, insisting she taught Cree to
fear police offi cers, as well as sympathetic, though
devastated replies, mostly from black people.
“Of course Cree’s statement was a generaliza-
tion: ‘the police.’ Of course, that’s not how I talk to
him about the situation, but it was crazy how so
many people automatically assumed and were
coming at it from a negative way.”
Tia says she received validation from newsoutlets for discussing the shootings with her son,
which was heartening. And she feels privileged to
have a platform to share these perspectives. “These
are the stories that we’re not afraid to tell,” Tia
emphasizes about Family Reunion’s importance.
It helps that Tia’s husband, Cory, is so even-
keeled and available for the kids—he and Tia talked
with Cree about his fear while they were all in bed
together. Cory is as supportive of Tia, even when
their careers make family management tough.
“I was shooting My Christmas Inn in Utah, and
my husband was shooting his show, The Oath, in
Puerto Rico. I couldn’t take my son with me
because I didn’t want to disrupt school. I remem-
ber being on the phone with my mom, saying, ‘I
need for you to do this for me, please’—and my dad,
saying, ‘This is what grandparents are for.’ It was
hard seeing my son in such an emotional state
where he missed both parents. But my mom, dad
and brothers stepped in like no other. Even my sis-
ter came over with the kids. Life is not perfect, and
there are going to be times where you’re going to
have to pull things out of your Mary Poppins bag.”
Family helping each other out, in real life and on
her new show, reminded me of Sister, Sister, so I
had to ask: What would it look like if it returned?
The answer: Mama, Mama. “So many people are
engaged with how we parent, what our children are
up to, and how we interact as parents together. So
defi nitely it would be about family and how we are
as parents navigating through that.”
I’d tune in.The actress
(and cookbook
author) shares
easy recipes,
beauty tricks,
organizing ideas
and more on Tia
Mowry’s Quick
Fix, her YouTube
channel. Here
are her three
most life-
changing tips
for working
moms.“It’s important for my life to
have an electric pressure cooker.
The cooking time cuts in half.
My daughter loves potatoes,
but if I were to throw a potato
in the oven, it would take an
hour. Do you know how many
minutes it takes in a pressure
cooker? Five.”“I love putting cereals, pastas
and snacks in glass jars. I can tell
if I need more of it. When it’s in
the box, sometimes you end up
overbuying because you think
that you need something.” She
still buys in bulk and stores “over-
fl ow” of each item in their original
packaging near their neat,
corresponding glass jar.Tia used to take away toys when
Cree wasn’t listening, but it
didn’t work. Now that Cree has
caught the acting bug—he guest
stars on Family Reunion—Tia
says, “Somebody’s not going to
get to go on an audition and be
on a set anymore.” That did the
trick. “It was like a new kid,”
the proud mom says.