Mothering While Black. Dawn Marie Dow
of neighborhoods comprised of African Americans from different economic backgrounds; and they exposed their sons to African American men, including fathers, uncles, cousins, coaches, or friends, who expressed what they believed were healthy versions of masculinity. Mothers provided this exposure because they believed their sons would have to understand how they were being interpreted in various settings and how to deploy different racialized versions of their masculinity to successfully negotiate those settings.
Maya, introduced at the start of this chapter, described how she and her husband used experience management to expose their son to alternative and, in her view, more positive ideals of masculinity:
With our son, we definitely have a heightened level of concern, especially around public schools, about what it means to be a black male in this society. . . . [I]t is worrisome to think about sending him into the world where he is such a potential target. . . . I know how to make a kid that does well in school and can navigate academic environments. My husband knows how to help young people—black young people—understand their position, how the world sees them, and how they might see themselves in a different and much more positive way.
Maya and her husband did this by teaching their son how others might perceive him while rejecting prevailing images of African American masculinity and crafting alternatives, a version of what W. E. B. Du Bois referred to as double consciousness.37
Mothers who used environment management organized their sons’ social interactions to exclude exposures to racism. Rachel, a married mother of a son and daughter, said,
My son thinks he is street-smart, but he is used to being in an environment in which he is known. No one thinks of my son as a black boy, they think of him as my son, but when he goes out into the real world, people will make assumptions about him.
Rachel lived in a predominately white neighborhood with few other African American families. She believed her neighbors did not view her family as “the African American family” but simply as a family, and this protected her son from challenges associated with being an African American male in the broader society, where he might be assumed to be part of the urban underclass and treated poorly.
When mothers discussed addressing concerns related to their daughters’ self-esteem, they often focused on the peer group management strategy. For Sharon, one of her reasons for joining a mothers’ group was to give her daughter a peer group. She explained that “part of [joining] was wanting her to have a strong sense of self and being prideful of who she was, but at the same time really being comfortable, being in really any environment. But feeling grounded or centered with people that were like her.” Sharon and other members of her mothers’ group also made efforts to enroll their daughters in activities together to ensure they were not the only black girls participating. Sharon believed that by providing her daughter with this race-, class-, and gender-specific peer group early in her life, she would have the emotional support to avoid insecurities over her self-worth and beauty. Indeed, she had been prompted to seek out such a group when her daughter was the only African American student in her preschool and began expressing a desire to have hair like the other girls. These mothers hoped that having a supportive group of peers from the same racial background would shield their daughters from the self-doubt and social isolation they often experienced during their own childhoods.
Mothers also described using two additional strategies—emotion management and image management—to help their sons manage the expression of their feelings and their physical demeanor. Although mothers primarily discussed using these strategies in relation to their sons, image management was, at times, discussed in relation to their daughters to ensure they were treated well. However, different stakes were implicated in the successful deployment of these strategies for their daughters versus their sons. For example, Karlyn engaged in something she called “prepping for life” with her son. She said,
I talk to [my son] constantly. We do scenarios and we talk about stuff. I’ll pose a situation, like, say, if you are ever kidnapped, what do you do? If the police ever pull you over, how do you need to react? So, we do scenarios for all of that; it’s just prepping for life.
It would not be unreasonable for a parent to instruct their child to view police officers as sources of help. What is striking about Karlyn’s examples is that she viewed child predators and police officers as equally dangerous to her son. She hoped that preparing her son for these scenarios would give him some agency in his response when he was confronted with these situations. Mothers enrolled their sons in activities such as yoga and karate, hoping they would learn to restrain their emotions and that this ability would translate to their interactions with teachers, police officers, peers, and the public.
Rebecca, a widow with one son, who also raised her nephew in his teenage years, described using image management when counseling her nephew about his clothing:
I tried to explain that to him because he didn’t understand. He said, “I am just wearing my hoodie.” “But baby, I understand what you are doing, and there is nothing wrong with that, but if you walk through the [poor, primarily African American, and high-crime] neighborhood near my school, we see something different.” You know, just having to protect him and trying to shelter him from unnecessary stress and trauma. . . . Is it fair? No. Is it reality? Yes.
Rebecca’s comments illustrate a parenting paradox experienced by the mothers in this research. Even as she challenged the double standards that she believed were used to evaluate her nephew’s behavior and appearance, as a practical matter, she felt compelled to educate him and her son on these different standards and encourage them to adhere to them for their own safety. Participants could not prevent negative interactions from happening, but they wanted to increase their sons’ chances of surviving them.
Mothers also recounted concerns over managing their daughters’ physical appearance. Kristen, married and the mother of one daughter, described the racial stigma her daughter might encounter based on her hairstyle:
I was trying to decide if I wanted to do cornrows, which I don’t have a problem with, but I think sometimes there is a stereotype that comes along, or can come along, with it. It was important to me to make sure that if I did it that it didn’t look [sigh] ghetto. I even discussed it with a few friends and it actually looks really cute. . . . I didn’t want people to assume that she was a certain type of child based on her hairstyle . . . bad . . . with parents that are kind of a little wild.
Kristen and other mothers believed that even a seemingly insignificant decision of styling their daughters’ hair in a way that was both convenient and common in the African American community could have consequences in the broader white mainstream. These mothers felt that cornrows could provoke negative assessments of their daughters’ character by teachers and peers.
Finally, mothers described scrutinizing the media entertainment and toys they exposed their children to, particularly their daughters. Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that most modern childcare experts advise parents to refrain from exposing their children to television until they are two years old and to then limit the amount thereafter. Steven P. Shelov and colleagues described research showing how exposure to television negatively impacts brain development and leads to childhood obesity.38 Absent from the litany of potential negative effects, however, was a worry voiced by many of my participants: How does exposure to televised images of African Americans impact their children’s racial self-esteem? Thus, they monitored and limited screen time for their children using a racial filter. Mothers also used media and toy management to expose their daughters to empowering images of African American women role models and to exclude negative images.
Karin talked about her plans to restrict her daughter’s screen time as a way of preserving her self-esteem as an African American girl. She did not want her daughter to grow up shaped by media images that portray African American women as having the “wrong” hair and skin color and being undesirable to men. She recounted that because her own parents limited her screen time, she never saw Lisa Turtle, the sole black character on the popular 1980s television show Saved by the Bell, go dateless season after season. Karin also believed the blow to her own self-esteem was less severe when a white girl in her summer camp told her that she looked like Nell