Mothering While Black. Dawn Marie Dow
popular depictions of African American mothers’ experiences focus on working-class and low-income mothers.13 In addition, with a few notable exceptions, this body of research often approaches African American families from a deficit perspective. It focuses on evaluating parenting behaviors or the negative impact of having lower-income parents on a child’s prospects rather than on what these parents want for their children. This research also focuses on class differences rather than on how race and gender complicate parenting approaches at different socioeconomic levels.
Christine’s comments illustrate how and why relying on white middle-class mothers’ experiences to stand in for all middle-class mothers’ experiences results in both unhelpful and misleading understandings of the challenges that different racial groups of middle-class mothers confront. Her identity as both African American and middle class were deeply implicated in Christine’s experiences and perspectives related to family, work, and parenting. These experiences, however, are often not the focus of existing research on middle-class families. Mothering While Black intervenes into these discussions by focusing on the parenting and work–family experiences and strategies of African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers and by demonstrating how these experiences and strategies are complicated by intersections of racial identity, class, and gender.
With this backdrop in mind, several questions animate my research. First, what parenting strategies do African American middle-class mothers use to raise middle-class sons and daughters in a racially unequal world? Second, how do these mothers make decisions and create strategies regarding work, family, and childcare? Third, with both of these questions in mind, what cultural, social, legal, and economic forces shape these strategies?
Through in-depth interviews with sixty middle- and upper-middle-class African American mothers, I examine these questions. I was consistent in the questions and topics I covered with each mother, but I also had some flexibility that permitted each mother to explore topics of her choosing. I conducted these interviews without assumptions about the societal expectations that would influence participants’ accounts. Participants were recruited through the use of modified snowball sampling techniques. Study announcements were sent via email to African American and predominately white professional women’s and mothers’ organizations. The study was also announced at a range of other civic, business, religious, and social organizations. After their participation in the study, respondents were asked to refer others as potential participants. All of the interviews were conducted in person at a location of each participant’s choosing. It is important to note that these interviews were conducted between 2009 and 2011. Barack Obama had become the first African American to be elected as the president of United States, and this may have influenced some mothers’ perspectives and outlooks regarding race and gender.
Through analyzing these mothers’ accounts, I revise existing theories and map out alternative theories related to motherhood, family, and parenting. In doing so, I identify additional factors that influence African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers’ decisions related to work, family, parenting, and childcare. I also explore the societal expectations against which these mothers justify their decisions and how they make those justifications.
Existing research often focuses on how differences in economic resources explain mothers’ decision-making.14 However, my interviewees’ accounts demonstrate how racial identity, class, and gender work in tandem to produce a different set of default expectations against which mothers must negotiate in their daily decisions. Using the analytical lens of intersectionality, Mothering While Black examines how the interplay of these intersections with other institutions across society has important theoretical and empirical implications for African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers’ beliefs, practices, experiences, and decision-making.15
As a middle-class African American woman and a mother, I share demographic characteristics with the participants of my study. I did not offer that I was a mother, but when asked, I answered honestly and then redirected the interview back to the respondent. Sharing these characteristics with my participants seemed to help build rapport and to create an environment in which people seemed willing to share the details of their lives. In general, respondents readily shared concerns about racial identity and racism and, at times, were more reticent about discussing class divisions or distinctions among African Americans. Despite the benefits of this “insider status,” I worked to ensure that I refrained from making assumptions about shared understandings. For a more detailed discussion of the methods, please see the appendix.
DOMINANT IDEOLOGIES OF MOTHERHOOD AND PARENTING
Christine’s account mentions the “white motherhood society” from which she felt excluded. In doing so, she was referencing two dominant ideologies, or frameworks, of motherhood and parenting and their related practices and expectations. Both ideologies are widespread in society and are the focus of discussions and critiques in family and work–life scholarship. The first ideology privileges economic resources and status in determining parenting beliefs and practices.16 The second ideology privileges the private sphere: the realm of homemaking and caregiving in the lives of “good” mothers.17 Indeed, scholars suggest that when mothers do not conform to the prescribed practices of these ideologies, they often feel compelled to explain their noncompliance.18 These two ideologies are described in more detail in the next two sections.
MIDDLE-CLASS PARENTING: CLASS TRUMPS RACE
Middle-class Americans are often envisioned as having access to a range of privileges and amenities, such as neighborhoods with low crime rates, increased personal safety, high-quality recreational resources, access to better schools, and greater occupational and residential opportunities. The first ideology of motherhood and parenting assumes that material resources and, specifically, class status determine parents’ approaches to raising their children and play the most significant roles in determining an individual’s life experiences and trajectory.19 Annette Lareau suggests that middle-class parents from different racial backgrounds share common concerns about their children’s life trajectories, a common outlook about what is best for their children, and a common approach to parenting their children and organizing family life.20 Children from these families lead highly scheduled lives that are filled with structured extracurricular activities, such as Little League, soccer, dance classes, and music lessons. These activities are aimed at enriching children’s education and helping them acquire specific cultural, economic, and social capital that will enable them to reproduce their parents’ middle-class status and successfully navigate middle-class lives as adults.21 These parents view educational settings as places that should make every effort to meet their children’s needs, and they encourage their children to adopt the same service-oriented view of these settings.22 However, this focus on class-reproduction strategies through material resources downplays other parts of parents’ identities that may influence parental decision-making or their efforts to influence a child’s racial or gender identity and expression. It also downplays the challenges that parents from different racial backgrounds may face as they attempt to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
HOW RACE AND GENDER MATTER FOR MIDDLE-CLASS PARENTING
Academic and popular depictions of middle-class mothers have largely focused on the experiences of white mothers and their aims for their children as adults.23 The works of Patricia Hill Collins; Suzanne Carothers; Katrina McDonald; and, more recently, Riché Barnes represent notable exceptions.24 Carothers examines how mothers who perceived themselves to be middle class taught their daughters the meaning of mothering and work.25 Collins’s scholarship draws on a variety of sources to examine the diverse standpoints of all black women and mothers on a range of issues.26 McDonald examines the historical bond of African American women across class groupings and how increasing class divisions are weakening those ties.27 Last, Barnes’s research examines African American middle-class women in Atlanta who have reduced their commitments to their careers to prioritize their commitments to their marriages.28
Despite these exceptions, scarce attention has been paid to the lives of middle- and upper-middle-class African American mothers.29 Yet these mothers often experience different social contexts and have different