Mothering while Black : boundaries and burdens of middle-class parenthood / Dawn Marie Dow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dow, Dawn Marie, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American mothers--Social conditions.

African American mothers.

Parenting--Social aspects.

Parenting.

Middle class African Americans--Family relationships.

Middle class African Americans.

Intersectionality (Sociology).

Families.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xvi, 252 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Informed by news stories, such as those of the fatal shootings of Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin, and engaged with ongoing popular and academic discussions of work and family conflict, Mothering While Black makes significant contributions to the sociology of work and family, race and ethnicity, and gender and culture. Using the analytical lens of intersectionality, it demonstrates that the frameworks typically deployed in research on middle-class mothers and their families, which usually focus on the experiences of elite white mothers, do not adequately capture the experiences of African American middle-class and upper-middle-class mothers. Through sixty in-depth semistructured interviews with African American middle-class and upper-middle-class women, Mothering While Black distills the experiences of these contemporary mothers, revealing the cultural expectations and constraints that inform their approaches to parenting, work and family, and childcare. Through their accounts, this book demonstrates how race, class, and gender complicate their parenting concerns and strategies, and identifies three aspects of African American middle-class identity that study participants worked to foster in their children. Through this research, the book expands on and revises theories related to parenting, racial identity formation, and family and work conflict by complicating existing frameworks for understanding the cultural pushes and pulls that influence mothers' decision-making"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Creating racial safety and comfort

Border crossers

Border policers

Border transcenders

The market-family matrix

Racial histories of family and work

Alternative configuration of childrearing

Conclusion and implications.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Dow, Dawn Marie, author. Mothering while black

ISBN:

9780520300316

0520300319

9780520300323

0520300327

OCLC:

1050457183