Abstract
Mothering while Black takes the concepts of racial socialization and “the second shift” (Hochschild 2003) to new heights by arguing for an intersectional approach that illuminates the various approaches contemporary black mothers employ in rearing their children. Specifically, Dow teases out the various postures that busy black middle- (and upper-) class mothers take in working to raise children who are secure in their blackness and personally successful.
Mothering while Black is presented in two parts, both interlaced with rich, in-depth interview excerpts from her 60 San Francisco Bay Area respondents. Dow begins her first part by forming the foundation on which she later builds her typology of black mothering practices. This foundation amasses the common challenges that black mothers face in creating safety and comfort for their children in school, in their neighborhood, and in extracurricular contexts where “screening for racial intelligence” by whites is regularly practiced and particularized for girls and boys. Gendered racism is also implicated by the mothers of this study in the lack of physical safety for their sons and the lack of positive images of beauty for their daughters. Almost every aspect of the children’s healthy development seemed to require mothers to inculcate the valuable skill of “code switching” (74) in their children to help them avoid conflict within a particular community of people. And at home, black mothers monitored their children closely, especially in regard to their consuming media messages.
Dow follows this by very carefully explaining how different groups of black mothers draw from their own life experiences to find the best strategy for ensuring the safety and comfort they seek for their children. “Border Crossers” are those mothers who find it vital that their children live among or regularly interact with underprivileged blacks as a practice of navigating and respecting different kinds of habitus and of helping to lift other blacks out of their poor condition. “Border Policers” are more concerned that their children avoid crossing social-class borders where poor values and life decisions are said to lurk. Instead, they strongly encouraged their children to focus on interacting with like-minded middle-class black families. And “Border Transcenders” were those mothers who took on the challenge of defying racial categorizations and encouraging their children to exercise blackness in whatever way they saw fit. Mothers of biracial children were prominent within this group. Dow provides ample evidence of how mothers in each group came to embrace the one mothering perspective they did, and she never privileges one group’s strategy over the other in her discussion.
The second half of this book is titled “Beyond Separate Spheres and the Cult of Domesticity” and in many ways feels quite distinct from the first half. Part II takes on the ominous “market-family matrix,” defined by her as “the specific cultural, social, economic, structural, and ideological characteristics and configurations of the family and the market [that] produce a matrix in which mothers who work outside of the home experience either conflict or integration” (123). In essence, Dow argues that the traditional gendered divisions of labor do not match with the demands placed on black women nor with the cultural expectations of black women individually and collectively.
While again calling for an intersectional perspective, Dow also argues that “rather than explaining an exception to the assumed norm of white middle-class mothers and families, the findings from this research particularize the norm as something that has been produced by a distinctive set of circumstances not shared by all mothers and families” (194). Specifically, Dow finds plenty of cultural support for black mothers working outside of the home, particularly since they began their lives in America as full-time “employees” for slave masters.
Dow is extremely adept at patiently walking the reader through the intricacies of her claims and in substantiating her research methodology. This is particularly useful for students and lay people unfamiliar with theory and methods. She also makes it easy for black women and families to find themselves within her typology and the market-family matrix, which I believe will help establish Dow as a solid figure in the area of race, gender, and family studies. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether the two parts of this text make for a cohesive whole; I came away feeling that this text ultimately made a reasonable micro-macro connection and was a fresh department from the typical focus on disadvantaged mothers.