This chapter highlights the terms ‘welfare queen’, ‘baby mother’, and ‘angry black woman’ as representations of black womanhood that dominate popular culture and frame public policy making. It mentions Patricia Hill Collins, who describes the terms as stereotypical representations of black womanhood that play a central role in the ideological justification of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. It also explains how the terms perpetuate black women's inferiority and pathology that are specifically linked to black women's failures as mothers. The chapter concentrates on the diverse experiences of several black mothers that provide a small glimpse into the complex ways that they went about developing a good view of motherhood that is inspired by attachment parenting (AP). It analyzes the black women's dislike of the label of AP, which reflected their belief that this style of childrearing was more natural and familial.
Faircloth, C. Militant Lactivism? Attachment Parenting and Intensive Motherhood in the UK and France, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2013. ISBN: 9780857457585
