Black Mothers and Attachment Parenting

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Intensive Mothering ◽  
Intersectional Analysis ◽  
Attachment Parenting ◽  
Outstanding Work

This outstanding work examines black mothers' engagements with attachment parenting and shows how it both undermines and reflects neoliberalism. Unique in its intersectional analysis, it fills a gap in the literature, drawing on black feminist theorizing to examine intensive mothering practices and policies.

Black Mothers and Attachment Parenting

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Intensive Mothering ◽  
Intersectional Analysis ◽  
Attachment Parenting

Attachment parenting is an increasingly popular style of childrearing that emphasises natural activities such as extended breastfeeding, bedsharing and babywearing. Such parenting activities are framed as the key to addressing a variety of social ills. Parents choices are thus made deeply significant with the potential to guarantee the well-being of future societies. Examining black mothers' engagements with attachment parenting, the book shows the limitations of this neoliberal approach. Unique in its intersectional analysis of contemporary mothering ideologies, the book fills a gap in the literature on parenting culture studies, drawing on black feminist theorizing to analyse intensive mothering practices and policies.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
The State ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Attachment Parenting

This chapter introduces the attachment parenting (AP) phenomenon from the perspectives of black mothers. It reviews insights that the narratives of black mothers offer about the contemporary and particular experience of motherhood. It also analyzes AP journeys from the extreme practice of privileged white hippies to an increasingly accepted and influential dogma in the policies of the state and medical professionals. The chapter talks about the disruption of dominant construction of good mothering as the province of only white, middle-class women through the engagements of black mothers. It documents the diverse ways black women use AP to assert themselves as good mothers.

scholarly journals Formerly Incarcerated Black Mothers Matter Too: Resisting Social Constructions of Motherhood

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (4) ◽  
pp. 420-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Mitchell ◽  
Jaya B. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Large Urban Area ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Formerly Incarcerated ◽  
Critical Qualitative Research ◽  
Semistructured Interviews

Mass incarceration as a system of racialized and gendered social control has disproportionately impacted Black women, many of whom are mothers. Contrary to dominant social constructions of motherhood, these women employ their own strategies of mothering unique to their lived experiences. This study relies on interview data to understand Black women’s motherhood experiences post-incarceration. Drawing from five semistructured interviews of Black mothers across a large urban area in Texas, we argue for more critical, qualitative research of formerly incarcerated Black women, grounded in Black feminist theory (BFT).

scholarly journals Motherhood in Toni Morrison’s Sula and A Mercy: Rethinking (M)Othering

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Natália Fontes de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Black Mother ◽  
Feminist Theories ◽  
Biological Determinants

Motherhood tends to elicit strong feelings in women as well as a passionate rhetoric in our cultural discourse. Daughters have extensively been the focus of studies about mother-daughter bonds. Surprisingly, much less attention has been given to mother figures. By tracing the theme of motherhood in Sula (1973) and A Mercy (2009), I investigate how Toni Morrison rewrites the experiences of black mothers during slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Drawing mainly on feminist and black feminist theories, I explore, through literary analysis, how motherhood assumes various forms in both novels. The comparative analysis of Sula and A Mercy challenges distorted views commonly associated with the black mother and extends notions of mothering beyond biological determinants.

Reclaiming AP

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-168
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Womanhood ◽  
Good View ◽  
Attachment Parenting ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
Welfare Queen

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.

“Can You Hear Me Now?” Race, Motherhood, and the Politics of Being Heard

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Killen
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
National Convention ◽  
Equal Citizenship

AbstractMotherhood as a political identity grants women political legitimacy, enabling them to make rights-based claims. However, the efficacy and possibility of motherhood as a political identity is entangled in the sexist and racist narratives that are inextricable from white supremacy. In this article, I analyze the language used by the Mothers of the Movement (MothM) at the 2016 Democratic National Convention to demonstrate how the identities and experiences of Black women, specifically Black mothers, are co-opted and reproduced as deficient, criminal, and irrelevant, thereby limiting their ability to make claims as mothers and citizens. How, then, can marginalized mothers confront the tools of white supremacy, which portray them as “bad” mothers and “bad” citizens, to be heard within the dominant order without conforming to it? I contend that in appropriating the very discourses and spaces that seek to exclude and subjugate them, the MothM demonstrate the hypocrisy of the system of “good motherhood”—all the while reaffirming their status as equal citizens deserving of political recognition. Drawing from Black feminist thinkers, I demonstrate how motherhood and the rights that the MothM claim as mothers can be conceptualized as assertions of freedom and equal citizenship.

From Scientific Motherhood to Intensive Mothering

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Intensive Mothering ◽  
Attachment Parenting ◽  
Black Populations

This chapter examines contemporary political contexts that focuses on how attachment parenting (AP) matches with neoliberal politics and emphasizes the notion that society is 'post' race. It highlights both the specificities and similarities in Britain and Canada as they have similarly sized black populations and comparable histories of migration. It also offers unique and underexplored insights about contemporary blackness and motherhood in the two countries. The chapter looks at interviews with women and their shared characteristics that inform the analysis of their experiences. It describes scientific motherhood as the idea that mothering should be guided by scientific supervision and principles.

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