A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movem A sweeping examination of the core issues of sexual politics, bell hook's new book Feminist Theory: from margin to center argues that the contemporary feminist movement must establish a new direction for the 1980s. Continuing the debates surrounding her controversial first book, Ain't I A Woman, bell hooks suggests that feminists have not succeeded in creating a mass movement against sexist oppression because the very foundation of women's liberation has, until now, not accounted for the complexity and diversity of female experience.

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Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. C. B. Stack. New York: Harper & Row. 1974. Carol Stack wrote one of the most powerful books of the last half century about African American families. The book's power derived from its focus on the stories and the lives of persons who were struggling to manage with limited resources and who had evolved seamless methods of survival and coping strategies. Stack was not content to view the problems of impoverished African American families from an outside perspective, as had been done in the past, but chose instead to present her work from the view of the participants. She presented a sensitive view of families that has not been duplicated to this day. Stack put specific emphasis on being accepted by the families before she began interviewing them. She and her son took a long time to be accepted by the families as they gradually became participants in the day-to-day lives of the "Flats." She was sensitive to the patterns of interactions among the networks of family and friends that would have been overlooked by almost any other researcher or method of observation. The book showed how a person from another racial and economic group was able, with skill, to become an intimate part of the experience and the lives of very poor families. Her anthropological approach stands in sharp contrast to the countless attempts of others to quickly go in and pull out slices of families' lives with a preexisting conceptual framework. The African American families of the Flats were presented as they were, not from a White academic theoretical perspective that was not based on reality. Stack made many observations that allowed one to see the intricate workings of the families that "outsiders" had not been documented before. Participants were allowed to make observations about their own families' patterns of interaction and to uncover truths of family functioning based on the reality of their lives. Important data on these second-generation urban dwellers are presented in such a calm manner that one could overlook their significance to the field. The impact of the economic pressures on the men and women in the African American community show how persons can have mainstream values but are prevented from achieving them because of the lack of employment and economic security within the community. In response to the reality, Stack found that African Americans have cooperated to produce an adaptive strategy of exchanging goods and trading resources, as well as offering child care or temporary fosterage. Kinship boundaries were more elastic than they were in more affluent families because these individuals immersed themselves in a domestic network of kinfolk and fictive kin, or those who became as kin. The participants in Stack's study moved around and had loyalties to more than one household grouping at a time, making their family networks unlike the "household" structures of most American families. These networks were diffused over several kin-based households that changed frequently. The usual method of arbitrarily specifying widely accepted definitions of the family as nuclear or matrilocal may block one from seeing the world as it exists in very poor communities. Stack's observations refuted the "culture of poverty" position that had seen African Americans as having no culture or totally negative qualities of family disorganization, personal disorganization, and fatalism. Unfortunately, too many current writings on African Americans still take these same positions. The views may be the result of ignorance, naivete, or complex levels of racism that insidiously make their way into present family literature. Stack continued to reflect on the poverty of the participants' situations. By doing so, she avoided another position that is all too common-assumption that all African American families are the same, regardless of their levels of poverty or affluence. …

All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community

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Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. Mary Patillo-McCoy. Chicago, 1L, and London, UK: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. xii. 276pp. (Cloth US$25.00; PaperUSS15.00)

Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Douglas S. Massey , Nancy A. Denton

Sociologists have identified a consistent set of hegemonic ideologies that influence women's work and family decisions. These ideologies assert that (a) a mother's primary responsibility is childrearing and a father's is breadwinning (Blair-Loy, 2003; Gerson, 1985; Hays, 1996; Smith, 1993; Uttal, 1996, 1999); (b) mothering should occur in a self-sufficient nuclear family (Hays, 1996; Macdonald, 2011; Smith, 1993); and (c) employment conflicts with motherhood (Blair-Loy, 2003; Damaske, 2011; Gerson, 1985; Hays, 1996; J. Williams, 2000). It is widely recognized that these ideologies are modern creations that emerged in White middleclass families during the Industrial Revolution (Glenn, Chang, & Forcey, 1994; Landry, 2000; J. Williams, 2000) and now occupy a dominant place in American society (Blair-Loy, 2003; Christopher, 2012; Hays, 1996; Segura, 1994). Despite this, the number of employed mothers has increased significantly, no doubt a partial result of the women's rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Mothers today are more likely to work outside the home (Cohany & Sok, 2007).An expansive body of research has examined why mothers engage in paid employment and how they experience combining employment and raising children. Scholars have also investigated how ideology influences mothers' family and work decisions (Bielby, 1992; Braun, Scott, & Alwin, 1994; Herring & Wilson-Sadberry, 1993; Hochschild & Machung, 1989; Hock, Gnezda, & McBride, 1984) and the meanings they attach to their decisions, particularly when they challenge hegemonic ideals (Hays, 1996; Hochschild, 1997; Hochschild & Machung, 1989; Macdonald, 2011; Uttal, 1996). Scholars have identified how mothers account for their decisions when they are unable or choose not to stay at home with their children. Some scholars present a conflict paradigm of work and family such that motherhood is considered incompatible with employment (Blair-Loy, 2003; Gerson, 1985; Hays, 1996; Smith, 1993; Stone, 2007; J. Williams, 2000). Because of this incompatibility, employed mothers, specifically those who are middle class, often experience conflict and must reframe their decision to work so that it symbolically conforms to these ideologies (Blair-Loy, 2003; Damaske, 2011; Gerson, 1985; Macdonald, 2011; Stone, 2007). Other scholars describe how some middle-class mothers actively reject these hegemonic ideologies and create their own (Christopher, 2012; Garey, 1999; Gerson, 2010; Uttal, 1996, 1999).This article adds to the existing scholarship by identifying an alternative mothering ideology, which I term integrated mothering, that African American middle- and upper-middle-class employed mothers feel accountable to regarding their family and work decisions. Research primarily examining the experiences of poor and working-class African American women and mothers describes how they reject dominant cultural depictions and understandings of their lives (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2009; Blum & Deussen, 1996; Collins, 2009; Hays, 2003). In general, study participants did not engage with hegemonic ideologies by actively rejecting them or by reframing their decisions to work outside of the home to symbolically conform to them. Participants' accounts suggest that they are influenced by different cultural expectations of motherhood from within their communities. These expectations include the assumption that mothers will work outside the home, be economically self-reliant, and have access to kin and community members to assist them with child care. These mothers did not feel compelled to justify their decisions in order for them to be socially palatable to others. These findings suggest how distinct mothering ideologies may differently influence how mothers experience and make sense of their family and work decisions.Conceptual FrameworkHegemonic Mothering IdeologiesScholars have argued that because women feel accountable to hegemonic mothering ideologies, such as the "standard North American family" (Smith, 1993), the "cult of domesticity" (J. …

Integrated Motherhood: Beyond Hegemonic Ideologies of Motherhood

Through 60 in-depth interviews with African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, this article examines how the controlling image of the “thug” influences the concerns these mothers have for their sons and how they parent their sons in light of those concerns. Participants were principally concerned with preventing their sons from being perceived as criminals, protecting their sons’ physical safety, and ensuring they did not enact the “thug,” a form of subordinate masculinity. Although this image is associated with strength and toughness, participants believed it made their sons vulnerable in various social contexts. They used four strategies to navigate the challenges they and their sons confronted related to the thug image. Two of these strategies—experience and environment management—were directed at managing characteristics of their sons’ regular social interactions—and two—image and emotion management—were directed at managing their sons’ appearance. By examining parenting practices, this ...

The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys: Navigating the Controlling Image of the “Thug”

This research analyzes how African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers understand their work and family decision making in relation to two controlling images—the Strong Black Woman (SBW) and the Welfare Queen—that they describe regularly confronting in their lives. In-depth interviews with 60 African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers reveal the strategies these mothers use to overcome assumptions that they are poor, single mothers on welfare or, alternatively, are self-reliant and resilient caregivers who do not need help. Although most interviewees distanced themselves from the image of the Welfare Queen, they had a range of responses to the SBW: Some invested in it, some resisted it, and some rejected it. This study shows how the controlling images of the SBW and the Welfare Queen influence the meanings African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers attach to their decisions related to work and family and create a sense of exclusion from white middle-class mothering co...

Negotiating “The Welfare Queen” and “The Strong Black Woman” African American Middle-Class Mothers’ Work and Family Perspectives

Scholars examining kin and community care have often sought to identify the relative importance of structural and cultural factors on the use and availability of these networks, but research has yielded unclear results in the case of child care. Cultural theories focus on how values, beliefs, and practices lead to differences in kin and community care; structural theories focus on how educational attainment, income, inherited power or inequality, and family structure lead to such differences. Using interviews with 60 African American middle- and upper-middle-class mothers, the author examines their preferences for kin and community members’ assistance in caring for their children. Although participants often had the resources to hire child care providers from the market, they also had access to, and preferred, kin and community networks of care. By examining participants’ accounts of their child care choices, the author identified four factors that influenced their orientations to kin: (1) participants’ e...

Caring for Them Like Family: How Structure and Culture Simultaneously Influence Contemporary African American Middle- and Upper-Middle-Class Mothers’ Kin and Community Child Care Choices

This introductory essay situates this special issue within the context of antiracism and social justice for family scholars. The editors underscore the political and social context that led the National Council on Family Relations' three flagship journals—Journal of Family Theory & Review (JFTR), Family Relations (FR), and Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF) to collectively invite submissions for separate special issues on Transformative Family Scholarship: Theory, Practice, and Research at the Intersection of Families, Race, and Social Justice. This special issue focuses on scholarship using cutting-edge theory, research, and practices to investigate racial injustice and confront white supremacy within the context of the family. The guest editors synthesize the dominant themes cross-cutting the 13 articles, including parenting, racial stratification, health and economic well-being, and racial identity. The guest editors explain how these articles contribute to a more robust analysis of structural racism within families. The introduction closes with an invitation to scholars doing scholarship using critical theoretical approaches to continue their efforts and consider the Journal of Marriage and Family as a potential publication outlet for their research. 

Dawn Marie Dow

Papers

Integrated Motherhood: Beyond Hegemonic Ideologies of Motherhood

The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys: Navigating the Controlling Image of the “Thug”

Negotiating “The Welfare Queen” and “The Strong Black Woman” African American Middle-Class Mothers’ Work and Family Perspectives

Caring for Them Like Family: How Structure and Culture Simultaneously Influence Contemporary African American Middle- and Upper-Middle-Class Mothers’ Kin and Community Child Care Choices

Transformative family scholarship: Introduction to the special issue