Mothering in the streets: Familial adaptation strategies of street‐identified Black American mothers
PMCID: PMC9698362
PMID: 36439403
Abstract
Abstract Objective Using components of the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response Model, Critical Race Feminism, and Sites of Resilience, this study explored how street‐identified Black American mothers engage in street life, while juggling the pressures of childrearing, family, and home life within a distressed, urban Black community. Background Street‐identified Black American mothers are vilified for their intersecting identities of being Black women who are experiencing poverty, and who may also be involved in illegal activity. Black mothers are disproportionately represented in the criminal legal system, but existing research has inadequately examined how street‐identified Black mothers “do” family in the confines of structural violence. Method We addressed this gap by analyzing interview data with 39 street‐identified Black American mothers ages 18 to 54. Data were collected using street participatory action research. Results We identified a typology of three adaptive mothering strategies employed by street‐identified Black women as they respond to and cope with violent structural conditions shaping their mothering: constrained mothering, racialized mothering, and aspirational mothering. Conclusions Findings suggested that these strategies were developed in response to an overarching carceral apparatus, of which these mothers were tasked with avoiding when possible and confronting when necessary. Their mothering strategies were shaped by a collective, Black American cultural identity and worldview, and the mothers possessed a unique way of perceiving the world as criminalized subjects with disproportionate proximity to the punitive state.
Full Text
Low‐income Black American mothers who engage in street life do so while juggling the pressures of childrearing, family, and home life in the inner city (Hitchens & Payne, 2017, Forthcoming; Payne, 2008, 2011). We use the term Black American to identify American Descendants of Slavery and enslaved Africans. This specific racial classification underscores that Black Americans have a distinctive, cultural lived experience from broader groups and other Black people (e.g., Black African immigrants or Caribbean immigrants). “Street life,” “the streets,” or a “street” identity is phenomenological language that speaks to the various modes of survival in distressed, urban Black communities (Payne, 2008, 2011). These phenomenological concepts have been used by those in low‐income Black spaces to demarcate a subjective, cultural lived experience and worldview (e.g., “I'm from the streets” or “I come from a street family”). This conceptual worldview makes reference to oneself, family, or network in relation to a context of struggle and challenging or inequitable living conditions.
To cope with or manage stressors within this context, Black women and girls who are “street‐identified” embody a racial‐, ethnic‐, sociocultural‐, and gender‐based ideological code and behavior centered on attaining personal, social, and economic survival (Hitchens & Payne, 2017, Forthcoming; Payne, 2008, 2011). This blended system is often referred to as “grinding,” or the “underground” work that street‐identified Black women and girls employ to secure financial stability and also “reflects the intensity and drudgery of work in their daily lives” (McCurn, 2018, p. 8). For Black women and girls in the streets, bonding activities include interpersonal acts (e.g., attending parties or social events), group solidarity (e.g., participating in social clubs or “hanging on the block”), and community organizing (e.g., back‐to‐school drives or rent parties; Hitchens, 2020). Illegal activities include a diverse array of “hustles” that are generally stigmatized by mainstream society and can be nonviolent (e.g., drug use or sale, prostitution, or shoplifting) or violent (e.g., fighting, robbery, or gang involvement; Fishman, 1995; Jones, 2010; Maher & Daly, 1996; Miller, 1998). Some Black mothers, for example, navigate street life by employing situational forms of violence primarily to protect themselves and their loved ones (Hunt & Joe‐Laidler, 2001) or engaging in crime to supplement low‐wage work within the formal economy (McCurn, 2018). Still, the vast majority of Black women and girls do not participate in what is formally considered “crime,” even within low‐income or urban neighborhoods, and Black Americans are not a monolithic racial or ethnic group (Gaston & Doherty, 2018). Thus, street‐identified Black women and girls comprise a “rare” minority and hidden subset of the broader Black population (Heckathorn, 1997). Street life captures the fluidity of behaviors and activities of this subset, unraveling how they organize meaning around feeling well, satisfied, or accomplished and how they choose to survive through adversity (Hitchens & Payne, 2017; Payne, 2008).
When street‐identified Black American women and girls become mothers, they are tasked with the challenge of managing adversity while also navigating parenthood. We define Black American mothering as the various, context‐specific maternal strategies that Black American mothers employ to support their families under State violence and other oppressive forces (Collins, 1994; Dow, 2019; Gurusami, 2019; Rodriguez, 2016). Black Americans are often victims of structural violence, or the invisible, disproportionate, and excessive harm of the poor and marginalized as a function of their disadvantage (Gilligan, 1996). Structural violence describes how structural institutions and systems actively prevent individuals, groups, and communities from meeting their basic needs (Galtung, 1969). Gilligan (1996) argued that poverty is the deadliest form of violence and that social actors have a vested interest in the subjugation of Black Americans by preventing them from “realizing their potentialities” (Galtung, 1969, p. 170) through policies, laws, and other inequities.
This context of structural violence helped us to examine the conditions faced by street‐identified Black families and the complex demands placed upon Black mothers in the streets. Collins (1986) argued that being poor, Black, and female offers a “clearer view” of the “interlocking nature of oppression,” (p. 519), and anti‐Black racist misogyny is a form of discrimination particular to Black womanhood and produces racialized and gendered harm (Bailey & Trudy, 2018). Black mothers are not only disproportionately under correctional control relative to other mothers, but they also experience criminalization upon release that can constrain their post‐incarceration parenting practices (Gurusami, 2017, 2019; McCorkel, 2013). Formerly incarcerated Black mothers experience more difficulty regaining custody of their children upon release, despite the fact that they are typically primary caregivers prior to incarceration (Mitchell & Davis, 2019). Black mothers in the streets face hyper‐surveillance under conditions of probation or parole, and also navigate “family criminalization” or the intertwining institutional scrutiny and punitive treatment of Black mothers and their children (Elliott & Reid, 2019).
Our work demonstrates how this criminalization influences the “stigmatized identities” and racialized and gendered experiences of street‐identified Black American mothers (Moloney et al., 2011). We also reimagine how they resiliently traverse the terrains of mothering in low‐income, high‐crime neighborhoods. Examining the experiences of street‐identified Black American mothers contributes to the field of family science by highlighting how they engaged and fostered familial relationships, and particularly their role as mothers in the context of broader societal systems that are racialized, gendered, and classed. Furthermore, our work highlights the strengths of street‐identified Black American mothers, seeking to build upon their abilities to be self‐sufficient and resilient and to promote healthy family functioning in the face of adversity.
Since the release of the Moynihan Report (Moynihan, 1965), Black families have been framed as a community in “crisis” and a “tangle of pathology” in academic and sociopolitical spheres; worse yet, the crisis has been perceived as self‐perpetuating. This report shaped the public lexicon about poor, single Black mothers as “the nation's newest boogeym[e]n,” “parasites,” “brood mares,” and “savage[s]” who could not be trusted to nurture their children or maintain a monogamous marriage (Orleck, 2005). Previous controlling images or stereotypes associated with Black women range from the mammy to the matriarch, the welfare queen, and the Jezebel (Collins, 1990). Friedman and Hitchens (2021) proposed that a new image, The Criminal, is a dominant schema that co‐produces and/or influences all other controlling images of Black women. The Criminal as a controlling image is enacted through criminal justice decision‐making and then inscribed onto the bodies of Black women and girls (Friedman & Hitchens, 2021). Anti‐Black rhetoric along with the advent of the War on Drugs solidified that the denigration of the Black family was owed, in large part, to the criminal negligence of poor Black mothers (Roberts, 1993).
Scholars on Black families have provided salient critiques of the culturally deviant models advanced in mainstream family literature (Burton et al., 2010; Few, 2007). These scholars noted that Moynihan's (1965) analysis was reflective of “white mainstream respectability” that placed blame on “absent” fathers and welfare “dependent” mothers (Orleck, 2005). Even more significantly, scholars demonstrated that poor Black mothers rarely see themselves through the racialized lens of Moynihan and others. For example, Orleck (2005) argued that single Black mothers resisted labels of being “unregenerate” and “burdensome” by white welfare caseworkers, and instead saw an “abundance of family values—not a lack of them” as instrumental in choosing to birth and raise their children (p. 84). Black mothers also nurture their children and cultivate community, while maintaining higher participation in the formal labor market than other mothers (McLoyd & Enchautegui‐de‐Jesús, 2005). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019) consistently finds that Black women ages 16 and older outpace other women in the workforce—an empirical finding that further debunks the myth of the lazy, “welfare queen” (Gilman, 2014). Burton et al. (2010) encouraged researchers in the field of family science to undertake more “robust understandings of racial socialization that move us toward truly understanding racialized systems effects in addition to race differences” (p. 455).
Many Black women have maintained individual and collective resilience even while they experience family provider role strain disproportionate to other women (Mendenhall et al., 2013). This resiliency is marked by ethnic‐specific strengths across the life course, including strong religiosity and extended family closeness (Mendenhall et al., 2013). Some scholars have continued to elucidate the intricacies of mothering in Black families, examining how parenting is a collective feature of the Black community (Gurusami, 2019). If children are not raised in a traditional two‐parent household, they are often raised in an extended family network of support in which kin and “fictive kin” help in child rearing (Collins, 1990).
Black American families are more complex and dynamic than is often captured in academic literature, especially for mothers in close proximity to the streets and/or criminal legal system. Street‐identified Black American mothers have conceptualized street life as a “site of resiliency,” or an adaptive way to secure opportunity for themselves and their families (Hitchens & Payne, 2017, Forthcoming; Payne, 2008). With this context in mind, we situated our qualitative findings in the family stress literature to examine how these mothers cope with the daily pressures of navigating family life while simultaneously enduring gendered racism, classism, and violent socioeconomic conditions. To better understand these interconnected familial and societal dynamics, we address the following research questions:
To understand the complex lived experiences of street‐identified Black American mothers, we employed critical theoretical frameworks on families that elucidate how adverse structural conditions influence their behaviors and parenting strategies. We drew on the Family Adaptation and Adjustment Response (FAAR) Model to situate this dynamic within a family system and understanding of family processes (Patterson, 2002). However, given the FAAR Model's racial and cultural limitations (Brown‐Baatjies et al., 2008), we expanded the Model with the addition of Critical Race Feminism (CRF; Wing, 1997) and Sites of Resilience (SOR; Payne, 2011). We employed CRF to create an intersectional lens of how multiple forms of oppression influence Black American mothering (Wing, 2000). We also utilized SOR to reconceptualize coping and notions of resilience, particularly the ideologies and behaviors considered “maladaptive” by the FAAR Model (Patterson, 2002; Payne, 2008, 2011). These theoretical additions provided support needed to understand the racial, ethnic, gender, and sociocultural worldviews of this stigmatized population of mothers who may be involved in illegal activities, fear confrontation with legal authorities, and/or experience various forms of economic or social precarity (Shaghaghi et al., 2011).
The FAAR Model constructs family resilience as the active process by which families adapt to risk exposure (Patterson, 2002). During the adjustment phase of the FAAR Model, families balance demands (i.e., stressors, strains, and hassles) that can co‐occur and accumulate over time, utilize capabilities (i.e., coping behaviors, resources, or support) to manage or alleviate demands, and find meaning (i.e., situational, family identity, and worldview) in how demands and capabilities shape their shared orientation (Patterson & Garwick, 1994). A family crisis occurs when demands on the family exceed their existing capabilities, creating an imbalance. During the adaptation phase, the family seeks to restore balance by reducing demands, acquiring new coping behaviors and resources, or changing their view of the crisis (Patterson, 1988).
While the FAAR Model is useful to identify how families grapple with the myriad crises that can disrupt households, it does so void of an intersectional analysis that recognizes that all crises are not made equally. CRF provides the latitude needed to center the marginalized experiences of street‐identified Black American mothers as individuals, while also contextualizing these experiences within the diverse Black family unit (Crenshaw, 1991; De Reus et al., 2005). Critical race feminists contend that there is no singular Black perspective or monolithic “Black experience,” and that theorizations on Black populations should include all that makes them rich and distinctive (Evans‐Winters & Esposito, 2010; Harris, 1990; Wing, 2000). Mothering in low‐income Black communities involves navigating a unique set of daily stressors and crises that emerge as a function of living in a “violent milieu” with multiple, interlocking forms of deprivation experienced at individual, group, and community levels (Jenkins, 2002, p. 30). As individuals, Black women continue to be violently victimized more frequently than other women, and this victimization often accrues over their lifetime (Sabri et al., 2016). Black women are murdered at higher rates than other women, and pregnant Black women are more than three times as likely to experience intimate partner homicide victimization as pregnant white and Hispanic women (Kivisto et al., 2021; Threadcraft & Miller, 2017). Black women are more likely to witness someone being shot, see a dead body, or hear about someone that they knew being killed or raped than other women (Isom Scott, 2018). CRF helped us to understand how these accumulated individual‐ and group‐based risks can influence Black mothering, while also shaping the adaptive well‐being of the entire Black communities.
The FAAR Model argues that “bonadaptation” (i.e., restoring balance) and “maladaptation” (i.e., poor adaptation) are two primary outcomes for families in crisis (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Patterson, 2002). As families adjust to accumulated demands, they rely on acquired resources and coping behaviors to address stressors (Patterson, 2002). Coping is traditionally theorized as “maladaptive” if the individuals or families do not effectively minimize stressors or engage in “avoidance” behaviors such as violence, drinking, or social isolation (Masten, 2001; McCubbin & Patterson, 1983; Scarpa & Haden, 2006). Yet, these traditional coping paradigms are insufficient to understand coping among Black populations, particularly in racially‐stressful situations (Plummer & Slane, 1996). Designed by and for white men and women, these paradigms often give value to Eurocentric ideals of self‐mastery, autonomy, and individualism while devaluing Afrocentric, collectivistic forms of coping which often include the local community (Banyard & Graham‐Bermann, 1993; Yeh et al., 2006). The model also reflects a relatively linear process in which families experience an imbalance, resulting in an adjustment, and then adaptation response to restore balance. However, the imbalance street‐identified Black American mothers face is constant due to the structural violence encountered within their communities and interactions with the State.
Moreover, the FAAR Model does not fully consider how nontraditional forms of coping are adaptive by fostering resilience in violent social conditions (Payne, 2011). SOR theory provided an alternative framing of how Black Americans engage in resilience within these conditions, by conceptualizing a street identity in terms of (a) phenomenology, (b) relational coping, (c) historical patterns/trends, (d) structural systems, and (e) incidents of social injustice (Payne, 2011). SOR argues that “criminal coping” is not only a major behavioral adaptation to chronic strain, but also that families who engage in street life do so to achieve restoration of the familial unit (Agnew, 2007; Payne, 2008, 2011). Street life becomes a “problem‐solving effort of the family system” (Brown‐Baatjies et al., 2008, p. 90) and street‐identified Black mothers who participate in illegal activities typically do so to confront the “strainful” effects of economic poverty and structural oppression (Agnew, 2007; Hitchens & Payne, 2017, Forthcoming; Payne, 2008, 2011). These conditions draw some Black women and girls to the viability of the streets and also increase their likelihood of using crime to achieve culturally defined goals and means of success (Agnew, 2007; Burt & Simons, 2015). Black mothers in the streets find psychological and physical spaces of resilience that operate concurrently to produce sites of strength at the individual, familial, and community levels (Hitchens, 2020; Hitchens & Payne, 2017; Payne, 2011). They manage chronic strain through bonding activities such as attending parties or frequenting bars, participating in social clubs such as motorcycle or car clubs, “hanging on the block” or street corner, and attending group gatherings with friends. They cultivate joy in times of sorrow by developing support groups for bereaved women and care for the children of mothers who fall on hard times (Hannays‐King et al., 2015; Hitchens, 2020). Survival and resilience are central to the Black American experience, and their traumatic history necessitates diverse forms of coping to combat their oppression (Sharpe, 2016).
The convergent mixed‐methods design was situated within a Street PAR methodology. PAR is a methodological framework where formal researchers select members of the target population to mutually design and implement a research program while engaging in activism within a local community (Baum et al., 2006). PAR actively includes members of the “researched” in the research process, including developing research questions and collecting and analyzing data (Baum et al., 2006). As an application of PAR, Street PAR is an epistemological orientation that primarily involves street‐identified populations in schools, correctional facilities, and local communities to engage in this participatory enterprise (Payne, 2008). Street PAR assumes that individuals who are actively or formerly involved in the streets are best placed to systematically examine the sociostructural experiences of an urban and/or street population. As such, Street PAR embraces the worldviews and lived experiences of this population, shifting the location of power and knowledge production (Baum et al., 2006).
Wilmington is the largest city in Delaware, and at the time of data collection (2017–2018), it had approximately 70,166 residents with 58% of the population Black and 36% of the population white (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019). Wilmington is a useful research site to examine the nexus of street life and mothering as the city has one of the highest per capita homicide rates for a city of its size (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 2009–2018; Jones, 2014). Labeled “MurderTown USA” and one of the “most dangerous small cities in America” (Jones, 2014), Wilmington has a violence problem that costs Delaware $611 million per year (Giffords Law Center, 2018).
Participants had to meet the following criteria: (1) self‐identify as Black or African American; (2) self‐identify as female; (3) live in a low‐income environment; (4) be between the ages of 16 to 54; (5) live in the Westside or Northside neighborhoods of Wilmington; and (6) be street‐identified, involved with crime, formerly incarcerated, or formerly involved in activities associated with the streets. Participants were recruited using snowball sampling, a technique generally used to collect data from fringe, sparse, and/or sensitive populations (Shaghaghi et al., 2011). Participants who met the inclusion criteria were identified through the Street PAR Associates' social networks. The Associates were 11 street‐identified Black men who lived in Wilmington and were members of a previous Street PAR project. The Associates provided contact information for those who met the study criteria. The first author (Co‐Project Director) and second author (Co‐Investigator) reached out to interview the girls and women who the Associates identified and expanded the sample by asking those who participated if they knew additional individuals who fit the criteria.
A total of 50 street‐identified Black American girls and women were interviewed, of which 39 (78%) identified as mothers. At the time of the interview, 20 were custodial mothers (i.e., always had custody from birth), 2 were noncustodial mothers (i.e., never had custody from birth), and 17 had periods throughout their lives of being custodial and noncustodial mothers. Twelve of the women were also grandmothers (see Table 1).
For this analysis, we drew from a variety of interview questions such as: Can Black women be in the streets but still be a provider or protector? We ensured that the themes developed typified the most common patterns in the mother's accounts of their experiences and perspectives. These themes included resilience, motherhood, parenting strategies, community conditions, and family composition and structure. Grounded theory methods allowed for our data collection and analysis to inform one another through an iterative process of collecting, coding, comparing, reflecting, and creating themes (Charmaz, 2011). We developed a social justice inquiry by rejecting objectivity, emphasizing reflexivity, and developing themes that were sensitive to the nexus of power, privilege, and oppression (Charmaz, 2011). Coding proceeded in multiple stages to reduce the data into manageable, meaningful categories. At each stage, transcribed text was constantly compared and linked within and across interviews to develop meaning and relevance. Coding began with open coding, which included listening to and reading transcripts, coding the data line by line, selecting meaningful segments of the text, and labeling these segments into codes. We each open coded individually and then we met to discuss broad codes before moving forward. Focused coding followed and included further analyzing the codes derived from open coding. Focused coding also involved carefully reducing the number of codes by merging relevant codes and deleting codes that were not germane to the study. Followed by axial coding, we constructed linkages between codes to develop conceptual themes.
Black mothering among women in the streets involves a tightrope of stress and resilience. On this tenuous ground, street‐identified mothers use inventive strategies to juggle the precarity of living in violent social conditions while raising children, families, and communities. This precarity is most visible when examining how they negotiate multiple familial stressors in distressed ecological contexts with limited resources at their disposal. Street‐identified Black American mothers rationalize the duality of street life and motherhood by conceptualizing their street involvement in terms of survival—a mechanism to minimize, cope with, or alleviate complex forms of oppression. They learn to adapt to adverse conditions using a creative repertoire or “tool kit” that is shaped by their cultural habits, skills, and styles structuring their choices, behaviors, and decision‐making (Burt & Simons, 2015; Swidler, 1986). This repertoire includes using three types of fluid mothering strategies: (1) constrained mothering, (2) racialized mothering, and (3) aspirational mothering. Their mothering strategies are shaped by a collective, Black American cultural identity and worldview with a unique way of perceiving the world as criminalized subjects with disproportionate proximity to the punitive State.
Black American mothers in the streets are compelled to contend with a myriad of stressors that complicate mothering, including living within a context of economic deprivation. Constrained mothering denotes how street‐identified Black American mothers navigated the margins of blocked socioeconomic opportunity by recalibrating their parenting strategies given the limited resources jeopardizing their ability to provide for and nurture their families. This context of economic hardship is emblematic of structural violence and can also be understood as “absolute” poverty or disadvantage, wherein individuals, families, or communities do not have the minimal level of resources needed for basic survival (Ladin, 2014). The mothers in our sample knew these hardships intimately, as most were either unemployed (n = 16) or were working in the low‐wage, part‐time sector (n = 15), and most lived in low‐income, multi‐family, or unstable housing (n = 24). While the women did not explicitly name policies enforced upon them, they did identify how various social policies (e.g., welfare or housing) served as stressors that shaped their mothering and contributed to their street involvement. Street‐identified Black American mothers rationalized the duality of street life and motherhood through an iterative assessment of individual and familial needs against the risks associated with satisfying those needs.
Housing insecurity frequently surfaced as a family stressor that contributed to the mother's use of constrained mothering to achieve stability for their families. Women spoke about living in homes where the “refrigerator is empty,” the “stove is messed up,” and living with “mice,” “roaches,” and other pests. Other women discussed crowded dynamics of “15 people” (Marshieka, 24) cramped into small apartments or street‐identified youth who “might be sleeping on the floor, air mattress, or whatever” (Kayla, 28). Evelyn (42) admitted that much of these “blended” family dynamics exist because poor families simply “can't afford to live alone.” And she's right—up until 2019, Delaware's minimum wage was $8.75, meaning a renter needed to work “100 hours, or 2.5 full time jobs, to afford the Delaware Fair Market Rent of $1,142 for a two‐bedroom unit” (Housing Alliance Delaware, 2019). Evelyn (42) revealed her own struggles with finding affordable housing for her and her children: “I haven't slept in my own bed since 2006. I've been on people's couches ever since.”
The mothers' second‐class positioning within a stratified labor market affected how they perceived their marginalized status and participation in crime (Crutchfield, 2014). Constrained mothering emerged as they saw involvement in illegal activity as a practical response to economic deprivation, given the lack of opportunity to attain livable wages within the labor market. Joy (37) explained how economic deprivation affects entire generations of families: “If you're raised in poverty, you don't have the income. … mom don't have money, family don't have money. So, you go to whatever you can do on the street… selling whatever you can sell just to make it.” Basheera (46) likened the desperate confines of poverty experienced by low‐income Black Americans as “trapping an animal in a corner. Eventually, the animal gonna come out fighting, doing whatever it needs to do to get where it needs to be.” Street life became a practical way to escape the vulnerability of concentrated disadvantage, and to provide basic needs for their families, even if stability was temporary or led to negative consequences for themselves or their children.
Tosha H. (47) described how engaging in street life (i.e., theft or violence) can be a site of resilience—a way to achieve personal, social, and economic survival (Payne, 2008, 2011). The demands of providing for their families in these constrained contexts, coupled with the capabilities available to the mothers, influenced their involvement in the streets to restore balance and survive—a function of their adaptation and adjustment.
Constrained mothering demonstrates the adaptive and inventive strategies street‐identified Black American mothers used to provide for their families while concurrently managing an enduring context of economic deprivation. Their mothering practices were also shaped by an embodied carcerality (Friedman & Hitchens, 2021) or the production of racialized, carceral subjects through reifying one's physical representation as synonymous with a deviant object. These situational and contextual constraints also shaped their coping behaviors. In the next section, we illuminate how racialized mothering is enacted in response to the criminalization of Black families, disproportionately through contact with an oppressive carceral apparatus.
Racialized mothering refers to how street‐identified Black American mothers reconciled their familial relationship to the carceral apparatus as criminalized subjects and their adaptation to the racial dynamics embedded in their interactions with the criminal legal system. Race and racism continued to be central organizing principles that not only shaped the life chances of these mothers, but also structured their parenting practices and decision‐making. They were called on to raise grandchildren when drug addiction removed their daughters from the home, sent money on the books of their child's father in prison, and prayed for their sons who were shot while hanging on the block. Moreover, some of the mothers (n = 12) spent time in prison themselves, and half of the mothers (n = 19) experienced periods of noncustodial parenting due to incarceration, drug addiction, or other forms of street life. These multiple, overlapping identities can be understood as the “afterlives of slavery” or the continued suffering through truncated quality of life that is unique to the experiences of Black American descendants of the Slave South (Sharpe, 2016). Street‐identified Black American mothers shouldered the uneven burdens of care and emotional trauma as they not only felt the immense toll of mass incarceration when their loved ones were sentenced to prison, but also navigated their own involvement as criminalized subjects (Hitchens, 2020; Hitchens & Payne, Forthcoming). Racialized mothering revealed their strategies to survive the stress of the carceral state and the everyday state‐sanctioned violence pervasive in their communities, anchored by the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.
Seventeen of the mothers spoke of their experiences with either mothering children while incarcerated, mothering children who were incarcerated, or mothering children entangled in the carceral apparatus as juveniles on probation or having frequent police contact. Marshieka (24) and Martai (32) were both incarcerated in Baylor Women's Correctional Institution (BWCI) in Delaware for assault and drug possession, respectively. BWCI is a small women's prison that houses both pretrial detainees and those serving sentences, and most serve less than 1‐year sentences for nonviolent crimes (Delaware Department of Corrections, 2019). Both mothers illustrated the revolving door of incarceration among Black women from their neighborhoods. Marshieka (24) was incarcerated with her aunt who “[has been to jail] plenty of times. … we was in jail together, she got out, and she went right back in. She's in there now.” Martai (32) said both her stints in BWCI resembled a “family reunion”:
In moments of vulnerability, formerly incarcerated mothers revealed how difficult it was to manage the lives of their children while “doing their time” in a system that felt cruel and unforgiving (Garcia‐Hallett, 2019). Lisa H. (37) lamented that being sentenced for robbery was “hell … because [she] missed [her] babies.” Lakeira (23) was forced to leave behind two young sons and remembered anxiously wondering about their well‐being: “Do my kids really remember me? Because you know, kids, they start to forget after a while. How are my kids? Are they being treated good? Are they eating enough? Are they bathed?” Lakeira was forced to wonder about her children as she described the prison environment where “they had us locked in a room for some petty stuff,” leaving her unable to call and talk to her children. When she tried other forms of communication, like sending letters, her letters were often never sent to her children, but rather read by prison guards and returned back to her due to what she had written to them. She said: “I used to be so over it. It's not somewhere anybody want to be. … I was being strong about it for a minute, but I actually got to a point where I had to physically fight somebody in there.” Martai (32) actually gave birth to her son while in prison and remembered being shackled during labor, with a leering guard at her side. She said she will never forget the trauma of being forced to leave her newborn at the hospital and said she began to lash out aggressively in prison:
Aspirational mothering refers to the cognitive and emotional forms of survival street‐identified Black American mothers employ to cope with acute and chronic stressors that threaten their families. Building from Yosso's (2005) identification of various forms of capital, namely, aspirational capital—or the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers—aspirational mothering is another strategy employed to counter, and/or restore balance under violent structural conditions. Aspirational mothering emerged as these mothers made sense of their intersectional standing in society by altering their cognitive responses to stressors. They adjusted their mindsets and how they mentally and emotionally dealt with stressors by maintaining their hopes, dreams, optimisms, and aspirations to be self‐reliant and independent for their children's well‐being and safety. They transmitted their capabilities to their children by embodying strength not only as mothers, but also as Black women. We argue that Black mothering under the State is—in and of itself—a site of resilience that requires malleability against these pressures and structural conditions. Furthermore, while the characteristics of resilience enacted by the mothers overlap with the previous typologies described, we provide a distinct category here to outline the cognitive and mental shifts that mother's use, a practical adjustment they made as they sought to restore balance for their families.
Our work illuminates the complex SOR embodied by mothers who access available capabilities such as physical aggression or mental toughness to survive in oppressive conditions, particularly when those conditions are considered unjust or high in magnitude (Agnew, 2007). It is through these frameworks that we complicate traditional understandings of families at the margins and unravel how street‐identified Black American mothers navigate the precarity of living in violent social conditions, seeking to achieve balance while raising and caring for children and families. The typologies described are generated as part of the mother's street identity and should not be understood as poor adaptive responses. Constrained, racialized, and aspirational mothering are strategies that support the mothers' capacities in balancing the continual demands imposed upon them by society. Moreover, the process street‐identified Black mothers engage in was nonlinear. In other words, their adjustment and adaptation were a constant ebb and flow of balancing demands and capabilities, shaping how they cope with adverse sociostructural conditions. Their street identity served as the anchor or common thread within each typology as they strived to meet the demands placed upon them.
The FAAR Model illuminated the daily hassles of navigating multiple stressors and challenges that affect families. CRF highlighted the racialized assumptions embedded in policies, specifically policies about Black “welfare queens” who abuse the system or buy “steak and lobster” with their food stamps rather than food to “stretch” for their children (Landsbaum, 2016). These rigid policies aid in keeping the mothers dependent on welfare assistance while also criminalizing their behaviors within that system—a system that is inherently racialized. The less popular truth is that many Black mothers in the streets use strategies (i.e., constrained and racialized mothering) as mechanisms to scrape by in a system not designed to meet their basic needs. Rightly or wrongly, the $1000 profit gained from illegally “flipping” welfare payments, for example, provides little financial security for these mothers. They grapple with this ongoing uncertainty, stretching themselves to the limits to provide for themselves and their families. The incorporation of SOR alongside FAAR and CRF acknowledges that Black mother's street identity serves as an adaptive mechanism of continuous adjustment in their efforts to restore balance in their lives and those of their families. When applied together, these models allowed for a more comprehensive examination of the processes by which street‐identified Black mothers seek to restore familial balance.
This study also has implications for how we theorize about the impact of surveillance and criminalization on Black mothering. As discussed by the mothers, too many women face the threat of not only incarceration, but also the fracturing of mother–child bonds. Roberts (2020) recognized that child removal from “protective” agencies (such as DFS) are an “integral part of the U.S. carceral regime” (p. 3). Removal often involved perceived neglect stemming from poverty, with punitive solutions that rarely addressed the structural causes of the problems Black families face (Gurusami, 2019). In overpoliced communities like Wilmington, low‐income Black mothers often contend with “nonnormative” events (Patterson, 1988) of violence and their children being incarcerated (Jones, 2014). While mothers tried to keep their children away from harm, they had to adjust and adapt by making sense of the “unexplainable” (Patterson, 2002). Street‐identified Black American mothers employed racialized mothering as a strategy to adjust to the racial dynamics embedded in their interactions with the carceral apparatus. Their use of racialized mothering demonstrates the labor needed to navigate motherhood as criminalized subjects. Black mothers in the streets also sought to restore the balance of their family demands by adjusting their perspective and outlook. Their use of aspirational mothering allowed them to hold a future orientation and hope for their children's reentry, while highlighting their sense‐making of the social forces their children must negotiate upon their return from prison.
Future scholarship might consider how to reframe dominant narratives of street‐identified Black American mothers and integrate frameworks that illustrate their strengths and mechanisms of resilience. Family theories such as the FAAR Model can be expanded to contextualize the racial, ethnic, sociocultural, and gendered experiences and worldviews of this population. Family scientists must not underestimate the power of racialized and gendered systems that sustain poor, inequitable, and violent socio‐structural conditions that continually harm Black mothers and their families. Furthermore, we must continue to complicate narratives of the “strong Black woman” archetype (Beauboeuf‐Lafontant, 2009). Just because women are able to demonstrate resilience in the face of extreme adversity does not mean it is a just burden. To quell the intersectional forms of violence perpetrated against Black mothers, structural interventions are needed, including fair housing wages, creating a child welfare system that does not function as an apparatus of the carceral state, and programs and policies that center the voices and experiential knowledge of street‐identified Black American mothers. Each of these interventions can alleviate the stressors that shape gendered and racialized pathways into street life for Black American mothers while enhancing their efforts to restore balance and provide for their families.
Sections
"[{\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0037\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"Low\\u2010income Black American mothers who engage in street life do so while juggling the pressures of childrearing, family, and home life in the inner city (Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017, Forthcoming; Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). We use the term Black American to identify American Descendants of Slavery and enslaved Africans. This specific racial classification underscores that Black Americans have a distinctive, cultural lived experience from broader groups and other Black people (e.g., Black African immigrants or Caribbean immigrants). \\u201cStreet life,\\u201d \\u201cthe streets,\\u201d or a \\u201cstreet\\u201d identity is phenomenological language that speaks to the various modes of survival in distressed, urban Black communities (Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). These phenomenological concepts have been used by those in low\\u2010income Black spaces to demarcate a subjective, cultural lived experience and worldview (e.g., \\u201cI'm from the streets\\u201d or \\u201cI come from a street family\\u201d). This conceptual worldview makes reference to oneself, family, or network in relation to a context of struggle and challenging or inequitable living conditions.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0037\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0050\", \"jomf12848-bib-0035\", \"jomf12848-bib-0022\", \"jomf12848-bib-0043\", \"jomf12848-bib-0046\", \"jomf12848-bib-0053\", \"jomf12848-bib-0039\", \"jomf12848-bib-0050\", \"jomf12848-bib-0026\", \"jomf12848-bib-0034\", \"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"To cope with or manage stressors within this context, Black women and girls who are \\u201cstreet\\u2010identified\\u201d embody a racial\\u2010, ethnic\\u2010, sociocultural\\u2010, and gender\\u2010based ideological code and behavior centered on attaining personal, social, and economic survival (Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017, Forthcoming; Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). This blended system is often referred to as \\u201cgrinding,\\u201d or the \\u201cunderground\\u201d work that street\\u2010identified Black women and girls employ to secure financial stability and also \\u201creflects the intensity and drudgery of work in their daily lives\\u201d (McCurn,\\u00a02018, p. 8). For Black women and girls in the streets, bonding activities include interpersonal acts (e.g., attending parties or social events), group solidarity (e.g., participating in social clubs or \\u201changing on the block\\u201d), and community organizing (e.g., back\\u2010to\\u2010school drives or rent parties; Hitchens,\\u00a02020). Illegal activities include a diverse array of \\u201chustles\\u201d that are generally stigmatized by mainstream society and can be nonviolent (e.g., drug use or sale, prostitution, or shoplifting) or violent (e.g., fighting, robbery, or gang involvement; Fishman,\\u00a01995; Jones,\\u00a02010; Maher & Daly,\\u00a01996; Miller,\\u00a01998). Some Black mothers, for example, navigate street life by employing situational forms of violence primarily to protect themselves and their loved ones (Hunt & Joe\\u2010Laidler,\\u00a02001) or engaging in crime to supplement low\\u2010wage work within the formal economy (McCurn,\\u00a02018). Still, the vast majority of Black women and girls do not participate in what is formally considered \\u201ccrime,\\u201d even within low\\u2010income or urban neighborhoods, and Black Americans are not a monolithic racial or ethnic group (Gaston & Doherty,\\u00a02018). Thus, street\\u2010identified Black women and girls comprise a \\u201crare\\u201d minority and hidden subset of the broader Black population (Heckathorn,\\u00a01997). Street life captures the fluidity of behaviors and activities of this subset, unraveling how they organize meaning around feeling well, satisfied, or accomplished and how they choose to survive through adversity (Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017; Payne,\\u00a02008).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0012\", \"jomf12848-bib-0017\", \"jomf12848-bib-0031\", \"jomf12848-bib-0066\", \"jomf12848-bib-0028\", \"jomf12848-bib-0024\", \"jomf12848-bib-0028\", \"jomf12848-bib-0024\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"When street\\u2010identified Black American women and girls become mothers, they are tasked with the challenge of managing adversity while also navigating parenthood. We define Black American mothering as the various, context\\u2010specific maternal strategies that Black American mothers employ to support their families under State violence and other oppressive forces (Collins,\\u00a01994; Dow,\\u00a02019; Gurusami,\\u00a02019; Rodriguez,\\u00a02016). Black Americans are often victims of structural violence, or the invisible, disproportionate, and excessive harm of the poor and marginalized as a function of their disadvantage (Gilligan,\\u00a01996). Structural violence describes how structural institutions and systems actively prevent individuals, groups, and communities from meeting their basic needs (Galtung,\\u00a01969). Gilligan\\u00a0(1996) argued that poverty is the deadliest form of violence and that social actors have a vested interest in the subjugation of Black Americans by preventing them from \\u201crealizing their potentialities\\u201d (Galtung,\\u00a01969, p. 170) through policies, laws, and other inequities.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0010\", \"jomf12848-bib-0002\", \"jomf12848-bib-0030\", \"jomf12848-bib-0031\", \"jomf12848-bib-0048\", \"jomf12848-bib-0054\", \"jomf12848-bib-0018\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"This context of structural violence helped us to examine the conditions faced by street\\u2010identified Black families and the complex demands placed upon Black mothers in the streets. Collins\\u00a0(1986) argued that being poor, Black, and female offers a \\u201cclearer view\\u201d of the \\u201cinterlocking nature of oppression,\\u201d (p. 519), and anti\\u2010Black racist misogyny is a form of discrimination particular to Black womanhood and produces racialized and gendered harm (Bailey & Trudy,\\u00a02018). Black mothers are not only disproportionately under correctional control relative to other mothers, but they also experience criminalization upon release that can constrain their post\\u2010incarceration parenting practices (Gurusami,\\u00a02017, 2019; McCorkel,\\u00a02013). Formerly incarcerated Black mothers experience more difficulty regaining custody of their children upon release, despite the fact that they are typically primary caregivers prior to incarceration (Mitchell & Davis,\\u00a02019). Black mothers in the streets face hyper\\u2010surveillance under conditions of probation or parole, and also navigate \\u201cfamily criminalization\\u201d or the intertwining institutional scrutiny and punitive treatment of Black mothers and their children (Elliott & Reid,\\u00a02019).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0055\"], \"section\": \"\", \"text\": \"Our work demonstrates how this criminalization influences the \\u201cstigmatized identities\\u201d and racialized and gendered experiences of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers (Moloney et al.,\\u00a02011). We also reimagine how they resiliently traverse the terrains of mothering in low\\u2010income, high\\u2010crime neighborhoods. Examining the experiences of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers contributes to the field of family science by highlighting how they engaged and fostered familial relationships, and particularly their role as mothers in the context of broader societal systems that are racialized, gendered, and classed. Furthermore, our work highlights the strengths of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers, seeking to build upon their abilities to be self\\u2010sufficient and resilient and to promote healthy family functioning in the face of adversity.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0056\", \"jomf12848-bib-0057\", \"jomf12848-bib-0011\", \"jomf12848-bib-0023\", \"jomf12848-bib-0023\", \"jomf12848-bib-0064\"], \"section\": \"STIGMATIZED IDENTITIES OF BLACK AMERICAN MOTHERS IN THE STREETS\", \"text\": \"Since the release of the Moynihan Report (Moynihan,\\u00a01965), Black families have been framed as a community in \\u201ccrisis\\u201d and a \\u201ctangle of pathology\\u201d in academic and sociopolitical spheres; worse yet, the crisis has been perceived as self\\u2010perpetuating. This report shaped the public lexicon about poor, single Black mothers as \\u201cthe nation's newest boogeym[e]n,\\u201d \\u201cparasites,\\u201d \\u201cbrood mares,\\u201d and \\u201csavage[s]\\u201d who could not be trusted to nurture their children or maintain a monogamous marriage (Orleck,\\u00a02005). Previous controlling images or stereotypes associated with Black women range from the mammy to the matriarch, the welfare queen, and the Jezebel (Collins,\\u00a01990). Friedman and Hitchens\\u00a0(2021) proposed that a new image, The Criminal, is a dominant schema that co\\u2010produces and/or influences all other controlling images of Black women. The Criminal as a controlling image is enacted through criminal justice decision\\u2010making and then inscribed onto the bodies of Black women and girls (Friedman & Hitchens,\\u00a02021). Anti\\u2010Black rhetoric along with the advent of the War on Drugs solidified that the denigration of the Black family was owed, in large part, to the criminal negligence of poor Black mothers (Roberts,\\u00a01993).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0008\", \"jomf12848-bib-0021\", \"jomf12848-bib-0056\", \"jomf12848-bib-0057\", \"jomf12848-bib-0057\", \"jomf12848-bib-0051\", \"jomf12848-bib-0073\", \"jomf12848-bib-0029\", \"jomf12848-bib-0008\"], \"section\": \"STIGMATIZED IDENTITIES OF BLACK AMERICAN MOTHERS IN THE STREETS\", \"text\": \"Scholars on Black families have provided salient critiques of the culturally deviant models advanced in mainstream family literature (Burton et al.,\\u00a02010; Few,\\u00a02007). These scholars noted that Moynihan's\\u00a0(1965) analysis was reflective of \\u201cwhite mainstream respectability\\u201d that placed blame on \\u201cabsent\\u201d fathers and welfare \\u201cdependent\\u201d mothers (Orleck,\\u00a02005). Even more significantly, scholars demonstrated that poor Black mothers rarely see themselves through the racialized lens of Moynihan and others. For example, Orleck\\u00a0(2005) argued that single Black mothers resisted labels of being \\u201cunregenerate\\u201d and \\u201cburdensome\\u201d by white welfare caseworkers, and instead saw an \\u201cabundance of family values\\u2014not a lack of them\\u201d as instrumental in choosing to birth and raise their children (p. 84). Black mothers also nurture their children and cultivate community, while maintaining higher participation in the formal labor market than other mothers (McLoyd & Enchautegui\\u2010de\\u2010Jes\\u00fas,\\u00a02005). The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics\\u00a0(2019) consistently finds that Black women ages 16 and older outpace other women in the workforce\\u2014an empirical finding that further debunks the myth of the lazy, \\u201cwelfare queen\\u201d (Gilman,\\u00a02014). Burton et al.\\u00a0(2010) encouraged researchers in the field of family science to undertake more \\u201crobust understandings of racial socialization that move us toward truly understanding racialized systems effects in addition to race differences\\u201d (p. 455).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0052\", \"jomf12848-bib-0052\", \"jomf12848-bib-0031\", \"jomf12848-bib-0011\"], \"section\": \"STIGMATIZED IDENTITIES OF BLACK AMERICAN MOTHERS IN THE STREETS\", \"text\": \"Many Black women have maintained individual and collective resilience even while they experience family provider role strain disproportionate to other women (Mendenhall et al.,\\u00a02013). This resiliency is marked by ethnic\\u2010specific strengths across the life course, including strong religiosity and extended family closeness (Mendenhall et al.,\\u00a02013). Some scholars have continued to elucidate the intricacies of mothering in Black families, examining how parenting is a collective feature of the Black community (Gurusami,\\u00a02019). If children are not raised in a traditional two\\u2010parent household, they are often raised in an extended family network of support in which kin and \\u201cfictive kin\\u201d help in child rearing (Collins,\\u00a01990).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0037\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\"], \"section\": \"STIGMATIZED IDENTITIES OF BLACK AMERICAN MOTHERS IN THE STREETS\", \"text\": \"Black American families are more complex and dynamic than is often captured in academic literature, especially for mothers in close proximity to the streets and/or criminal legal system. Street\\u2010identified Black American mothers have conceptualized street life as a \\u201csite of resiliency,\\u201d or an adaptive way to secure opportunity for themselves and their families (Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017, Forthcoming; Payne,\\u00a02008). With this context in mind, we situated our qualitative findings in the family stress literature to examine how these mothers cope with the daily pressures of navigating family life while simultaneously enduring gendered racism, classism, and violent socioeconomic conditions. To better understand these interconnected familial and societal dynamics, we address the following research questions:\\n\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0059\", \"jomf12848-bib-0006\", \"jomf12848-bib-0075\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0076\", \"jomf12848-bib-0059\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0069\"], \"section\": \"THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS\", \"text\": \"To understand the complex lived experiences of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers, we employed critical theoretical frameworks on families that elucidate how adverse structural conditions influence their behaviors and parenting strategies. We drew on the Family Adaptation and Adjustment Response (FAAR) Model to situate this dynamic within a family system and understanding of family processes (Patterson,\\u00a02002). However, given the FAAR Model's racial and cultural limitations (Brown\\u2010Baatjies et al.,\\u00a02008), we expanded the Model with the addition of Critical Race Feminism (CRF; Wing,\\u00a01997) and Sites of Resilience (SOR; Payne,\\u00a02011). We employed CRF to create an intersectional lens of how multiple forms of oppression influence Black American mothering (Wing,\\u00a02000). We also utilized SOR to reconceptualize coping and notions of resilience, particularly the ideologies and behaviors considered \\u201cmaladaptive\\u201d by the FAAR Model (Patterson,\\u00a02002; Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). These theoretical additions provided support needed to understand the racial, ethnic, gender, and sociocultural worldviews of this stigmatized population of mothers who may be involved in illegal activities, fear confrontation with legal authorities, and/or experience various forms of economic or social precarity (Shaghaghi et al.,\\u00a02011).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0059\", \"jomf12848-bib-0060\", \"jomf12848-bib-0058\"], \"section\": \"THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS\", \"text\": \"The FAAR Model constructs family resilience as the active process by which families adapt to risk exposure (Patterson,\\u00a02002). During the adjustment phase of the FAAR Model, families balance demands (i.e., stressors, strains, and hassles) that can co\\u2010occur and accumulate over time, utilize capabilities (i.e., coping behaviors, resources, or support) to manage or alleviate demands, and find meaning (i.e., situational, family identity, and worldview) in how demands and capabilities shape their shared orientation (Patterson & Garwick,\\u00a01994). A family crisis occurs when demands on the family exceed their existing capabilities, creating an imbalance. During the adaptation phase, the family seeks to restore balance by reducing demands, acquiring new coping behaviors and resources, or changing their view of the crisis (Patterson,\\u00a01988).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0013\", \"jomf12848-bib-0015\", \"jomf12848-bib-0019\", \"jomf12848-bib-0033\", \"jomf12848-bib-0076\", \"jomf12848-bib-0041\", \"jomf12848-bib-0067\", \"jomf12848-bib-0044\", \"jomf12848-bib-0072\", \"jomf12848-bib-0040\"], \"section\": \"THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS\", \"text\": \"While the FAAR Model is useful to identify how families grapple with the myriad crises that can disrupt households, it does so void of an intersectional analysis that recognizes that all crises are not made equally. CRF provides the latitude needed to center the marginalized experiences of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers as individuals, while also contextualizing these experiences within the diverse Black family unit (Crenshaw,\\u00a01991; De Reus et al.,\\u00a02005). Critical race feminists contend that there is no singular Black perspective or monolithic \\u201cBlack experience,\\u201d and that theorizations on Black populations should include all that makes them rich and distinctive (Evans\\u2010Winters & Esposito,\\u00a02010; Harris,\\u00a01990; Wing,\\u00a02000). Mothering in low\\u2010income Black communities involves navigating a unique set of daily stressors and crises that emerge as a function of living in a \\u201cviolent milieu\\u201d with multiple, interlocking forms of deprivation experienced at individual, group, and community levels (Jenkins,\\u00a02002, p. 30). As individuals, Black women continue to be violently victimized more frequently than other women, and this victimization often accrues over their lifetime (Sabri et al.,\\u00a02016). Black women are murdered at higher rates than other women, and pregnant Black women are more than three times as likely to experience intimate partner homicide victimization as pregnant white and Hispanic women (Kivisto et al.,\\u00a02021; Threadcraft & Miller,\\u00a02017). Black women are more likely to witness someone being shot, see a dead body, or hear about someone that they knew being killed or raped than other women (Isom Scott,\\u00a02018). CRF helped us to understand how these accumulated individual\\u2010 and group\\u2010based risks can influence Black mothering, while also shaping the adaptive well\\u2010being of the entire Black communities.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0049\", \"jomf12848-bib-0059\", \"jomf12848-bib-0059\", \"jomf12848-bib-0047\", \"jomf12848-bib-0049\", \"jomf12848-bib-0068\", \"jomf12848-bib-0063\", \"jomf12848-bib-0003\", \"jomf12848-bib-0077\"], \"section\": \"THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS\", \"text\": \"The FAAR Model argues that \\u201cbonadaptation\\u201d (i.e., restoring balance) and \\u201cmaladaptation\\u201d (i.e., poor adaptation) are two primary outcomes for families in crisis (McCubbin & Patterson,\\u00a01983; Patterson,\\u00a02002). As families adjust to accumulated demands, they rely on acquired resources and coping behaviors to address stressors (Patterson,\\u00a02002). Coping is traditionally theorized as \\u201cmaladaptive\\u201d if the individuals or families do not effectively minimize stressors or engage in \\u201cavoidance\\u201d behaviors such as violence, drinking, or social isolation (Masten,\\u00a02001; McCubbin & Patterson,\\u00a01983; Scarpa & Haden,\\u00a02006). Yet, these traditional coping paradigms are insufficient to understand coping among Black populations, particularly in racially\\u2010stressful situations (Plummer & Slane,\\u00a01996). Designed by and for white men and women, these paradigms often give value to Eurocentric ideals of self\\u2010mastery, autonomy, and individualism while devaluing Afrocentric, collectivistic forms of coping which often include the local community (Banyard & Graham\\u2010Bermann,\\u00a01993; Yeh et al.,\\u00a02006). The model also reflects a relatively linear process in which families experience an imbalance, resulting in an adjustment, and then adaptation response to restore balance. However, the imbalance street\\u2010identified Black American mothers face is constant due to the structural violence encountered within their communities and interactions with the State.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0001\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0006\", \"jomf12848-bib-0001\", \"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0037\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0001\", \"jomf12848-bib-0007\", \"jomf12848-bib-0035\", \"jomf12848-bib-0036\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\", \"jomf12848-bib-0032\", \"jomf12848-bib-0035\", \"jomf12848-bib-0070\"], \"section\": \"THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS\", \"text\": \"Moreover, the FAAR Model does not fully consider how nontraditional forms of coping are adaptive by fostering resilience in violent social conditions (Payne,\\u00a02011). SOR theory provided an alternative framing of how Black Americans engage in resilience within these conditions, by conceptualizing a street identity in terms of (a) phenomenology, (b) relational coping, (c) historical patterns/trends, (d) structural systems, and (e) incidents of social injustice (Payne,\\u00a02011). SOR argues that \\u201ccriminal coping\\u201d is not only a major behavioral adaptation to chronic strain, but also that families who engage in street life do so to achieve restoration of the familial unit (Agnew,\\u00a02007; Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). Street life becomes a \\u201cproblem\\u2010solving effort of the family system\\u201d (Brown\\u2010Baatjies et al.,\\u00a02008, p. 90) and street\\u2010identified Black mothers who participate in illegal activities typically do so to confront the \\u201cstrainful\\u201d effects of economic poverty and structural oppression (Agnew,\\u00a02007; Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017, Forthcoming; Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). These conditions draw some Black women and girls to the viability of the streets and also increase their likelihood of using crime to achieve culturally defined goals and means of success (Agnew,\\u00a02007; Burt & Simons,\\u00a02015). Black mothers in the streets find psychological and physical spaces of resilience that operate concurrently to produce sites of strength at the individual, familial, and community levels (Hitchens,\\u00a02020; Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a02017; Payne,\\u00a02011). They manage chronic strain through bonding activities such as attending parties or frequenting bars, participating in social clubs such as motorcycle or car clubs, \\u201changing on the block\\u201d or street corner, and attending group gatherings with friends. They cultivate joy in times of sorrow by developing support groups for bereaved women and care for the children of mothers who fall on hard times (Hannays\\u2010King et al.,\\u00a02015; Hitchens,\\u00a02020). Survival and resilience are central to the Black American experience, and their traumatic history necessitates diverse forms of coping to combat their oppression (Sharpe,\\u00a02016).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0004\", \"jomf12848-bib-0004\", \"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0004\"], \"section\": \"Street PAR\", \"text\": \"The convergent mixed\\u2010methods design was situated within a Street PAR methodology. PAR is a methodological framework where formal researchers select members of the target population to mutually design and implement a research program while engaging in activism within a local community (Baum et al.,\\u00a02006). PAR actively includes members of the \\u201cresearched\\u201d in the research process, including developing research questions and collecting and analyzing data (Baum et al.,\\u00a02006). As an application of PAR, Street PAR is an epistemological orientation that primarily involves street\\u2010identified populations in schools, correctional facilities, and local communities to engage in this participatory enterprise (Payne,\\u00a02008). Street PAR assumes that individuals who are actively or formerly involved in the streets are best placed to systematically examine the sociostructural experiences of an urban and/or street population. As such, Street PAR embraces the worldviews and lived experiences of this population, shifting the location of power and knowledge production (Baum et al.,\\u00a02006).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0074\", \"jomf12848-bib-0020\", \"jomf12848-bib-0042\", \"jomf12848-bib-0042\", \"jomf12848-bib-0027\"], \"section\": \"Research site\", \"text\": \"Wilmington is the largest city in Delaware, and at the time of data collection (2017\\u20132018), it had approximately 70,166 residents with 58% of the population Black and 36% of the population white (U.S. Census Bureau,\\u00a02019). Wilmington is a useful research site to examine the nexus of street life and mothering as the city has one of the highest per capita homicide rates for a city of its size (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] Uniform Crime Reporting Program,\\u00a02009\\u20132018; Jones,\\u00a02014). Labeled \\u201cMurderTown USA\\u201d and one of the \\u201cmost dangerous small cities in America\\u201d (Jones,\\u00a02014), Wilmington has a violence problem that costs Delaware $611 million per year (Giffords Law Center,\\u00a02018).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0069\"], \"section\": \"Participant recruitment\", \"text\": \"Participants had to meet the following criteria: (1) self\\u2010identify as Black or African American; (2) self\\u2010identify as female; (3) live in a low\\u2010income environment; (4) be between the ages of 16 to 54; (5) live in the Westside or Northside neighborhoods of Wilmington; and (6) be street\\u2010identified, involved with crime, formerly incarcerated, or formerly involved in activities associated with the streets. Participants were recruited using snowball sampling, a technique generally used to collect data from fringe, sparse, and/or sensitive populations (Shaghaghi et al.,\\u00a02011). Participants who met the inclusion criteria were identified through the Street PAR Associates' social networks. The Associates were 11 street\\u2010identified Black men who lived in Wilmington and were members of a previous Street PAR project. The Associates provided contact information for those who met the study criteria. The first author (Co\\u2010Project Director) and second author (Co\\u2010Investigator) reached out to interview the girls and women who the Associates identified and expanded the sample by asking those who participated if they knew additional individuals who fit the criteria.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-tbl-0001\"], \"section\": \"Interview subsample\", \"text\": \"A total of 50 street\\u2010identified Black American girls and women were interviewed, of which 39 (78%) identified as mothers. At the time of the interview, 20 were custodial mothers (i.e., always had custody from birth), 2 were noncustodial mothers (i.e., never had custody from birth), and 17 had periods throughout their lives of being custodial and noncustodial mothers. Twelve of the women were also grandmothers (see Table\\u00a01).\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0009\", \"jomf12848-bib-0009\"], \"section\": \"Data analysis\", \"text\": \"For this analysis, we drew from a variety of interview questions such as: Can Black women be in the streets but still be a provider or protector? We ensured that the themes developed typified the most common patterns in the mother's accounts of their experiences and perspectives. These themes included resilience, motherhood, parenting strategies, community conditions, and family composition and structure. Grounded theory methods allowed for our data collection and analysis to inform one another through an iterative process of collecting, coding, comparing, reflecting, and creating themes (Charmaz,\\u00a02011). We developed a social justice inquiry by rejecting objectivity, emphasizing reflexivity, and developing themes that were sensitive to the nexus of power, privilege, and oppression (Charmaz,\\u00a02011). Coding proceeded in multiple stages to reduce the data into manageable, meaningful categories. At each stage, transcribed text was constantly compared and linked within and across interviews to develop meaning and relevance. Coding began with open coding, which included listening to and reading transcripts, coding the data line by line, selecting meaningful segments of the text, and labeling these segments into codes. We each open coded individually and then we met to discuss broad codes before moving forward. Focused coding followed and included further analyzing the codes derived from open coding. Focused coding also involved carefully reducing the number of codes by merging relevant codes and deleting codes that were not germane to the study. Followed by axial coding, we constructed linkages between codes to develop conceptual themes.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0007\", \"jomf12848-bib-0071\"], \"section\": \"FINDINGS\", \"text\": \"Black mothering among women in the streets involves a tightrope of stress and resilience. On this tenuous ground, street\\u2010identified mothers use inventive strategies to juggle the precarity of living in violent social conditions while raising children, families, and communities. This precarity is most visible when examining how they negotiate multiple familial stressors in distressed ecological contexts with limited resources at their disposal. Street\\u2010identified Black American mothers rationalize the duality of street life and motherhood by conceptualizing their street involvement in terms of survival\\u2014a mechanism to minimize, cope with, or alleviate complex forms of oppression. They learn to adapt to adverse conditions using a creative repertoire or \\u201ctool kit\\u201d that is shaped by their cultural habits, skills, and styles structuring their choices, behaviors, and decision\\u2010making (Burt & Simons,\\u00a02015; Swidler,\\u00a01986). This repertoire includes using three types of fluid mothering strategies: (1) constrained mothering, (2) racialized mothering, and (3) aspirational mothering. Their mothering strategies are shaped by a collective, Black American cultural identity and worldview with a unique way of perceiving the world as criminalized subjects with disproportionate proximity to the punitive State.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0045\"], \"section\": \"Constrained mothering: Economic deprivation in the streets\", \"text\": \"Black American mothers in the streets are compelled to contend with a myriad of stressors that complicate mothering, including living within a context of economic deprivation. Constrained mothering denotes how street\\u2010identified Black American mothers navigated the margins of blocked socioeconomic opportunity by recalibrating their parenting strategies given the limited resources jeopardizing their ability to provide for and nurture their families. This context of economic hardship is emblematic of structural violence and can also be understood as \\u201cabsolute\\u201d poverty or disadvantage, wherein individuals, families, or communities do not have the minimal level of resources needed for basic survival (Ladin,\\u00a02014). The mothers in our sample knew these hardships intimately, as most were either unemployed (n\\u00a0=\\u00a016) or were working in the low\\u2010wage, part\\u2010time sector (n\\u00a0=\\u00a015), and most lived in low\\u2010income, multi\\u2010family, or unstable housing (n\\u00a0=\\u00a024). While the women did not explicitly name policies enforced upon them, they did identify how various social policies (e.g., welfare or housing) served as stressors that shaped their mothering and contributed to their street involvement. Street\\u2010identified Black American mothers rationalized the duality of street life and motherhood through an iterative assessment of individual and familial needs against the risks associated with satisfying those needs.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0038\"], \"section\": \"Constrained mothering: Economic deprivation in the streets\", \"text\": \"Housing insecurity frequently surfaced as a family stressor that contributed to the mother's use of constrained mothering to achieve stability for their families. Women spoke about living in homes where the \\u201crefrigerator is empty,\\u201d the \\u201cstove is messed up,\\u201d and living with \\u201cmice,\\u201d \\u201croaches,\\u201d and other pests. Other women discussed crowded dynamics of \\u201c15 people\\u201d (Marshieka, 24) cramped into small apartments or street\\u2010identified youth who \\u201cmight be sleeping on the floor, air mattress, or whatever\\u201d (Kayla, 28). Evelyn (42) admitted that much of these \\u201cblended\\u201d family dynamics exist because poor families simply \\u201ccan't afford to live alone.\\u201d And she's right\\u2014up until 2019, Delaware's minimum wage was $8.75, meaning a renter needed to work \\u201c100 hours, or 2.5 full time jobs, to afford the Delaware Fair Market Rent of $1,142 for a two\\u2010bedroom unit\\u201d (Housing Alliance Delaware,\\u00a02019). Evelyn (42) revealed her own struggles with finding affordable housing for her and her children: \\u201cI haven't slept in my own bed since 2006. I've been on people's couches ever since.\\u201d\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0014\"], \"section\": \"Constrained mothering: Economic deprivation in the streets\", \"text\": \"The mothers' second\\u2010class positioning within a stratified labor market affected how they perceived their marginalized status and participation in crime (Crutchfield,\\u00a02014). Constrained mothering emerged as they saw involvement in illegal activity as a practical response to economic deprivation, given the lack of opportunity to attain livable wages within the labor market. Joy (37) explained how economic deprivation affects entire generations of families: \\u201cIf you're raised in poverty, you don't have the income. \\u2026 mom don't have money, family don't have money. So, you go to whatever you can do on the street\\u2026 selling whatever you can sell just to make it.\\u201d Basheera (46) likened the desperate confines of poverty experienced by low\\u2010income Black Americans as \\u201ctrapping an animal in a corner. Eventually, the animal gonna come out fighting, doing whatever it needs to do to get where it needs to be.\\u201d Street life became a practical way to escape the vulnerability of concentrated disadvantage, and to provide basic needs for their families, even if stability was temporary or led to negative consequences for themselves or their children.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0061\", \"jomf12848-bib-0062\"], \"section\": \"Constrained mothering: Economic deprivation in the streets\", \"text\": \"Tosha H. (47) described how engaging in street life (i.e., theft or violence) can be a site of resilience\\u2014a way to achieve personal, social, and economic survival (Payne,\\u00a02008, 2011). The demands of providing for their families in these constrained contexts, coupled with the capabilities available to the mothers, influenced their involvement in the streets to restore balance and survive\\u2014a function of their adaptation and adjustment.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0023\"], \"section\": \"Constrained mothering: Economic deprivation in the streets\", \"text\": \"Constrained mothering demonstrates the adaptive and inventive strategies street\\u2010identified Black American mothers used to provide for their families while concurrently managing an enduring context of economic deprivation. Their mothering practices were also shaped by an embodied carcerality (Friedman & Hitchens,\\u00a02021) or the production of racialized, carceral subjects through reifying one's physical representation as synonymous with a deviant object. These situational and contextual constraints also shaped their coping behaviors. In the next section, we illuminate how racialized mothering is enacted in response to the criminalization of Black families, disproportionately through contact with an oppressive carceral apparatus.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0070\", \"jomf12848-bib-0035\", \"jomf12848-bib-0037\"], \"section\": \"Racialized mothering: Criminalization in the streets\", \"text\": \"Racialized mothering refers to how street\\u2010identified Black American mothers reconciled their familial relationship to the carceral apparatus as criminalized subjects and their adaptation to the racial dynamics embedded in their interactions with the criminal legal system. Race and racism continued to be central organizing principles that not only shaped the life chances of these mothers, but also structured their parenting practices and decision\\u2010making. They were called on to raise grandchildren when drug addiction removed their daughters from the home, sent money on the books of their child's father in prison, and prayed for their sons who were shot while hanging on the block. Moreover, some of the mothers (n\\u00a0=\\u00a012) spent time in prison themselves, and half of the mothers (n\\u00a0=\\u00a019) experienced periods of noncustodial parenting due to incarceration, drug addiction, or other forms of street life. These multiple, overlapping identities can be understood as the \\u201cafterlives of slavery\\u201d or the continued suffering through truncated quality of life that is unique to the experiences of Black American descendants of the Slave South (Sharpe,\\u00a02016). Street\\u2010identified Black American mothers shouldered the uneven burdens of care and emotional trauma as they not only felt the immense toll of mass incarceration when their loved ones were sentenced to prison, but also navigated their own involvement as criminalized subjects (Hitchens,\\u00a02020; Hitchens & Payne,\\u00a0Forthcoming). Racialized mothering revealed their strategies to survive the stress of the carceral state and the everyday state\\u2010sanctioned violence pervasive in their communities, anchored by the intersections of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0016\"], \"section\": \"Racialized mothering: Criminalization in the streets\", \"text\": \"Seventeen of the mothers spoke of their experiences with either mothering children while incarcerated, mothering children who were incarcerated, or mothering children entangled in the carceral apparatus as juveniles on probation or having frequent police contact. Marshieka (24) and Martai (32) were both incarcerated in Baylor Women's Correctional Institution (BWCI) in Delaware for assault and drug possession, respectively. BWCI is a small women's prison that houses both pretrial detainees and those serving sentences, and most serve less than 1\\u2010year sentences for nonviolent crimes (Delaware Department of Corrections,\\u00a02019). Both mothers illustrated the revolving door of incarceration among Black women from their neighborhoods. Marshieka (24) was incarcerated with her aunt who \\u201c[has been to jail] plenty of times. \\u2026 we was in jail together, she got out, and she went right back in. She's in there now.\\u201d Martai (32) said both her stints in BWCI resembled a \\u201cfamily reunion\\u201d:\\n\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0025\"], \"section\": \"Racialized mothering: Criminalization in the streets\", \"text\": \"In moments of vulnerability, formerly incarcerated mothers revealed how difficult it was to manage the lives of their children while \\u201cdoing their time\\u201d in a system that felt cruel and unforgiving (Garcia\\u2010Hallett,\\u00a02019). Lisa H. (37) lamented that being sentenced for robbery was \\u201chell \\u2026 because [she] missed [her] babies.\\u201d Lakeira (23) was forced to leave behind two young sons and remembered anxiously wondering about their well\\u2010being: \\u201cDo my kids really remember me? Because you know, kids, they start to forget after a while. How are my kids? Are they being treated good? Are they eating enough? Are they bathed?\\u201d Lakeira was forced to wonder about her children as she described the prison environment where \\u201cthey had us locked in a room for some petty stuff,\\u201d leaving her unable to call and talk to her children. When she tried other forms of communication, like sending letters, her letters were often never sent to her children, but rather read by prison guards and returned back to her due to what she had written to them. She said: \\u201cI used to be so over it. It's not somewhere anybody want to be. \\u2026 I was being strong about it for a minute, but I actually got to a point where I had to physically fight somebody in there.\\u201d Martai (32) actually gave birth to her son while in prison and remembered being shackled during labor, with a leering guard at her side. She said she will never forget the trauma of being forced to leave her newborn at the hospital and said she began to lash out aggressively in prison:\\n\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0078\"], \"section\": \"Aspirational mothering: Coping and survival in the streets\", \"text\": \"Aspirational mothering refers to the cognitive and emotional forms of survival street\\u2010identified Black American mothers employ to cope with acute and chronic stressors that threaten their families. Building from Yosso's\\u00a0(2005) identification of various forms of capital, namely, aspirational capital\\u2014or the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers\\u2014aspirational mothering is another strategy employed to counter, and/or restore balance under violent structural conditions. Aspirational mothering emerged as these mothers made sense of their intersectional standing in society by altering their cognitive responses to stressors. They adjusted their mindsets and how they mentally and emotionally dealt with stressors by maintaining their hopes, dreams, optimisms, and aspirations to be self\\u2010reliant and independent for their children's well\\u2010being and safety. They transmitted their capabilities to their children by embodying strength not only as mothers, but also as Black women. We argue that Black mothering under the State is\\u2014in and of itself\\u2014a site of resilience that requires malleability against these pressures and structural conditions. Furthermore, while the characteristics of resilience enacted by the mothers overlap with the previous typologies described, we provide a distinct category here to outline the cognitive and mental shifts that mother's use, a practical adjustment they made as they sought to restore balance for their families.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0001\"], \"section\": \"DISCUSSION\", \"text\": \"Our work illuminates the complex SOR embodied by mothers who access available capabilities such as physical aggression or mental toughness to survive in oppressive conditions, particularly when those conditions are considered unjust or high in magnitude (Agnew,\\u00a02007). It is through these frameworks that we complicate traditional understandings of families at the margins and unravel how street\\u2010identified Black American mothers navigate the precarity of living in violent social conditions, seeking to achieve balance while raising and caring for children and families. The typologies described are generated as part of the mother's street identity and should not be understood as poor adaptive responses. Constrained, racialized, and aspirational mothering are strategies that support the mothers' capacities in balancing the continual demands imposed upon them by society. Moreover, the process street\\u2010identified Black mothers engage in was nonlinear. In other words, their adjustment and adaptation were a constant ebb and flow of balancing demands and capabilities, shaping how they cope with adverse sociostructural conditions. Their street identity served as the anchor or common thread within each typology as they strived to meet the demands placed upon them.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0101\"], \"section\": \"DISCUSSION\", \"text\": \"The FAAR Model illuminated the daily hassles of navigating multiple stressors and challenges that affect families. CRF highlighted the racialized assumptions embedded in policies, specifically policies about Black \\u201cwelfare queens\\u201d who abuse the system or buy \\u201csteak and lobster\\u201d with their food stamps rather than food to \\u201cstretch\\u201d for their children (Landsbaum, 2016). These rigid policies aid in keeping the mothers dependent on welfare assistance while also criminalizing their behaviors within that system\\u2014a system that is inherently racialized. The less popular truth is that many Black mothers in the streets use strategies (i.e., constrained and racialized mothering) as mechanisms to scrape by in a system not designed to meet their basic needs. Rightly or wrongly, the $1000 profit gained from illegally \\u201cflipping\\u201d welfare payments, for example, provides little financial security for these mothers. They grapple with this ongoing uncertainty, stretching themselves to the limits to provide for themselves and their families. The incorporation of SOR alongside FAAR and CRF acknowledges that Black mother's street identity serves as an adaptive mechanism of continuous adjustment in their efforts to restore balance in their lives and those of their families. When applied together, these models allowed for a more comprehensive examination of the processes by which street\\u2010identified Black mothers seek to restore familial balance.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0065\", \"jomf12848-bib-0031\", \"jomf12848-bib-0058\", \"jomf12848-bib-0042\", \"jomf12848-bib-0059\"], \"section\": \"DISCUSSION\", \"text\": \"This study also has implications for how we theorize about the impact of surveillance and criminalization on Black mothering. As discussed by the mothers, too many women face the threat of not only incarceration, but also the fracturing of mother\\u2013child bonds. Roberts\\u00a0(2020) recognized that child removal from \\u201cprotective\\u201d agencies (such as DFS) are an \\u201cintegral part of the U.S. carceral regime\\u201d (p. 3). Removal often involved perceived neglect stemming from poverty, with punitive solutions that rarely addressed the structural causes of the problems Black families face (Gurusami,\\u00a02019). In overpoliced communities like Wilmington, low\\u2010income Black mothers often contend with \\u201cnonnormative\\u201d events (Patterson,\\u00a01988) of violence and their children being incarcerated (Jones,\\u00a02014). While mothers tried to keep their children away from harm, they had to adjust and adapt by making sense of the \\u201cunexplainable\\u201d (Patterson,\\u00a02002). Street\\u2010identified Black American mothers employed racialized mothering as a strategy to adjust to the racial dynamics embedded in their interactions with the carceral apparatus. Their use of racialized mothering demonstrates the labor needed to navigate motherhood as criminalized subjects. Black mothers in the streets also sought to restore the balance of their family demands by adjusting their perspective and outlook. Their use of aspirational mothering allowed them to hold a future orientation and hope for their children's reentry, while highlighting their sense\\u2010making of the social forces their children must negotiate upon their return from prison.\"}, {\"pmc\": \"PMC9698362\", \"pmid\": \"36439403\", \"reference_ids\": [\"jomf12848-bib-0005\"], \"section\": \"DISCUSSION\", \"text\": \"Future scholarship might consider how to reframe dominant narratives of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers and integrate frameworks that illustrate their strengths and mechanisms of resilience. Family theories such as the FAAR Model can be expanded to contextualize the racial, ethnic, sociocultural, and gendered experiences and worldviews of this population. Family scientists must not underestimate the power of racialized and gendered systems that sustain poor, inequitable, and violent socio\\u2010structural conditions that continually harm Black mothers and their families. Furthermore, we must continue to complicate narratives of the \\u201cstrong Black woman\\u201d archetype (Beauboeuf\\u2010Lafontant,\\u00a02009). Just because women are able to demonstrate resilience in the face of extreme adversity does not mean it is a just burden. To quell the intersectional forms of violence perpetrated against Black mothers, structural interventions are needed, including fair housing wages, creating a child welfare system that does not function as an apparatus of the carceral state, and programs and policies that center the voices and experiential knowledge of street\\u2010identified Black American mothers. Each of these interventions can alleviate the stressors that shape gendered and racialized pathways into street life for Black American mothers while enhancing their efforts to restore balance and provide for their families.\"}]"
Metadata
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