ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of several overarching themes relevant to Black mothers. Multiple social indexes of physical and mental health and well-being, shaped within a lived framework of structural racism. These structural themes include racial disparities and disproportionality based on explicit marginalization, stereotypes and implicit bias – all unresolved and unrecognized legacies of the historical trauma of African enslavement in the Americas. We discuss the long-standing schema of a “strong Black woman” that often obscures the gentle and more vulnerable side of Black mothering and minimizes the mental health needs of Black mothers and their need for emotional, physical or monetary support. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a strengths perspective to briefly examine the practices of racial socialization through protective nurturing and adaptive parenting practices leading to resilience in young children to survive in a hostile, racially stratified society. We conclude with suggestions for directions for future research.
