Mixed Race Studies

Motherhood in Liminal Spaces: White Mothers’ Parenting Black/White Children

Affilia
Volume 31, Number 4 (November 2016)
pages 434-449
DOI: 10.1177/0886109916630581

Mary Elizabeth Rauktis, Research Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Rachel A. Fusco, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sara Goodkind, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Cynthia Bradley-King, Clinical Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Most of the extant social work research on biracial children and families has focused on the experiences of transracially adopted black or biracial children and their white parents or Afro-Caribbean/white children and their white mothers in the United Kingdom. This study adds to the body of knowledge by using focus group interviews analyzed through a feminist lens to understand the experiences of a diverse group of white women parenting their biological black/white biracial children. The findings suggest that having children locates them in a liminal space between whiteness and blackness. Many face racism from their families and communities, which they are unprepared for, given their upbringing as white Americans. Yet despite these experiences, many still practice color-blind perspective in socializing their children. Implications of these findings include the need for early intervention and support for white mothers raising biracial children as well as the need to challenge the assumption that mothers are solely responsible for the well-being and cultural and racial socialization of their children.

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Racial and Ethnic Identity Development in White Mothers of Biracial, Black-White Children

Affilia
Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2004)
pages 68-84
DOI: 10.1177/0886109903260795

Margaret O’Donoghue, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work
New York University

This article reports on a qualitative research study of the racial and ethnic identity of 11 White mothers who were married to Black (specifically African American) men and were raising biracial children. The uniqueness of these women’s lives, as Whites with an intimate knowledge of the Black experience, makes it difficult to place them within the levels described by current models of racial identity. Through their parenting of biracial children, the mothers had come to a greater sense of their own racial identity and to recognize White privilege and their own White identity. Their specific ethnic identity, as ethnic Whites, has not been passed on to their children.

…Most of the women revealed that in raising their children, they focused on a Black identity, with a somewhat unconscious understanding that the traditions that they, the mothers, could provide were either “just American” or not something their children needed to incorporate into their identities.   Essential to this process of White mothers fostering Black culture in their  biracial children was the presence of Black husbands. All the women were in  long-term marriages with Black men. Their husbands had educated them about Black culture and fostered their knowledge of this ethnicity. Without their husbands’ presence, the women may have found it difficult to impart this sense of ethnic identity to their children….

…In general, the women did not think that their identity had essentially changed since they married, nor did they feel they had somehow “crossed over” and become Black. Many noted, however, that they had become more aware of their own identity as a racial being, as a White person. As was noted in the previous section, before their relationships with their husbands, they had never been placed in a situation of having to consider themselves as having a race. White privilege had previously enabled them to move through social situations without having to consider the impact of their racial identification….

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Bordering Community: Reclaiming Ambiguity as a Transgressive Landscape of Knowledge

Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work
Volume 27, Number 2 (May 2012)
pages 167-179
DOI: 10.1177/0886109912443957

Kimberly D. Hudson
School of Social Work
University of Washington, Seattle

Critically investigating the concept of community, this article explores some of the ideological and epistemological frameworks that have defined both the potentialities and the limitations of community as a liberatory and/or liberated space. This article sheds light on how ambiguously identified, bodied, and placed people are affected by cultures and systems of oppression in ways that create unique tensions with community and generate knowledge of the meaning of community itself. The major foci include the transgression, occupation, and policing of racial, gendered, and sexualized borders. In the final section, emerging questions, reflections, and implications for the field of social welfare are discussed.

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