1/11/2024 0 Comments Ashley seil smithSweetman-Durney said, “I had faced it after landing my contract with Topshop to design women’s dresses in 2005. “Although I was brought up in a family where I did not have much experience with discrimination,” Ms. “The big challenges were being young and a woman,” she said. As intersectional feminists, we must celebrate and recognize collective mothering as a positive choice to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all children.Starting her own business making jewelry wasn’t as easy as a march down the lane to a nearby tree. This practice expands possibilities for peer relationships between children, provides youth with stronger adult support networks and fosters a more equitable distribution of emotional, financial and cultural resources across communities. Rather, collective mothering is a valuable part of the social fabric of many communities around the world. Parker’s reliance on her friend’s family is not new, nor is it unusual. Sharing care-work can alleviate some demands of what sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild calls the “second shift,” or the household labor usually left to women after the formal workday ends. We include both girls’ mothers in the illustration to acknowledge that paid labor and domestic labor are each necessary forms of care-work. Parker, the character in glasses and orange below, relies on her friend Allie’s family to take care of her when her mother is at work. Each vignette suggests ways that kids can empathize with one another across difference. Our book demonstrates how race, class, gender, citizenship, ability and religion mutually influence children’s lives through the stories of nine diverse characters. When the three of us got together to write a research-based feminist children’s book about intersectionality, we knew that it was important to celebrate the reality and beauty of diverse family forms. The reality of transnational mothering disrupts dominant perceptions of motherhood, which assert that appropriate mothering should come from biological mothers who raise their children exclusively and “up close.” Transnational migrant mothers often rely on family and close friends to care for their children so that they work abroad to provide a better life for their extended families. In addition, feminist immigration scholars Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Leisy Abrego, Rhacel Parreñas, Joanna Dreby and Evelyn Nakano Glenn have all written about transnational mothers who leave children in their countries of origin when they immigrate to find employment in the United States and other host countries. The mainstream media tends to associate these mothering practices with working-class and poor mothers of color, but Collins points out that Black middle-class mothers also rely on community mothering to protect their children from everyday forms of racism. Patricia Hill Collins describes how blood mothers, “other mothers,” grandmothers and community mothers have collectively cared for Black children since slavery, playing integral roles in Black community survival. Sharon Hays argues that pressures for mothers to “do it all” though intensive mothering styles alienates and emotionally depletes women. Many feminist sociologists have pushed back against narrow understandings of parenting. Most of these children were placed into white nuclear families, leaving some Native American communities nearly childless and impeding the intergenerational transfer of indigenous cultural knowledge. Feminist historian Laura Briggs’ book Somebody’s Children documents how, since the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Native American children have been torn away from their families by social workers who do not understand or value collective childcare structures. Inflexible beliefs about appropriate parenting styles are limited, and can have devastating consequences.įor example, the United States government often criminalizes community mothering as a form of bad parenting. Yet at every point in America’s patriarchal, capitalist, racialized history, women have been challenged by dominant cultural norms that emphasize individualized and biological mothering. Korean language speakers even use the phrase uri ŏmma-meaning “we mom,” or “our mom,” instead of “my mom”-reflecting a cultural norm where women parent beyond the bounds of a nuclear, biological family.įeminists have long emphasized the benefits of collective mothering, also known as community mothering. There is a lovely Yoruba proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child.” In fact, communal parenting is a common and important practice across many communities of color and working-class families. Hello, I’m Parker, after school every dayĪllie’s family takes care of us both while we playĬommunity care is more precious than gold
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