Description
Book SynopsisIn Grandmothering While Black, sociologist LaShawnDa L. Pittman explores the complex lives of Black grandmothers raising their grandchildren in skipped-generation households (consisting only of grandparents and grandchildren). She prioritizes the voices of Black grandmothers through in-depth interviews and ethnographic research at various sitesdoctor's visits, welfare offices, school and day care center appointments, caseworker meetings, and more. Through careful examination, she explores the various forces that compel, constrain, and support Black grandmothers' caregiving. Pittman showcases a fundamental change in the relationship between grandmother and grandchild as grandmothers confront the paradox of fulfilling the social and legal functions of motherhood without the legal rights of the role. Grandmothering While Black illuminates the strategies used by grandmothers to manage their legal marginalization vis-à-vis parents and the state across a range of caregiving arrangements. In
Trade Review"A powerful ethnography." * Fostering Families Today *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Mothering While Black
2. Black Grandmothering: Role Expectations, Meanings, and Conflict
3. How Grandmothers Experience and Respond to Coerced Mothering within Informal Kinship Care
4. How Grandmothers Experience and Respond to Coerced Mothering within Formal Kinship Care
5. "He Don’t Get Enough Money to Do All That. And I Don’t Either": Grandmothers' Economic Survival Strategies
6. Managing the Burden and the Blessing
Conclusion
Appendix: The Five-Tiered System of Kinship Care
Notes
Bibliography
Index
