The development of a sexual self is based in an understanding of the messages and meanings an individual is given about sexual roles and behaviors. To understand how meanings become scripts unique to adolescent African American women's experiences, it is important to look at how their images have been framed within a racialized and sexualized sociohistorical context. The remnants of the foundational Jezebel, Mammy, Matriarch, and Welfare Mother images of African American womanhood remain today, as exemplified by similar, yet more sexually explicit scripts that include the Freak, Gold Digger, Diva, and Dyke. This paper explores the sociohistorical development of current sexual scripts for African American female adolescents through an interpretation of Hip Hop culture documents, and the available empirical research. The relevance of these current sexual scripts to sexual identity development, sexual risk-taking behaviors, and interpersonal relationship dynamics are also addressed.
Our purpose is to discuss the challenges that Black women researchers face when doing qualitative research with Black women on sensitive topics. From a Black feminist perspective, we explore the dynamics of race, class, and gender in the informant-researcher relationship between Black women. We also share five recommendations for conducting ethical qualitative research with Black women: contextualizing research, contextualizing subjectivity, triangulating multiple sources, monitoring symbolic power, and caring in the research process.
This qualitative study was designed to identify African American early adolescents' subjective meanings of African American women's sexuality through an examination of Stephens & Phillips (2003) sexual images-the Diva, Gold Digger, Freak, Dyke, Gangster Bitch, Sister Savior, Earth Mother, and Baby Mama. These eight sexual images both inform and reflect beliefs about African American women's physical attractiveness. Interpersonal relationship decision making processes also were influenced by these conceptual frameworks of African American women's sexuality. Findings from this study are important given the tendency of previous researchers to ignore race and intraethnic variations in studies of beliefs about attitudes toward sexuality.
This paper presents a comprehensive review of research linking single-parent family structure to parenting processes, maternal well-being, and child developmental outcomes among African Americans. The approaches used to study these families, related methodological and conceptual concerns, and the factors linked to maternal well-being, effective parenting processes, family functioning, and child outcomes are addressed. Much work remains to be done on conceptualizing and assessing parenting processes among African Americans in general and single African American mothers in particular. Researchers must examine more carefully the circumstances that foster or impede successful parenting among these mothers. Studies also are needed to disentangle the interactions between economic stress and parenting behavior and to determine the extent to which the findings can be applied to middle-income single African American parents.
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