The tenacity of the intensive mothering ideology—the notion that good mothers should invest vast amounts of time, money, energy, and emotional labor in mothering—is well documented, particularly among affluent White mothers. Drawing on 16 interviews with low-income, Black single mothers, we analyze how gender, race, class, and the ideology of intensive mothering intersect to shape these mothers’ parenting. Mothers repeatedly emphasized the importance of sacrifice, self-reliance, and protection. In short, good mothers sacrifice for their children; they are self-reliant and teach their children to be this way too; and they protect their children. We argue that low-income mothers embrace and perform intensive mothering in the absence of larger social supports for their children’s upbringing and at a cost to their own emotional and physical well-being.

Background African-American women have the lowest breastfeeding rates among all racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Peer counseling is an effective intervention in improving breastfeeding in this population. However, little is known on peer counselors’ perceptions of breastfeeding in African-American women. Objectives As part of a larger qualitative study, the goal of this study was to understand the contextual factors influencing breastfeeding decisions of low-income African-American women from the perspective of breastfeeding peer counselors (PCs). Methods Three focus groups were conducted with 23 PCs from the WIC program in a Southeastern state. All focus group discussions were audio-recorded, professionally transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological model was used to group categories into themes. Results Of the sample, 48% were African-American, 78.2% were married, 56.5% had some college education. Five main themes emerged to describe factors at multiple-levels influencing breastfeeding in PCs’ low-income African-American clients: Individual, Microsystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem, and Chronosystem. Novel findings included 1) having breast-pumps may give African-American women a “sense of security”, 2) cultural pressures to be a “strong black woman” can impede breastfeeding support, and 3) breastfeeding “generational gaps” have resulted from American “slavery” and when formula was “a sign of wealth”. Conclusions As PCs described, low-income African-American women breastfeeding decisions are impacted by numerous contextual factors. Findings from this study suggest a need to broaden public health approach to breastfeeding promotion in this population by moving beyond individual characteristics to examining historical and socio-cultural factors underlying breastfeeding practices in African-American women.

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