Black M/Otherhood: A Content Analysis Exploring How Black Mothers Are Represented in Social Work Literature

Abstract

The vast range of experiences of Black mothers are not adequately captured in social work scholarship. Motivated by observations made by a 2000 article written by Greif, Hrabowski, and Maton which noted that much of social work literature on Black mothers focused on the negative, this paper describes a content analysis examining how Black mothers are represented in social work literature. The authors conducted a search in Social Work Abstracts for articles written between 2000 and 2020 that focused on Black mothers. Of the over 18,000 articles published between 2000 and 2020 in Social Work Abstracts, 32 of them met the inclusion criteria. Findings revealed that most of the social work literature on Black mothers is concentrated on some perceived form of adversity ( n = 25). The remaining articles ( n = 7) were not oriented around difficulty. Also of note, only a third of the articles ( n = 10) spoke to issues of systemic and structural oppression that impact Black mothering. As evidenced by these findings, social work literature continues to perpetuate a system of dominance that misorients the experiences of Black mothers. Fundamentally, social work literature is in dire need of more representations of Black motherhood. This paper concludes with recommendations for research related to Black mothers.