UC Santa Barbara

This study identifies, analyzes, and contextualizes the ways Black women perceive and perform motherwork in Los Angeles. I specifically explore the following questions: (1) How are Black women’s work trajectories impacted by their mothering experiences in Los Angeles? (2) What impact does education, their own and their children’s, have on Black mothers’ work trajectories? I focus on how Black women negotiate their work relationships after becoming mothers, illuminating their matriculation into performing motherwork. I understand motherwork as the racially gendered labor women who mother enact as parents and as workers in the economy. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Black women who have experiences mothering and working in Los Angeles. Rather than demonizing or glorifying the mothers in this study, I describe and interpret their viewpoints, providing a platform for them to conceptualize and voice their social roles and realities. In analyzing the ways Black women merge family and work responsibilities, I conceptualize and define the term modes of motherworking which describes the multidirectional ways Black mothers navigate between, within, and at the intersections of family labor, employed labor, and educational labor. This study also identifies three distinct modes of motherworking: adaptive motherwork, incorporative motherwork, and transitionary motherwork. When discussing Black motherwork, this study takes into consideration Black women’s histories with economic and education-based discrimination, reproductive injustices, and anti-Black gendered ideologies of families to better understand Black mothers’ decisions navigating social institutions. This study particularly highlights the importance of education as a critical space of Black women’s labor and thus an important component of Black motherwork.