Not Our Kind of Girl: Unravelling the Myths of Black Teenage Motherhood - Hardcover

Kaplan, Elaine Bell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520087364 ISBN 13: 9780520087361

Publisher: University of California Press, 1997

Synopsis

One of the most worrisome images in America today is that of the teenage mother. For the African-American community, that image is especially troubling: All the problems of the welfare system seem to spotlight the black teenage mom. Elaine Bell Kaplan's affecting and insightful book dispels common perceptions of these young women. Her interviews with the women themselves, and with their mothers and grandmothers, provide a vivid picture of lives caught in the intersection of race, class, and gender.

Kaplan challenges the assumption conveyed in the popular media that the African-American community condones teen pregnancy, single parenting, and reliance on welfare. Especially telling are the feelings of frustration, anger, and disappointment expressed by the mothers and grandmothers Kaplan interviewed. And in listening to teenage mothers discuss their problems, Kaplan hears first-hand of their misunderstandings regarding sex, their fraught relationships with men, and their difficulties with the educational system—all factors that bear heavily on their status as young parents.

Kaplan's own experience as an African-American teenage mother adds a personal dimension to this book, and she offers substantial proposals for rethinking and reassessing the class factors, gender relations, and racism that influence black teenagers to become mothers.

About this title

About the Author:

Elaine Bell Kaplan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.

From Library Journal:

Sociologist Kaplan (Univ. of Southern California) spent over three years interviewing black teenage mothers (and their mothers) in East Oakland, California. Using an ethnographic approach, she considers the teens' choice of motherhood in the light of gender, race, class relations, and socioeconomic conditions, within the context of Daniel Patrick Moynihan's culture of poverty, W.J. Wilson's economic determinism, and C. Stark's cultural strategies theories. She finds female black teenagers insecure, seeking an idealized relationship through motherhood, longing in vain for a male-headed, Brady Bunch-like model family. A reversal in the rising numbers of these welfare-dependent single mothers depends, says Kaplan, upon a different environment than now exists. She urges proactive support for young back women from feminist and community-oriented groups and financial, educational, and political sources. Well argued and readable, this is highly recommended for academics, professionals, and educated lay readers.?Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0520087364
• ISBN 13: 9780520087361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 265