This study examined the effects of marital status and family income on the self-esteem of 292 African American mothers. Counter to previous studies with European American mothers, family income moderated the effects of marital status. Those mothers with higher family income had higher self-esteem, regardless of their marital status. For those with…

This article reports the challenges of race and social class in an action research project to facilitate educational change through community collaboration with African American parents, community organizations, and public schools. This project was undertaken in Charlotte, North Carolina to enhance the participation of African American parents in…

This paper (a) reintroduces E. Franklin Frazier's 1939 book, "The Negro Family in the United States," to family scholars and graduate students and highlights its importance as a groundbreaking and classic text, (b) provides both an introduction to the major thesis of this monograph and a reading of the text, and (c) discusses the…

This article introduces the authors' experiences and observations as grief/bereavement counselors participating in urban and rural funerals. A vignette illustrates the use of rituals and spirituality of one African American family, living in a rural area of Kentucky, and their efforts to cope with their own grief and loss of a loved one. The…

Purpose: This study examined connections (linking, compensatory, or none) between three systems of social support (informal, church, and formal). Predictors of each system were also examined. Design and Methods: A community sample of 187 caregivers who provided care to older African American participants in the Duke Established Populations for…

The Strong African American Families Program, a universal preventive intervention to deter alcohol use among rural African American adolescents, was evaluated in a cluster-randomized prevention trial. This 7-week family skills training program is based on a contextual model in which intervention effects on youth protective factors lead to changes…

Demographic and relationship quality data were collected from 704 individuals recruited to participate in a randomized study of relationship enhancing interventions. Recruiting at bridal shows produced partners who were more satisfied, earlier in their relationships, and less likely to be parents, with a marginally higher proportion of Latino…

This postscript challenges researchers to address the fundamental question, how do we define Black women? Changes in various aspects of Blackness--the Black family, the Black community, the Black experience--are highlighted. Taking into consideration these changes, clarification of how the intersection of gender and ethnicity together with other…

Mothers' and fathers' cultural socialization and bias preparation with older (M=13.9 years) and younger (M=10.31 years) siblings were studied in 162 two-parent, African American families. Analyses examined whether parental warmth and offspring age and gender were linked to parental practices and whether parents' warmth, spouses' racial…

Research from a variety of disciplines indicates that maternal cigarette smoking (MCS) during pregnancy is associated with an array of problematic outcomes, including various measures of criminal offending. Although some researchers have applied Moffitt's developmental taxonomy as a framework for understanding this relationship, this line of…

We present an overview of research on African American families and emphasize in this discussion limitations of approaches used in the past to study African American families. We also discuss and identify challenges for designing and implementing community, family-based programs targeting competence-promoting behaviors in African American…

As part of a comprehensive interview study on African-American grief, the authors explored how racism is incorporated into narratives about a deceased family member. To the extent that experiences of racism are pervasive in African-American life and to the extent that narratives about a person who has died generally account for the life…

This qualitative study represents one of the first efforts to examine how African American fathers protect their children from community violence. Eighteen African American biological and "social" fathers of preschoolers in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area participated in focus groups addressing parenting in violent neighborhoods. Fathers…

Educating young African American males has become an increasing concern for educators and human service professionals over the past 20 years. Disproportionate rates of school failure, drop out, and incarceration all speak to a need to develop interventions, which can account for the structural and ecological factors that impact Black families and…

To evaluate the type and quality of child care used by low-income families who were either receiving or not receiving subsidized child care, we interviewed 111 African American parents from a randomly selected sample of low-income families. We inquired about their child-care use, satisfaction with care, work stress, and employment history. Using…