African American Single Mothers

Chapter 1: Introduction
The strengths and resilience of African American single mothers has historically changed families and communities for the better. However, African American single mothers are often a vulnerable population at risk for poor physical and mental health with negative outcomes outweighing both their female and male counterparts (Hatcher, Rayens, Peden, & Hall, 2012). There has been numerous race comparative self-esteem studies and research on the effects of single parenthood on child and adolescent self-esteem. Yet few studies focus on the factors that impact both positive and negative self-esteem exclusively in African American mothers apart from their children. Most of what we know about the self-esteem of African Americans

When fathers are not around to share the child care or provide financially, the full responsibility falls on the mother, increasing the overwhelming demands of this obligation (Youngblut, Brady, Brooten, & Thomas, 2000). Smith, Oliver, and Innocenti (2001) found that low levels of social support are associated with high levels of parenting stress, increased anger towards the children, and increased psychological distress or depression, all of which adversely affect parenting. Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn (2010) concluded that consistent parenting quality, such as sensitivity and responsiveness, are lower in low-income mothers because of the mismatch between the multiple demands and access to fewer resources. The inability to provide the sensitivity and responsiveness has a direct effect on children?s healthy development. In particular, low-income African American mothers are often less responsive, engage in fewer teaching opportunities with their children during the day, and are more likely to engage in physical punishment as opposed to inductive reasoning (Bradley, Corwyn, McAdoo, & Garcia Coll,

This theory illustrates ?how the environment impacts human development" (Bronfenbrenner, 1986, p. 723) as a result of a number of influences such as social networks, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. Sontag (1996) stated that the Ecological Theory highlights the multiple influences on the development of the individual and family. The model includes four subsets: (1) Microsystem, (2) Mesosystem, (3) Exosystem, and (4) Macrosystem.
The microsystems are the contexts of everyday life (i.e. social supports: family, school, and neighborhood). The mesosystem is a system of microsystems, or the inter-relations among the major settings containing the developing person at a particular point in his/her life (i.e. interactions between family, schools, mother?s income, poverty). The exosystem is the extension of the mesosystem embracing other formal and informal social structures that do not contain the developing person, but within which other events occur that indirectly influence processes with the immediate structure in which the developing person lives (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). An exosystem could be work, the mass media, or informal social networks. The macrosystem is the overarching institutional patterns of culture or subculture, such as the economic, educational, legal, medical, mental health, and political systems (Bronfenbrenner,