As the twig is bent: childrearing and working poor, older African American mothers

Little is known about the sex role socialization of African American children. The broad purpose of this descriptive pilot study was the generation of hypotheses to test the influence of environmentalist and behaviorist orientations on working, poor, older African American mothers' childrearing ideologies and practices for sex role socialization from their perspectives. Three mothers (ages 40-54 years) participated in 4 weekly focus groups. The ethnographic interview and iterative data analysis techniques are adapted from Spradley (1979). One prototypic domain of beliefs and practices is presented in detail. The findings suggested that the mothers' (a) childrearing ideologies about and practices for differential sex role socialization are influenced inconsistently by environmentalist and behaviorist orientations and (b) ideologies and practices for the socialization of males into sex roles are contradictory. Specific hypotheses are generated from the prototypic domain.