“Protective Mothering: Black and White Women’s Approach to Childrearing through (Home)Schooling”

How do class-advantaged Black and white homeschooling mothers talk about childrearing? How does talk of childrearing reflect mothers’ location within the gender, race, and class hierarchy? This talk draws from interviews with Black and white mothers living in one Northeastern city to examine these questions. Women describe how their experiences of childrearing rely on their mothering work and result in conflict between their career, family, and children’s schooling. Many mothers respond to these tensions by leaving careers to provide protective mothering to secure their child’s future success in an unstable world. Yet how women describe practicing protective mothering varies by race. Stewart will discuss the findings within the context of her new book, The Color of Homeschooling: How Inequality Shapes School Choice (NYU Press 2023).