African American Parenting

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Parenting Among African American Families While African American parents face the same developmental tasks that all parents face, they also have to overcome additional tasks to make sure their will children survive and grow up to be functioning adults not only within their own group of people, but also within other groups of people (McAdoo, 2002; Julian, McKenry, & McKelvey, 1994). African American parents have a tougher time facing the numerous tasks they have as parents. African American parents and individuals in general are ignored by the press and mostly never addressed, except when the press is covering negative manners. African American families and children can only be fully understood in relation to the interaction of their ethnicity, …show more content…
The discrimination that African American children will face throughout their lives is a difficult context of parenting and requires many actions and messages from African American parents to their African American children. African American parents have to protect their children from racism within their ethnic group and outside of their ethnic group, but be careful not to overprotect their children. They have to make sure their children are ready to deal with the racism their entire lives (McAdoo, 2002). African American parents have to teach their children to develop the double conscious, in which they view the world with both African American eyes and European American eyes. In addition they have to teach their children the skill of being bicultural (McAdoo, 2002). To cope with enslavement and its aftermath, many African American families have found it important to maintain communal family traditions. Some of the communal family traditions include oral traditions, spirituality, shared childcare, and co-residential extended families and their support (McAdoo, 2002). In addition, African American parents place a high value on respecting, obeying, and learning from elders in the community (Dixon, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2008; Julian, …show more content…
These are additional tasks that African American parents have to perform, in addition to their other parental duties and these tasks require specific and particular approaches and efforts that other parents do not have to perform (McAdoo, 2002). African American families cannot help younger family members or couples with childhood expenses, college expenses, or new house expenses because they have not accumulated wealth over the years as European American families have so there is no room to help others in the family. Every generation of African American families has to climb up the ladder and start from fresh there is no family inheritance of wealth (McAdoo, 2002). More African American males are inconsistently incarcerated or under the criminal justice system each year than European American males for similar crimes, which increases the number of single parent households, decreases the level of education, and increases the number of lower economic status individuals. When resources are limited, African American grandparents will give up their own needs to provide foe their grandchildren. Many African American children are orphaned or left alone because of the parents’ or their