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Her work, his work, their work: time and self-care in Black middle-class couples

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Her work, his work, their work: time and self-care in Black middle-class couples

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Content HER WORK, HIS WORK, THEIR WORK:
TIME AND SELF-CARE IN BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS COUPLES
by
LaToya Deneece Council
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(SOCIOLOGY)
August 2022
Copyright 2022 LaToya D. Council
ii
I dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Sharon Grady Slocumb.

iii
Acknowledgements
A widely known and accepted phrase is that “it takes a village to raise a child.” Parents
and guardians should have the support of kin, fictive kin, friends, and neighbors—a village.
Villages are important, and when we encounter personal challenges, our villagers are there,
pouring into who we are and who we strive to become. A similar thought can be applied to
graduate school, and the completion of a dissertation. It takes and has taken a village to raise me,
a PhD. My village consists of advisors, mentors, friends, family, and other mothers, who each
stepped in and supported me as I completed my dissertation.
I experienced many moments where ideas were not coming across on paper, or I felt
defeated when my work received few and far in-between external recognitions. When those
moments occurred, Dr. Michael Messner was right there, cheering me and my work on, and
served as a reminder of how important research on Black middle-class couples, work, family,
and self-care is. Thank you, Mike, for constantly encouraging me, and supporting my work.
During the days it was hard for me to believe in my project, you believed, and always said, “keep
going.” I am going to “keep going,” because it is through your example, that I have learned what
it means to be a sociologist, a teacher, and a colleague. By modeling your approach to
advisement, I hope my students come to learn as much from me as I learned from you.
Personal initiative, and a committed dissertation chair are just two important components
to complete a research project. It also takes the commitment of other professors known as the
dissertation committee. I am thankful for Dr. Jennifer Hook, Dr. Jody Agius Vallejo, Dr. Lynne
Casper, and Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro for serving on my dissertation committee. In ways
that cannot be fully described here, each of you showed not only a commitment to my research,
but to me as a person. Dr. Hook, your encouragement and continued advice to approach graduate

iv
school like a 9 to 5 helped me stay grounded. I was reminded that my career is just one aspect of
who I am. Dr. Vallejo, thank you for always listening to me, and for being a wise confidant when
I experienced challenges as a first-generation graduate student. Learning from you about how to
navigate academia has been everything I needed it to be, and I am confident in who I am as a
first-generation scholar because of your constant check-ins, words of encouragement, and advice.
Dr. Casper, thank you for taking an interest in me, my ideas, and my career from the very
beginning. When I felt behind, you always reminded me of “the learning curve,” and assured me
that I would catch on to academic culture. Dr. AMHA, thank you for nurturing the Black
Feminist journey I began at Spelman College. When I enrolled in your Feminist Theory course,
and read your books, I knew I had to have you on my committee. You often challenged me to
view intersectionality as a theoretical paradigm, which is not easy. Thank you for supporting me
and encouraging me as I strive to continue to approach social problems at the intersections.
My dissertation committee has been integral to my journey and development as an
independent scholar, but it would be very remiss of me if I did not acknowledge a group of
professors who have helped me along the way, providing a coveted desire among academics—
time. In different ways, these professors provided time to me as it related to my research ideas,
with some, reading multiple drafts of my work. I am thankful for their time commitment. Those
professors are Dr. Elaine Bell Kaplan, Dr. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Dr. Leland Saito, Dr.
Rhacel Parreñas, Dr. Ann Owens, Dr. Emily Smith-Greenaway, Dr. Hajar Yazdiha, Dr. Dan
Schrage, Dr. Nina Eliasoph, Dr. Brittany Friedman, Dr. Josh Seim, and Dr. Kris Marsh.
Financial support and opportunities to present my research were instrumental and helped
move my dissertation foreword. I am thankful for the American Association of University
Women (AAUW), and the Dornsife Graduate School at USC for funding my research. Financial

v
support provided me the time and financial relief I needed to travel for data collection, write, and
present at conferences. From 2018 to 2021, I collected data in the Washington, D.C., Maryland,
and Virginia area. While there, the departments of Sociology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park provided space for me to do my work, and
opportunities to workshop my ideas. Thank you to Dr. Dawn Dow and Dr. Rashawn Ray the co-
directors of the Critical Race Initiative within the Department of Sociology, and to Dr. Ruth
Zambrana, the director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. The extension of
networks provided to me was incredibly helpful.
I am immensely thankful for the sociology staff team at USC Sociology. Stachelle
Overland, thank you for being a graduate advisor, a confidant, and friend. Your office provided
me a safe space when graduate school became challenging. When I needed encouragement, you
were there with supportive words and actions. Melissa Hernandez, thank you for being available
and answering the many questions I had regarding courses, books for TA courses, and funding
deadlines. The amount of time you all provided is appreciated, and I know this achievement is
even greater because of both of you. I would also like to thank former USC Sociology staff
members Amber Thomas and Lisa Losorelli for welcoming me to the department, and for
making USC Sociology a joyful space.
Family and friends. I identify you all as the backbone of the village. Each of you have
been with me every step of the way, cheering me on, providing words of encouragement, and
most importantly time to just be me. Writing a dissertation requires a lot of focus, determination,
and stamina, which requires being in academic mode for long periods of time. Family and
friends, your careful observations and attention to my wellbeing has helped me reach the finish
line. I hold each of you close to my heart.

vi
Ignacio Cruz, thank you for being my friend and my “hermanito.” You are family, friend,
and academic confidant. I look forward to continuing my “academic life” with the support of
your friendship. Jade Johnson, my sister. Days at your home with our mom, Mama Cheryl have
provided me the safe space to step away from the academy to recharge for the next day, and the
next big push. Academic friends Karina Santellano, Mary Ippolito, Yael Findler, Blanca
Ramirez, Azeb Madebo, Jillian Kwong, Briana Ellerbe, Carolyn Choi, Chelsea Johnson Rabb,
Robert Chlala, May Lin, Michela Musto, Jude Dizon, Jonathan Cortez, Caitlin Dobson,
Demetrius Murphy, Allison Monterrosa, Nate Rodriguez, Candice Robinson, Shaontá Allen,
Theresa Rocha Beardall, Saugher Nojan, Maretta McDonald, Taylor Jackson, and Laura
Hartmann-Villalta; there are no words that can rise to the level of love and appreciation I have
for each one of you. Just know, academia is lucky to have your brilliant minds, and I am so
happy that you all call me friend and I can call each of you friend.
My chosen family friends, Marc and Craig, LooLoo and Tau, Karina and Jose, Ignacio
and Ryan, thank you for showing me what true friendship is, and for just being dope people who
I plan to have in my life forever. My Spelman Sisters, Arienne Jones, Devon Dennis, Porsha
Gates, Chelsea Johnson Rabb, Leeasia Wynn, and DeKimberlen Neely, we chose to change the
world, and we are each doing it in our own unique way. You all reminded me of this as I visited
your homes and discussed my dissertation project. Thank you, for encouraging me to be
undaunted by the fight. My CLC sisters, Carolyn Choi and Chelsea Johnson Rabb--we are a
force; a dynamic trio and I am so thankful for your friendship and sisterhood. Our commitment
to research and social justice helped sustain me as I worked through tough ideas and moments in
graduate school because it gently reminded me as to why my research is important.

vii
I want to thank my family. Alander Hasty, our constant check-ins about my work and
graduate school journey were super important for me during the past eight years. I looked
forward to our Sunday night phone calls, where we would talk about the week ahead, goals, and
challenges. You are a true principle and educator, and I am so thankful for your friendship,
teacher spirit, and familial connection. Sabrina Council, you kept me on my toes. Thank you for
listening to my research presentations, as I worked through my ideas. And to my aunts, uncles,
and grandmother, thank you for praying for me as I completed graduate school. I love you all.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to acknowledge my research participants. This project
is because of each one of you. The time you all provided me, the meals, and the trust we built as
you invited me into your homes are memories I will always hold onto. Our conversations about
the Black middle-class, Black families, and the hopes you all have for this work is important to
me, and I hope that I captured many of those hopes and desires described to me in this project.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………ii
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………iii
List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..ix
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………x
Chapter 1: Her and His Time in Black Family Life……………………………………………….1
Chapter 2: Her Work: Strategizing Family and Personal Problems for Black Middle-Class
Women…………………………………………………………………………………………...33
Chapter 3: His Work: The Family First Ethos for Black Middle-Class Men……………………72
Chapter 4: Their Work: “And it was Love”…………………………………………………….121
Chapter 5: It’s All About Love: Challenging Gendered Racism with Revolutionary
Love Politics……………………………………………………………………………………177
References………………………………………………………………………………………183
Appendices
Appendix A: Table 1: List of Women Respondents and Demographics……………...194
Appendix B: Table 2: List of Men Respondents and Demographics…………………195
Appendix C: Table 3: List of Couples and Demographics……………………………196
Appendix D: Informed Consent Form………………………………………………...199
Appendix E: Interview Guide………………………………………………………...203

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List of Tables

Table 1. List of women respondents and demographics
Table 2. List of men respondents and demographics
Table. 3 List of couples and demographics

x
Abstract
The research conducted on time-use, work, and family life shows that within a 24/7
economy, families are having to navigate constraints on the division of time between work and
family. As individuals encounter nonstandard work schedules, they experience constraints on
their time, which tends to reproduce gender inequality and marital conflict at home. The research
on time-use, work, and family has tended to focus on gender, showing that women experience
higher rates of family/work conflict than men. However, we know far less about the ways in
which the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, and class shape individuals’ and couples’
navigation of the 24/7 economy, particularly how they reconcile time-use, work, and family life.
In this dissertation, I address this gap in the literature by asking, how do heterosexual Black
middle-class couples reconcile work and family life? How does gendered racism workplaces
contribute to the dynamic between heterosexual Black middle-class couples and their
reconciliation practices of work and family life. Interviews with 25 Black middle-class couples
with children reveal that both the women and the men expressed what I define as the family first
ethos, but their commitment is patterned by gender. Specifically, Black middle-class women
practice strategic mothering, which results in them trying to find ways to manage career,
motherhood, and marriage in ways that prioritizes family first. To make sense of the multiple
demands on their time, Black middle-class women redefine work-family balance as a personal
problem, that they alone must try to figure out. Black middle-class men also commit to the
family first ethos, but the type of work in which they are employed frames how they express this
commitment. I find that gendered racism from workplace culture shapes the ways in which Black
women and men contend with work and family demands in their marriages, and by extension
their families. The choices couples make “for the good of the family” tend to provide Black men

xi
an opportunity to enact familial masculinities steeped in headship and respect, provide Black
women access to supportive kin networks, while also leaving Black women with “personal
problems” grounded in time constraints. These findings underscore the impact structural
conditions can have on individuals, and the strategies incorporated to commit to family life.

Keywords: gender, work, and family, marriage, race, Black women, Black men

1
Chapter 1
Her and His Time in Black Family Life

If I had the gift of prophecy,
And if I understood all of God’s secret plans
And possessed all knowledge,
And if I had such faith that I could move mountains,
But didn’t love others, I would be nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2 (New Living Translation)

De [black] woman is de mule uh de world
So fur as Ah can see.
Nanny-Their Eyes Were Watching God

Arlie Hochschild wrote The Time Bind in 1997 as families in the United States were
undergoing changing cultures within the workplace. More women were entering the paid
workforce at full-time status, work hours increased, and individuals were trying to reconcile
balance with demanding corporate culture that incentivized longer hours and commitment with
awards like promotion, and opportunities to utilize family-friendly policies that most workers did
not actually pursue. Instead, Hochschild (1997) found that many employees viewed work as a
lower stress environment than home, because homelife became more stressful as individuals
attempted to navigate interpersonal relationships. Put another way, work provided structures that
home often lacked, especially as individuals worked hard to try to find ways to manage both
responsibilities which were stratified by gender. The research conducted since Hochschild’s
(1997) account of time constraints reveals how a 24/7 economy, and the rise in nonstandard work
schedules, creates time constraints which reproduces gender inequality at home, and by
extension marital conflict (Bianchi and Milkie 2010; Jacobs and Gerson 2005; Presser 2000). In
terms of gender, women tend to experience higher rates of family/work conflict than men

2
Today’s dual career families grapple with work/family time pressures that are
experienced unevenly by women and men. However, the time use literature’s focus on gender
inequities often ignores the confounding factors of race and class. In this dissertation, I address
this gap in the literature by asking, how do heterosexual Black middle-class couples reconcile
work and family life? How does gendered racism in workplace culture contribute to the dynamic
between heterosexual Black middle-class couples and their reconciliation practices of work and
family life? These are important questions because gendered racism in the workplace informs the
choices heterosexual Black middle-class couples make about intimate familial relations.
Workplace Culture and the Black Middle-Class
The Black middle-class grew in strength during the mid-1960s, on the heels of the Civil
Rights movement (Landry and Marsh 2011). During and shortly after the movement, the federal
government created affirmative action policies and programs such as the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, federal contract programs,
and federally funded social welfare services to combat poverty and achieve racial equality
(Collins 1983; Landry 1987; Landry and Marsh 2011). These policy implementations supported
Black professionals who were once kept out of professional jobs due to systemic racism. In order
for companies to receive federal funds, they had to hire Black job seekers.
Black middle-class Americans were frequently hired in public relations, and people
services. The people Black professionals were geared to serve were also Black, and often poor
and working-poor Americans (Collins 1983; Landry 1987). Accordingly, a sizeable proportion of
Black middle-class Americans were employed in jobs oriented toward Black recipients of
welfare services such as health and hospital care, corrections, and public transportation. Black
middle-class Americans employed in private White corporations were hired in areas that were

3
often underdeveloped and focused on consumer, manpower, and policy issues related to Black
communities (Collins 1983). Accordingly, many Black middle-class Americans held jobs in
private corporations and in the public sector that directly responded to the political and racial
tension of the 1960s. White corporations’ goals were to ensure Black consumers that they were
invested in equality; as part of this strategy, they employed Black professionals in middle
management areas of specialization.
Sharon Collins (1993) defines jobs employing Black professionals with the aim of
working with Black consumers as “racialized jobs.” Jobs become racialized when a growing
economy and race-based employment stipulations intersect. On the surface, racialized jobs can
appear to meet political and civil demands of racial representation within White corporations and
public sector jobs. And while race-specific jobs employ particular groups to reach particular
consumers and markets, these jobs ultimately reproduce social inequality (Collins 1993). That is,
when pressure at the federal level and within social organizations regarding Black progress
declined, race-based jobs became vulnerable and exposed Black people employed in them to
precarity and uncertainty. This was apparent among the Black middle-class post 1970s,
particularly as the U.S entered the conservative era of Reaganomics (Collins 1993; Landry
1987).
During the era of Reaganomics, government support for racial progress declined. The
affirmative action policies implemented in the 1960s were significantly rolled back. Federal
departments like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission experienced staff shortages
and loss of funding (Collins 1993). Further, federal courts were not supporting policies to
maintain affirmative action mandates. Accordingly, employment gains within the Black middle-
class stagnated. For example, during the 1960s and up until 1980, Black men with college

4
degrees were increasingly employed in managerial careers, and their rates of employment in
these fields were increasing faster than for White men (Collins 1997; Landry 1987; Landry and
Marsh 2011). However, by the end of the 1980s, and well into the 1990s, Black middle-class
men might have been employed as managers, but in sectors with low decision-making power
(Collins 1997).
By the 1990s, an era known in Africana studies as the “Post Soul” (Robinson 2014),
Black Americans within the middle-class often met a career cap as to how far they could go in
corporate America. Because the middle-income jobs in which they were most likely employed
were connected to racial progress, and race-specific consumers, they were often left out of
“money producing” jobs that came with decision-making power (Collins 1997; Landry and
Marsh 2011), which left many Black middle-class Americans tracking into racialized jobs that
exposed them to fewer opportunities to build skills, and more routinized work. Limited skills and
routinized work ultimately lowered many Black professionals’ human capital (Collins 1997;
Landry and Marsh 2011), and thus, their ability to compete in many ways with White
professionals for the jobs that included higher pay and more decision-making power within a
changing market economy.
Workplace Culture, the Black Middle-Class and the New Racism
Over the last decade the U.S. market economy has changed, particularly an expansion of
the service economy. In prior decades, jobs within the service economy were hourly and
consisted of industries such as customer representation, beauty and nail care, and restaurant and
hospitality. However, the service economy, has expanded and now includes careers like
education, health care, and technology. And like previous decades, minorities and women are
largely employed in these industries (Wingfield 2019). In addition, Black Americans are

5
underrepresented in what would be considered contemporary professional jobs (Wingfield 2019).
This matters because professional jobs are often tied to comfortable levels of income, stable
hours, adequate benefits, and much more autonomy (Wingfield 2019). To handle this low
representation, social organizations in the 1990s developed a diversity ideology, which called for
more representation (Embrick 2011).
Diversity has been a commonplace theme in workplace culture for the past few decades.
The purpose of diversity is to increase and support the cultural logic of acceptance, equality, and
respect for individuals’ cultural practices (Collins 2011a). Even though an investment in
diversity appears to be an inclusive practice, scholarship examining social institutions like work
and education, find that an investment in diversity rhetoric conceals the truth about racial, ethnic,
and gender inequalities because diversity does not equate to full inclusion (Collins 2011a;
Embrick 2011; Ray 2019; Wingfield 2021). A significant driver of diversity practices within the
workplace is largely due to major corporations’ commitment to incorporate minoritized
individuals (Collins 2011b; Embrick 2011). Like in previous decades, corporations’ initiative to
implement a diverse workplace culture was largely in response to consumers, particularly
consumers of color and women. And while diversity initiatives within workplaces often led to
more representation, much more tolerable for White employees than affirmative action policies,
it also led to social inequality between Black and White American job seekers (Collins 2011b;
Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). Specifically, Black professionals hired under the notion of
increasing diversity, are often placed in sectors of the company with less prestige and lower pay.
Accordingly, diversity in workplace culture makes room for Black professionals but in ways that
largely maintains white supremacy within professional workplaces.

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Since workplace culture operates in a way that tends to create segregated spaces (Ray
2019), it is important to examine how marginalized professionals navigate and respond to
racialized jobs under the guise of diversity and inclusion. Adia Harvey Wingfield, a prominent
scholar examining work organizations at the intersection of race, gender, and class, has
documented the impact workplace culture has on Black middle-class employees. Wingfield
(2013; 2020) finds that workplace culture often has diverging impacts on Black women and men
patterned by gender. The culmination of sexism and racism within workplace culture led
Wingfield (2013; 2020) to develop and argue the concept known as gendered racism within work
organizations. Gendered racism is the experience of racism in ways that take on gendered
meanings and informed by controlling racialized stereotypes. For example, Black men employed
in professional careers like law, engineering, and medicine expressed in interviews with
Wingfield (2013) that they carefully navigated controlling stereotypes White employers and co-
workers had of Black men. The image of the Angry Black Man, for instance, could lead to Black
men being marginalized, or even pushed out of professional networks that were critical for
mentoring, advancement, and promotion. In contrast, professional Black women are often
managing controlling stereotypes such as The Mammy and being hypersexualized (Wingfield
2020). A gendered difference between Black women and men is that Black women appear to
have slightly more room to push against workplace culture than Black men. However, in both
cases, Black women and men often incorporate emotional labor to combat gendered racism in
the workplace.
Developed by Arlie Hochschild in The Managed Heart, emotional labor is a response to
the often highly gendered “feeling rules” in workplaces, especially acute in face-to-face
interactions that are germane in the service industry. The research on emotional labor at the

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intersection of race, gender, and class, shows how the construction of feeling rules responding to
interpersonal encounters within workplaces are different for marginalized workers, and can
require different bodily responses depending on who workers are engaging (Choi 2017; Kang
2010; Wingfield 2021). For example, Black Americans experience a different set of rules of
engagement regarding emotional labor than their White coworkers. Specifically, the ability to
express anger and frustration at work tends to be available to White employees but within a
context of gendered racism and controlling images. Black employees learn that they put
themselves at risk in their jobs if they express anger or frustration (Wingfield 2021). When Black
people express anger, for instance, they risk triggering White colleagues’ internalized fears of
Black Americans supposed natural tendencies to be violent (Wingfield 2021).
Even in careers like law and finance, where anger and frustration are often expressed and
expected, Black lawyers and financers construct feeling rules that do not rely on anger and
frustration (Wingfield 2021). Responses to emotional labor among Black employees is gendered.
For example, Black women are more likely to express anger at work than Black men but are
careful to do so when the benefits outweigh the cost such as countering marginalization
(Wingfield 2021). In contrast, Black men rarely express anger at work because the consequences
could lead to job loss and social isolation (Wingfield 2013; 2020). Kristen Schilts found that the
context of gendered racism and controlling images is evident among Black transgender workers.
Specifically, a Black transman stated that when he spoke in a loud voice as a woman, co-workers
viewed him as a loud Black woman. After transitioning, speaking loudly triggered co-workers’
fears of Black men and violence. These gendered responses to feeling rules within workplace
culture among Black women and men occur because work organizations largely operate within
an unchallenged presumption of Whiteness. To manage unchallenged Whiteness, Black workers

8
look to their personal experiences and their knowledge of broader social acts to inform the
emotional labor they carry out at work (Wingfield 2021).
The new racism is born out of the post-civil rights era and is considered an encountering
of more covert forms of racism (Collins 2005; Wingfield 2019). Under the new racism, Black
people’s experiences with workplace culture appears to be similar to those of Black people
shortly after affirmative action policies and programs were implemented. Like affirmative action
policies, diversity initiatives on the surface create a multicultural workforce, but underneath,
both affirmative action and diversity actually serve to reproduce inequality. Black people
employed in diversity-typed racialized jobs are tracked into a segregated workforce, which
means they are underrepresented in jobs with higher pay, better benefits, and more decision-
making power (Collins 2011; Ray 2019. Wingfield 2019). In addition, companies’ investments
in diversity, also conceal how the burden to combat microaggressions is often the responsibility
of the person offended. For example, in research on veterans and their efforts to stand for peace,
Michael Messner found that the impetus to bring more diversity into progressive organizations,
especially women of color into leadership positions was often undermined by the
microaggressions women of color and non-binary members experienced as they voiced their
concerns regarding the lack of inclusion within the organization. As the individuals experiencing
microaggressions, women of color veterans felt the need to either view the microaggressions
toward them as teaching moments, or silently endure. Messner (2021) underscores that either
option, which requires emotional labor to create a set of feeling rules in compliance with the
White male majority can and does have consequences for marginalized individuals. Specifically,
microaggressions within organizations not only harm individuals, but create an interactional
dynamic between individuals that ultimately reproduces inequality (Messner 2021). That is, the

9
emotional labor recipients of microaggressions must enact to manage social experiences like
gaslighting places the responsibility on individuals to do something about the situation, instead
of the organization taking responsibility (Balsam, Molina, Beadnell, Simoni, and Walters 2011;
Messner 2021). A similar process is occurring in other racialized organizations like work.
Although Black Americans are not likely to encounter overt forms of racism in their daily
work lives, racially stratified work organizations create a challenge for them to commit to the
organization (Wingfield 2019). Put another way, because Black Americans tend to experience
gendered racism in employment, it is often hard for them to view work organizations positively.
An exception is work-aligned commitments in service of communities they engage. The ability
to reorient work to be in-service to community is also correlated with social class. Reorienting
work to be in-service to community is a form of agency, and this agency is often dependent on
the type of racialized job Black Americans are employed (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). For
instance, Black professionals often carry out more equitable and social justice-oriented work
demands because they often have the time to do so compared to poor and working poor Black
Americans (Wingfield 2019). In her study on Black healthcare professionals, Wingfield (2019)
found that Black medical professionals in high-status positions like doctors committed
themselves to communities of color, even when the financial costs were high. By committing to
communities of color, these medical professionals created more opportunities for lower status
medical workers of color, particularly since institutional support for those workers was limited.
The experiences of Black Americans in work organizations under the new racism reveals
multiple dynamic processes simultaneously occurring. One, the culture of diversity is revealed to
be another form of racial inequality (Collins 2011; Embrick 2011). Even though diversity
practices within work organizations create a multiracial demographic, the jobs many people of

10
color tend to be employed are siloed into sectors with lower opportunities for advancements and
decision-making power. Employment segregation carries serious costs, including racialized time
constraints. By virtue of their positions in racialized work organizations, workers of color, even
those in higher status positions, often have less control over their time use on the job as well as
off the job. Lower control over how time is used within and outside of work, can impact
planning for the future (Ray 2019). In addition, people of color who are working in organizations
that have stated a commitment to diversity often experience microaggressions that require them
to enact burdensome emotional labor performances, and/or to absorb a series of small harms that
can accumulate to large health troubles (Balsam et al. 2011; Messner 2021; Wingfield 2021).
This emotional burden has consequences for victims and makes it harder for them to feel
connected to the organization, and in this case, the workplace. But some workers of color do
enact agency, particularly those in high-status professions (Wingfield 2019). Given these
experiences with workplace culture under the new racism, how are workers of color, particularly
Black workers responding? How do these experiences with workplace culture show up at home?
How do the strains and challenges of gendered racism in workplaces impact meanings and
negotiations that go into hers and his time in work and family life?
Black American Family Culture and the Black Middle-Class
Black Americans’ experiences with employment discrimination has shaped Black
families in a multitude of ways. Research on Black families has suggested that the impact of
employment discrimination has stimulated more egalitarianism practices within Black family
life. In fact, scholars like Bart Landry show how Black Americans are symbolic pioneers of
egalitarian families within the United States due to Black women and men’s experiences of
gendered racism in workplaces. This egalitarianism is evident in the research on gender and

11
parenting in Black family life (Dow 2019; Hill 2002), Black women and family life (Barnes
2016; Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean, Marsh, and Landry 2015; Dill 1988; Dow 2016; Harley
1990; Jones 2010; Landry 2000), Black men and family life (Cazenave 1983; Hunter and Sellers
1998; Johnson and Young 2016; Kane 2000), and the division of housework and childcare
(Glauber and Gozjolko 2011; Orbuch and Eyster 1991; Kamo and Cohen 1998).
Parenting in Black families is stratified by gender. For example, scholarship shows that
Black parents often view gender equality in work as important for their sons and daughters.
Parents also rear their daughters to be self-reliant and independent, and rear their sons to be
attentive to masculinities like protection. External to the home, in public spaces like work, Black
parents emphasize teaching their children gender equality. However, in the home, Black parents
often invest in rearing their children to adhere to more gendered essential beliefs regarding
womanhood and manhood (Hill 2002). How Black parents rear their children is a response to
structural racism. For example, rearing Black girls to be self-reliant is geared toward helping
them to grow into independence, and not depend on anyone financially (Collins 1987; Hill
2002). In contrast, parents’ fear of their sons lives due to policing and stereotypes of Black men
as violent, often lead them to rear their sons to be aware of the broader publics’ beliefs regarding
Black men in order to keep them safe and out of trouble. Black mothers count on male kin
networks to help them rear their sons to be mindful of their racialized gendered appearance, as
well as to help young Black men realize social mobility (Dow 2019). These different realities for
Black girls and boys shape the dynamic among Black adults as it relates to their positions in
Black family life.
The self-reliance Black girls are taught in childhood can play a critical role in their adult
lives. For example, scholarship shows that self-reliance helps Black women achieve upward

12
mobility for themselves and their families (Dill 1988; Higginbotham and Weber 1992). Many
Black parents emphasize that mobility can be achieved when career and education are prioritized
over interpersonal relationships. Accordingly, as women who are often reared to place their
careers and individual success over romantic relationships, Black women appear to adhere to
lessons of strength, and women who can and should care for themselves (Collins 1987; 2000). In
addition, the strategy of self-reliance can lead Black women to perceive themselves as not having
access to alternative choices outside of working (Taylor, Tucker, and Mitchell-Kernan 1999).
However, more recent scholarship shows a shift in self-reliance, especially among Black women
within the middle-class.
Since Black women are often reared to be self-reliant, gender, work, and family scholars
have examined how Black women reconciled self-reliance with marriage and motherhood
(Barnes 2016l Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et al. 2015; Dow 2016; Taylor et al. 1999).
Responding to the work and family demands on Black women’s time, scholarship found that
Black women construct a work-family integration schema (Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et
al. 2015; Dow 2016). The work-family integration schema has been primarily examined among
Black women within the middle-class and shows that the integration of work and family helps
them to accomplish the demands expected of them in Black American culture—to participate in
the paid workforce full-time while participating emotionally and physically in family life. In a
response to the work-family integration schema, some Black middle-class women practice what
anthropologist Riché Barnes titled “strategic mothering,” wherein they seek ways to “redefine
their relationships with work to best fit the needs of their families and communities” (pg. 2).
Often, this means Black middle-class women are trading in self-reliance to rely on their
husbands, and to do so, many craft family availability that includes reducing work hours,

13
temporarily leaving the paid workforce, and switching positions in their career that allows them
to work hours aligning more with family life.
The research conducted on Black middle-class women’s time related to work and family
life is abundant. Not so abundant is the research on Black middle-class men’s experiences with
work and family life. What is understood is that Black middle-class men’s position within
racialized jobs has stagnated since the 1980s (Collins 1997; Landry and Marsh 2011). After the
1980s, Black middle-class men are reported to work in occupations with low decision-making
power, benefits, and pay compared to their White counterparts (Wingfield 2019). In addition,
Black middle-class men encounter gendered racism, and must embody emotional performances
to maintain employment (Wingfield 2013; 2020). These work experiences, and the overall
workplace culture, has framed the limited scholarship on Black middle-class men’s participation
in family. Further, family literature often makes broad generalizations, that rarely disaggregates
men’s family experiences by social class, with much of the research conducted assuming that
most Black men’s experiences with employment discrimination will have the same impact in
family life.
Another area where Black men’s participation in family life is examined is related to
housework and childcare. Scholarship in this area underscores that Black men’s experiences with
employment discrimination, and co-providership with Black women informs their larger
participation in housework and childcare than White men (Glauber and Gozjolko 2011; Orbuch
and Eyster 1991; Kamo and Cohen 1998). That is, Black men’s lower wages often prevent them
from bargaining out of housework, and their sharing of co-providership with Black women often
prevents them from working longer hours to achieve higher wages because their families often
rely on both to help with the division of chores and childcare. These experiences and stark

14
contrast from White men due in large part to structural racism, has led scholarship to suggest that
Black men incorporate egalitarian practices.
Scholarship examining Black men’s gender attitudes show that Black men maintain
egalitarian beliefs about women’s positions in the market economy. In their study on Black men
and feminist attitudes, Hunters and Sellers (1998) found that Black men support women working
outside the home, as well as feminism as an ideology. Kane (2000) in a review shows that the
support for gender equality among Black men is mixed. For example, some scholarship argues
that Black middle-class men are more likely to embody egalitarian practices because of their
possible better position in the market economy than poor and working poor Black men
(Cazenave 1983; Hill 2005). Further, in a study on gender and Black parents, Hill (2002) found
more gender equality beliefs and practices among Black middle-class parents. However,
scholarship on providership particularly, shows that poor and working-poor Black men are more
likely to practice egalitarianism because of their position in the market economy (Roy 2004; Roy
and Dyson 2010), while Black middle-class men might support financial egalitarian practices,
while still maintaining headship at home and lower gender egalitarian views of Black women’s
position in the home (Blee and Tickamyer 1995; Ransford and Miller 1983).
Black middle-class men’s mixed embodiment of egalitarian and gender egalitarian
practices was particularly evident in the 1990s. During the 1990s, the implementation of public
campaigns invested in Black manhood and fatherhood were created by Black middle-class men
to help poor and working-poor Black men to remember and recommit to the expectation of them
in Black family life (Hill 2005; Messner 1997). Campaigns were responding to the racialized
stereotype of Black men as absent fathers lacking leadership in their homes. The campaign also
focused on helping poor and working-poor Black men to see the error in using violence against

15
Black women to regain respect at home (Hill 2005; Messner 1997). For example, Christian Black
pastor Tony Evans was a key participant in “The Promise Keepers” movement and insisted that
poor men should not enact violence at home but become men who prioritize power and respect
through enacting leadership and male headship of the home (Hill 2005; Messner 1997). Further,
Black men who participated in the “Million Man March,” took an oath to not be violent toward
Black women and children, and instead, becoming men committed to leadership within Black
communities (Messner 1997). Masculinities scholars critiqued these movements and show that
fatherhood movements focused on male headship and leadership, maintained patriarchy and male
authority in Black family life (Messner 1997; Hill 2005; hooks 2004; Neal 2006).
However, since the 2007 and 2008 economic recession, Black middle-class men’s
experiences with family life has not been researched (Johnson and Young 2016). This is
important to underscore, because since the economic recession, the Black middle class has
experienced a decline (Lacy 2012), and Black professionals are employed in racialized jobs with
low decision-making power (Collins 1997; Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). This change urges the
question, under what conditions are some Black men likely to be more gender egalitarian in their
families? According to Johnson and Young (2016), fewer material and financial resources as
well as communal expectations shape the meaning making of fatherhood in Black families.
When Black fathers are resourced constrained, they often perform fatherhood embodying what
they believe is expected of them within the few options available (Johnson and Young 2016). For
example, Wingfield (2009) learned that Black male nurses embraced care and nurturance to
combat racism and racial inequality. Involved fatherhood and emotional and psychosocial forms
of support in the family may be seen as Black middle-class men’s responses to their racially

16
stratified positions in the market economy to combat racism and racial inequality (Johnson and
Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and Dyson 2010).
A Note on Marriage and the Black Community
Research on Black middle-class Americans in family life reveals multiple dynamic
processes, all stratified by race and gender. Particularly, structural racism in employment
constrains and enables gender relations in Black American family life. But a significant gap in
current scholarship concerns the under theorization of the marital bond. The examination of
marriage in Black families has largely focused on factors preventing Black marriages such as
underemployment and unemployment among Black men, the risk of welfare services that helps
Black women provide for their families, and the low number of eligible Black men due to
incarceration (Dickson 1993; Edin and Kefalas 2005; Wilson 1996). In more recent research,
when it comes to first marriage for women, data reveals that White women are twice as likely to
marry than Black women (Cohen and Pepin 2018). This trend is most evident among women
with low educational achievement, but findings still held that Black women’s lower likelihood of
marriage is hindered by the marriage squeeze (Cohen and Pepin 2018). Although this research
explains structural factors contributing to the lower marriage rate among Black Americans, the
experiences of Black middle-class Americans is not well understood. Still, many Black middle-
class women see some utility in marriage, especially since under the new racism they appear to
be trading in self-reliance for marriage and motherhood (Barnes 2016).
Some studies underscore the reality that the marriage squeeze (low availability of eligible
partners within birth cohort) can have an impact on Black middle-class women’s opportunities to
marry in ways similar to constraints on poor and working poor Black women (Clarke 2011;
Marsh, Darity, Cohen, Casper, and Salters 2007). Notwithstanding this impact, research on

17
marriage in the Black community show that Black Americans’ commitment to the institution of
marriage is apparent throughout U.S. history (Foster 2010; Hunter 2017; McDonald and Cross-
Barnet 2018). Sometimes marriages were fragile due to structural inequality, and sometimes
marriage cemented support for Black women and men who received little to none structural
resources. For example, during and after slavery, status as slaves prevented Black people from
marrying. However, sexual relations outside of marriage, and concern about the lack of marriage
among enslaved Black people encouraged abolitionists to move forward with efforts to eradicate
slavery from the south (Hunter 2017). In addition, some free Black people, committed to their
wives or husbands who were enslaved, would enter slavery to maintain a commitment to their
marriages (Foster 2010; Hunter 2017). When couples were separated by slavers, they assumed
they were still married. After slavery, many free Black Americans did get married, which
allowed many wives and widows of Black soldiers’ access to resources to help them survive
following the Civil War (Hunter 2017). The most well-known act of commitment to the
institution of marriage among enslaved Black people was Harriet Jacobs’s story. In her
autobiography, Harriet Jacobs explained her refusal to marry after the free Black man she
planned to marry was taken from her by her White enslaver because she refused his sexual
advances. Jacobs’s (1861) commitment to the man she planned to marry endured, and at the end
of her narrative her refusal to marry was assertively claimed as she stated “reader, my story ends
with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage” (pg. 302). Accordingly, the presence of
marriage in Black America during and shortly after slavery serve as a frame for understanding
the institution of marriage and its operation as a form of support and burden.
Contemporary research on Black marriages has underscored the ways in which the
emphasis of marriage among Black Americans is an outcome of racial neoliberalism. That is, in

18
an era of the declining welfare state, Black women are expected to handle their personal
problems that should have the commitment of state resources through marriage (Henderson
2020). Henderson (2020) underscores that a reliance on marriage to manage systemic problems
can have an impact on Black women including exposing them to unhealthy partnerships and
racist and sexist ideals of womanhood Black women should embody to be viewed as
marriageable. Henderson’s (2020) examination of marriage in Black America points to the
impact of racial neoliberalism, especially since greater proportions of White middle-class
Americans can realize mobility and opportunity outside of marriage within an era of
individualism (Cherlin 2010).
Aneeka Ayanna Henderson’s critique of marriage in an era of racial neoliberalism
explains the impact unhealthy relationships and racist and sexist ideals regarding marriageable
Black womanhood can have on Black women’s wellbeing. Under the new racism, Black women
are often bombarded with racially harmful stereotypes about Black womanhood (Cole and Guy-
Sheftall 2003; Collins 2000; 2005; Harris-Perry 2011; Jenkins 2007). For example, in 2014,
online dating site OkCupid released a report outlining users dating responses by race and gender.
The report indicated that Black women and Asian men received the least number of responses
back from potential matches. In addition, popular press bookshelves are filled with titles
attempting to tell Black women what they need to do to get and keep a man including Steve
Harvey’s best seller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Harvey’s (2009) book became a film in
2012, titled Think Like a Man and grossed $96.1million in box office sales. In 2020, Black pastor
Michael Todd released a book titled Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, and
Sex to help unwed Christians achieve marriage, particularly a marriage that centers faith. On
social media platforms such as Instagram, media influencers like Derrick Jaxn grew a large

19
media following as he used Christian-based misogynistic rhetoric to help Black women navigate
tumultuous dating relationships to find an everlasting loving relationship. And during summer
2020, celebrity couple Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, discussed their marriage, and the
challenges Jada experienced in shouldering motherhood, marriage, and career (Council, Marsh,
Chaney 2020). However, the most widely known public mentioning of Black marriage problems
was Ralph Richard Banks’s popular book Is Marriage for White People? These books, films, and
Red Table Talk series (Jada Pinkett Smith) are often geared toward Black women to find ways to
fix their singlehood problem, as well as find strategies to manage marital conflict.
Looking to Black women to “fix” personal problems related to family life, including
marriage is connected to a long and sustained use of racist and sexist stereotypes to control and
police Black women’s gender and sexuality (Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Collins 2000; 2005;
Jenkins 2007). In her widely read book Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins outlined the
impact controlling images had on Black women, especially if those images were internalized.
Related to work and family life, Collins (2000) described the “Black lady” controlling image
which is predicated on Black middle-class women upholding respectable images of Black
womanhood (Collins 2000; Cooper 2017; Higginbotham 1994). The respectable image is a
“hardworking Black woman professional who works twice as hard as everyone else” (pg. 89).
Collins (2000) argues that Black middle-class women who internalize the “Black lady”
controlling image, are often objectified by Black men as being women who prioritize work and
competing with men over romantic partnering. Instead of viewing Black women’s self-reliance
as for the good of the family (Harley 1990; Jones 1982), this group of Black women are
considered lacking in femininity, which explains their inability to attract a man and marriage
(Collins 2000). Racist and sexist messages from sources such as OkCupid posts, Steve Harvey’s

20
book, and social media influencers like Derrick Jaxn are contemporary symbols of the
objectification of Black middle-class women to put forward a heterosexual patriarchal view of
Black intimacy and desire.
In response to these objectifying portrayals of Black womanhood, Black middle-class
women who are committed to career, motherhood, and marriage, incorporate a community race
uplift perspective. Contemporary Black women, like Black club women in previous generations,
use their status as wives and mothers as platforms to view their work and their positions within
the family as forms of community race uplift work (Barnes 2016; Cooper 2017). In this way,
Black middle-class women take a constraining system, marriage, and make proverbial lemonade.
Black middle-class women’s incorporation of respectability to do “race work” underscores how
Black women often do not view their liberation separate from Black men (Cole and Guy-Sheftall
2003; Collins 2005; Zinn, Cannon, Higginbotham, and Dill 1986; Wallace 1978). Rather, as
Black feminist theorists argue, Black women’s empowerment cannot be at the expense of Black
men, and Black men’s empowerment cannot be at the expense of Black women. To not account
for how race and gender operate in both Black women and men’s lives, and in this case, in their
intimate lives as couples trying to manage time use and marriage, means that Black women
cannot truly flourish (Collins 2005).
What are Black women up against? Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reported that
structural racism created a tangle of pathology in the Black community. Since Black women
worked outside of the home, and a sizeable number were rearing children alone in urban cities,
he described the Black community as having a matriarchy problem because Black families did
not appear similar to the White middle-class normative family form—a breadwinning patriarchal
household. Because many Black families did not fit within this normative family structure, The

21
Moynihan Report characterized Black men as emasculated men who lacked power at home.
Moynihan suggested that Black men enlist in the military to gain secure employment, which
would help them regain power at home, and thereby subscribe to the dominant patriarchal family
structure. The response to Moynihan’s report was overwhelming internally and externally to the
Black community. For example, men in Black communities responded with fury, and used this
public embarrassment to push forward patriarchal rhetoric about the importance of Black male
authority, leadership, and respect in Black family life (hooks 2004; Wallace 1978). External to
the Black community, research on Black families and men surged decades succeeding the report,
with headlines characterizing Black men as endangered species and absent Black fathers (Neal
2005; Young 2021).
Racist and sexist controlling stereotypes of Black men as endangered and absent from
their children’s lives co-constructed race, gender, and sexuality responses among Black men
(Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Collins 2005; Neal 2005; hooks 2004). The endangered species
myth provided a pathway for Black men to access power in their interpersonal relationships
(Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978). If Black men are viewed as endangered, then what
becomes reified is an idea of Black men experiencing more oppression than Black women. The
deployment of this controlling narrative can and does have an impact on Black women, and the
strategies they construct in their interpersonal relationships with Black men (Cole and Guy-
Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978). In their groundbreaking scholarship on race and gender in Black
America, Johnetta Betsch Cole and Beverly Guy-Sheftall argue that Black women have been
coerced into believing that white supremacy intends “to destroy Black men, and as a result, they
remain silent about the physical and emotional abuse women suffer within our communities”
(pg. 28). Contemporarily, this shows up in the disproportionate amount of airtime Black women

22
receive when they are impacted by state violence and policing compared to Black men. In 2014,
legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw launched the #SayHerName campaign to bring awareness to
Black women’s experiences with state violence. Yet, many Black women are still enduring
Black cultural mandates of loving Black men, but in patriarchal ways that often means Black
women silently endure.
The second notable controlling image shaping the intimate lives of Black people at home
and in the community is the absent Black father. The absent Black father coalesced with research
on poverty among Black Americans living in urban cities. This research illuminated the impact
deindustrialization has on the Black community. Many Black men living in urban cities did not
have the required skillset to meet the expectations in a technology-driven economy. This led to
their increase in the service economy, and a series of underemployment and unemployment
(Wilson 1996). An outcome of low job prospects among Black men, which impacts how they
embody masculinity, is an attempt to redefine masculine ideals by finding other ways to embody
manhood. Accordingly, childbearing provided Black men a pathway to perform masculinity
(Collins 2005; hooks 2004). Media at the intersection race, gender, class, and sexuality,
amplified Black fatherhood and the “absent Black dad” image as an outcome of Black men’s
hypersexuality and use of fatherhood to perform Black masculinity, while foregoing involved
fatherhood expectations (Collins 2005; hooks 2004). The hypersexualization of Black men has
consequences for Black middle-class men as well, and this was underscored by Black middle-
class men’s attempt to lead patriarchal campaigns in the 90s emphasizing involved fatherhood
and male headship at home to combat the glooming stereotype that Black men are not capable of
participating in marriage and fatherhood (Hill 2005; hooks 2004; Messner 1997; Neal 2005;
Young 2021).

23
Responding to controlling stereotypes with an assertion for patriarchal male headship
might appear to be an appropriate response, however, Black masculinity scholarship finds that
this approach often hampers Black men’s experiences with liberating masculinity embodiments
(Grundy 2012; hooks 2004; Neal 2005; Young 2021). Scholars focusing on Black masculinity
and fatherhood, suggests that Black men replace patriarchal male headship with caring and
nurturing forms of fatherhood (hooks 2004; Johnson and Young 2016; Neal 2005; Young 2021).
As men who make meaning of life circumstances often with fewer resources and within
environments placing them at risk of turbulence, threat, and uncertainty (Young 2021), the
behavioral choices they make to contend with life problems might look different from men who
are not encountering similar circumstances. What this looks like for Black middle-class husbands
and fathers post early 2000s economic recession is not known.
Harmful racial stereotypes are not without consequences. However, as Black women and
men become aware of these harmful stereotypes, they can also actively resist them (Collins
2005). Heterosexuality is connected to racism and sexism, and powerfully defines and structures
womanhood and manhood within interpersonal relationships. It is important to unpack the ways
in which Black women and men are making meaning of work and family life within a couple
dynamic. Working Americans are encountering uncertainty in many ways, especially workplace
culture (Wingfield 2021). In prior decades, middle-class Americans were mostly shielded from
unemployment and underemployment, but now, even they are experiencing job precarity.
Scholarship finds that individuals meaning making of uncertainty in family life is patterned by
gender, leaving women with more constraints over how their time is used (Damaske 2021; Rao
2020). But what is missing, is how gendered responses are equally racialized. Research on race
and gender show that Black women are combatting controlling images like strength as they

24
commit to family life (Beuboeuf-Lafontant 2009; Jones and Shorter Gooden 2004), and Black
men are trying find ways to live up to expectations of them as involved fathers and husbands
(Johnson and Young 2016). Maintaining already fragile marriages due to economic constraints
(McDonald and Cross-Barney 2018), Black middle-class couples are strategizing ways to keep it
all together, and as I argue in previous research (Council 2021), despite these challenges, there is
some potential utility of marriage under the new racism framed by racial neoliberalism. That is,
marital bonds can create a foundation for resisting the constraints of gendered racism in work
life, but the forms this takes can often reproduce gender inequalities within the family. Scholar
bell hooks examined how the Black home can operate as a resistance space responding to white
supremacy. Work organizations do not provide care and concern for Black women and men, but
the home does.
Although rich scholarship underscores the construction of Black American cultural
practices within family life responding to structural racism, what is not emphasized in a similar
way is how the practice of egalitarianism is limited to certain aspects of family life, namely
economic contribution, commitment to work, and the division of housework and childcare. Few
studies have examined the limits of egalitarian practices, and the ways in which egalitarian
practices in some aspects of Black family life cannot account for gender and the meaning of
intimate interpersonal gender relations between Black women and men in other areas of Black
family life, particularly the couple dynamic (Council revise and resubmit; Haynes 2000; Moore
2008). I examine the construction of her and his time in Black family life, and how it represents
the limits of egalitarian practices and shows how the construction of time among Black
heterosexual middle-class couples is responding to structural racism while also reproducing
gender inequality in Black family life, especially within the couple dynamic. Can resistance sit

25
alongside inequality, and operate as a both/and, especially as it relates to the reconciliation her
and his time in Black middle-class family life. How do Black middle-class couples navigate
gendered racism at the intersections of work and family life?
Methodology
This study uses semi-structured interviews with 25 married and cohabiting Black middle-
class couples between 29 and 63 years old. 22 couples were married, one couple was engaged,
two couples were cohabiting in marriage-like partnerships. Consistent with the results of existing
scholarship on minoritized middle-classes, I determined whether couples were middle class
through a combination of their education and occupational status (Clergé 2019; Vallejo 2012).
Three participants had high school diplomas (men), two participants had some college
experience (men), and one participant had an associate degree (man). The remaining participants,
44 had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The women in the sample had the highest degree
attainment, with seventeen having either a master’s degree or a professional degree. Nine men
had a master’s degree or a professional degree. In terms of occupations, the fields individuals
were employed include education, engineering, federal contracting, health care, management,
non-profit, public affairs, sales, security, and technology. These occupations are consistent with
the occupations typically held by Black professionals under the new racism (Wingfield 2019).
Although I did not include homeownership status as a requirement to fit the middle-class
measurement (Landry and Marsh 2011), the majority of my sample were homeowners. 19
couples owned their home, and seven couples were renting. I discovered after the interviews
were completed that two of the renting couples became homeowners. Tables 1 and 2 provide
detail individual sample demographics, and table 3 provides detailed couple demographics.

26
To examine the meaning of her and his time in work and family life among Black
middle-class couples, I asked a range of interview questions on work and family life. Questions
focused on work experiences, work-family balance, housework and childcare, personal time and
self-care, and health and stress. For this project, I focus on the questions related to work, and
work-family balance. In individual interviews, I asked participants to describe their work
experiences, the tensions of those experiences, and whether or how those experiences came
home with them. I then asked them to describe their general thoughts about balancing work and
family obligations, and whether they believed they spent more time working than with their
families. The couple’s interview focused on work and family life as it relates to the couple
dynamic. That is, I asked couples to describe how work obligations influence their relationship
with each other, and how they manage work obligations as a couple. I also asked them to
describe each other’s ability to balance work and family demands.
In terms of interviews. I decided to conduct individual interviews first, and the couple’s
interview second. Two couples completed the couple’s interview first, and one couple completed
an individual interview, the couple’s interview, and the second individual interview. I noticed
that couples who completed the couple interview first or broke from the individual interview to
complete the couple interview relied more on what was stated during the couple’s interview to
understand their individual perceptions of time at the intersection of work and family life. For
example, I heard comments like “Well, like we mentioned in the other interview,” or “Like I
mentioned before” to respond to questions I asked. For couples who completed the individual
interviews and then the couple’s interview, I heard similar responses, but it was to confirm their
position without having prior knowledge of their partner’s position. This approach was revealing.
For example, Samuel mentioned being concerned about his mental health before getting up to

27
grab a refill at the restaurant we were eating. After he left, Jada, mentioned how surprised she
was that he mentioned his mental health and the stressors of not providing for his family the way
he feels he should.
Interviewing couples together is a tedious task. It can tread into a territory where couples
hear a perspective from their partner that they have not heard before like the example with Jada
and Samuel, one of many. However, qualitative researchers Taylor and de Vocht (2011) argue
that researchers gain two distinct interview experiences when interviewing couples separately
and then together. The first interview experience, they consider is a “her story” and “his story”
(Taylor and de Vocht 2011, 1584). In contrast, an interview with both together is considered a
“their story”. Accordingly conducting individual and joint interviews allowed me to gain insight
into how couples’ “shared experiences and meanings (584)” are constructed. I also believe
conducting individual and joint interviews with the incorporation of the constant comparative
method of grounded theory will generate new theory and ways of understanding social life. In
my study, this was evident in seeing how the meaning of her and his time within work and
family life shifts when engaged in relation to another person, underscoring the impact
interpersonal gender and race relations has on an individual’s meaning making of complex
processes.
Sample and Recruitment
I recruited through HBCU alumni organizations, graduate chapters of Black Greek-letter
organizations, Black professional social organizations like Jack and Jill of America, Black
churches, and through Black social media groups and pages. Initial contact for participants was
through email. Using the snowball sampling technique led to my interviewing couples residing in
cities throughout the United States. However, most of my sample resided in the Washington,

28
Maryland, and Virginia area (19 couples), where I initially wanted to conduct all interviews. The
remaining couples were recruited from Los Angeles (3 couples), New York (1), North Carolina
(1), and Utah (1). Since I did not ask regional specific questions, I did not find differences by
region responses to interview questions. Interviews were conducted in participants' homes, as
well as on zoom.
I identify as a Black woman feminist. My position as a Black woman situates me as an
outsider/within in relation to my participants (Collins 1986; Dow 2016). My race and gender
places me within a position in which I am relatable to women participants. My race places me
within a position in which I am relatable to men participants. My marital and parental status
positioned me as an outsider. I am not married, and I do not have children. Even though my
marital and parental status placed me in a different category from my participants, I still received
comments from participants that they were comfortable sharing their experiences with me.
Particularly, many couples commented that it was great to see a young Black person studying
Black family dynamics. Participants were also happy to learn that I attended an HBCU for
undergraduate studies, especially Spelman College. Even among couples who did not attend an
HBCU, when they learned I attended Spelman, they smiled and some commented “wonderful
school.” My educational pedigree provided me entrée into this community. Specifically,
Spelman College is solidly positioned in the Black middle-class, and is known to produce Black
women who become leaders in their communities and members of the Black middle-class. This
was particularly evident during the time I recruited because Spelman alumna Stacey Abrams was
gearing up and running for the governor’s seat of Georgia. Further, Vice President Kamala
Harris, a graduate of Howard University was entering the presidential race.

29
Educational pedigree helped during interviews because it legitimized me as someone
couples perceived as genuinely interested in understanding their experiences in the United States
regarding work and family life. This comfort also meant I had to be careful to not draw
conclusions that I understood participants explanation of an interview topic. For example,
sometimes in the interview I asked clarifying questions when participants made statements like
“you know what I mean?” This was particularly evident during the individual interviews with
Black women, relating to our experiences with gendered racism in the workplace. But the
moments were also clarified when the differences between us became apparent, marital and
parental status.
Data Analysis
Data analysis consisted of several stages. I transcribed all fifty individual interviews. The
couple interviews were transcribed by a transcription company, but I performed the data
cleaning, which consisted of listening to interviews and adding correcting errors from both
individual and couple transcription processes. Interview transcribing and data cleaning time
varied by interview length, but on average, took six to eight hours per interview. This stage of
data analysis allowed me to draw connections with existing research. For example, I confirmed
Black middle-class women’s use of strategic mothering to contend with work and family life.
Second, I coded each individual interview by notetaking line by line, which allowed me to gain a
deeper understanding of the individual interviews and note patterns and repetition within the
data. Third, I wrote memos for emerging themes and patterns. These memos allowed for a deeper
understanding of the interview data. Fourth, I incorporated the constant comparative method of
grounded theory to draw comparisons across interviews to confirm themes developed in the third
stage (Charmaz 2006). Lastly, I used a second coding schema to organize narratives into

30
categories that supported the emerging themes from the data: her and his time is informed by
gendered racism in the workplace and a shared commitment to a Black American culture of
family first.
Her Work, His Work, Their Work is divided into four chapters, each of which considers
how time is used when individuals encounter gendered racism in the workplace and a shared
commitment to a Black American culture of family first. Chapter 2 focuses on Black women’s
experiences with work and family life. I examine the strategies Black women use to integrate
work and family life. As women reared to be self-reliant, Black women in my study use self-
reliance to tackle work and family demands. For example, their experiences with gendered
racism in the workplace leads them to refashion the meaning of work in their life—as having a
larger purpose than themselves. This is evident of Black womanhood in Black communities and
how work is a form of race uplift work. But their commitment to work is in tension with the
culture of family first within their homes that they and their husbands adhere to. As they
integrate family with work, their time is doubly constrained because the women in my sample
find that both commitments take up so much of their time. What I find is that they are concerned
with two things: a commitment to their marriages, or a commitment to their personal time. The
tug between these two concerns lead to personal problems. While exploring ways to reconcile
these personal problems, the Black women in my sample recognize and try their best to push
back against the limits of cultural stereotypes like the Strong Black Woman, and depending on
the employment experiences of their partners, some Black women can manage this better than
others.

31
Chapter 3 examines Black men’s experiences with work and family life. I find
that Black middle-class men fully commit to the family first ethos, and work is viewed as a way
to help with providership and protection, aspects of Black American cultural expectations of men
in family life. In addition, their commitment to the family first ethos is shaped by their positions
and experiences in racialized jobs. I find that men who are employed as inflexible workers have
the least control over their time use and how work shows up at home. Men employed in semi-
flexible jobs have some control over their time and some control over how work shows up at
home. Lastly, men employed in flexible jobs have the most control over their time use and how
work shows up at home. Although flexible workers had the most control over time use, men
within this category recognized the fragility of their positions and the impact a slight shift could
have on their desired commitment. I also find that some men within each category engage the gig
economy (side jobs). Engaging the gig economy helps men secure their family’s financial future.
However, the impact of the gig economy on the family for those men who participated posed
varying threats to the family first ethos.
Chapter 4 brings the couples together. Here, I examine how individual time use is
reconciled within the couples’ agreed commitment to family first. I show how couples view their
partner’s work as being “for the good of the family.” I find that gendered racism from workplace
culture shapes the ways in which Black women and men show up in their marriages, and by extension
their families. In this way, these couples are trying to forge ahead despite structural constraints and
cultural conditions impact on them. By adhering to family first, and articulating “team” and
“partnership” descriptors of marriage life, I argue, Black middle-class couples can and do resist
white supremacy. However, this resistance is not without some costs. That is, the choices couples
make “for the good of the family” provide Black men an opportunity to enact masculinities

32
steeped in headship and respect, provide Black women access to support and care, while also
leaving Black women with problems that they must reconcile in time constrained ways.
In chapter 5 the conclusion, I include implications of this research for society and for
individual couples. The implication for society focuses on the impact of structural racism and
sexism on the intimate lives of Black Americans within the middle-class, as they find personal
solutions to problems larger than them. I discuss the impact of not paying attention to gendered
racism in workplace culture, and its impact on the reconciliation work that must go on at home,
can increase Black middle-class women’s exposure to emotional, financial, spiritual, and
physical forms of abuse. Although I only saw loving partnerships in my study, research has
documented the impact racism and sexism has on women’s negotiation of romantic partnering.
The conclusion will also provide points of departure for future research in this area.

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Chapter 2
Her Work: Strategizing Family and Personal Problems for Black Middle-Class Women

Love never gives up,
Never loses faith,
Is always hopeful,
And endures through every circumstance.
1 Corinthians 13:7 (New Living Translation)

“Miss Celie, why you always covering up your smile?”
Shug Avery-The Color Purple

When I begin an interview, the first question I ask participants is, “tell me your story.” I
want to know about their childhood, what they do for a living, what they are passionate about,
and what are some of their hobbies. I approach my interviews this way because I think these
topics among others are important to people. What these topics hint at are opportunities for
others to reveal some of who they are, to another human being. When I asked Evelyn to tell me
her story, she responded, “I’m a school psychologist, a yoga teacher, practitioner, and also a
mom. I’m also a PhD student as well, so all of those things.” Evelyn’s description of self is at the
heart of the interviews I conducted with 25 Black middle-class women, the importance of work,
family, and selfhood, or what I suggest Black womanhood.
Gender, work, and family scholars have examined how Black women reconciled self-
reliance with marriage and motherhood (Barnes 2016l Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et al.
2015; Dow 2016; Taylor et al. 1999). Responding to the work and family demands on Black
women’s time, scholarship found that Black women construct a work-family integration schema
(Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et al. 2015; Dow 2016). The work-family integration schema
has been primarily examined among Black women within the middle-class and shows that the
integration of work and family helps them to accomplish the demands expected of them in Black

34
American culture—to participate in the paid workforce full-time while participating emotionally
and physically in family life. In a response to the work-family integration schema, some Black
middle-class women practice what anthropologist Riché Barnes titled “strategic mothering,”
wherein they seek ways to “redefine their relationships with work to best fit the needs of their
families and communities” (pg. 2). Often, this means Black middle-class women are trading in
self-reliance to rely on their husbands, and to do so, many craft family availability that includes
reducing work hours, temporarily leaving the paid workforce, and switching positions in their
career that allows them to work hours aligning more with family life. In much of this
scholarship, interpersonal relationships are minimally included. That is, we know far less how
time is reconciled among Black middle-class women adhering to strategic mothering within the
couple dynamic, and a shared commitment to family first.
In this chapter, I examine the strategies Black women use to integrate work and family
life. As women reared to be self-reliant, Black women in my study use self-reliance to tackle
work and family demands. For example, their experiences with gendered racism in the
workplace leads them to refashion the meaning of work in their life—as having a larger purpose
than themselves. This is evident of Black womanhood in Black communities and how work is a
form of race uplift work. But their commitment to work is in tension with the culture of family
first within their homes that they and their husbands adhere to. As they integrate family with
work, their time is doubly constrained because the women in my sample find that both
commitments take up so much of their time. What I find is that they are concerned with two
things: a commitment to their marriages and a commitment to their personal time. The tug
between these two concerns lead to personal problems. While exploring ways to reconcile these
personal problems, the Black women in my sample recognize and try their best to push back

35
against the limits of cultural stereotypes like the Strong Black Woman, and depending on the
employment experiences of their partners, some Black women can manage this better than
others.
RACE, GENDER, AND WORK LIFE
As Black women in professional occupations, the women in my sample discussed their
experiences with racism and sexism as a combination of nonverbal feelings of race and gender
tension and verbal tensions such as tone and questioning of their work ethic. Residing in
Washington, D.C., Marion used tableware at the small restaurant where we were located to
describe how a changing racial demographic of Washington, D.C. contributes to the nonverbal
feelings of racism she experiences in her work as an education consultant:
DC is changing very rapidly, and the funding agency is changing. It’s more like the old
school, old boy, people who have been there. Because it used to be the Department of
Human Services and then they split and made it the Office of the State Superintendent
Education. So, you still had a lot of African Americans working in the office, [but] you
started seeing younger European Americans coming in. We were also feeling at a certain
point when our administration started changing that they wanted less of this color (pointing
to her skin), and more of this color (pointing to the white plate she was eating on). We were
feeling pushed out. There were times we were fired and rehired in one day because we
were fighting for our work. They were trying to say, we don’t need this work anymore. It’s
written in legislation.
I interviewed Marion in 2019, the third year of the Trump Administration. By this time, Marion
had been an education consultant for 15 years, which she began shortly after receiving her Ph.D.
in school psychology. Having the experience of living in Washington, D.C. for more than two

36
decades, Marion was used to the ascension of African Americans in professional occupations
within government and government adjacent agencies, which culminated into Washington, D.C.
being one of the oldest cities housing the Black middle-class (Collins 1996; Graham 1999; Lacy
2007). However, in recent years, Washington, D.C.’s racial demographic has shifted from what
is colloquially known as “Chocolate City” to what scholar Derek Hyra (2017) calls “Cappuccino
City.” Further, Marion’s statement “we don’t need this work anymore. It’s written in
legislation,” is connected to the uncertainty many Black professionals face who work in
racialized occupations. That is, Marion is employed in a racialized job that services a minority
and poor and working-poor population, and those jobs are often dependent on the political and
civil cultural climate (Collins 1983; 2011; Ray 2019).
Experiences with sexism are equally salient in Marion’s profession. Even though Marion
could not articulate overt forms of racism from colleagues, she recalls overt experiences with
sexism from colleagues. When Marion began working as an education consultant, she was
employed by a White man supervisor. Her supervisor was described by the Black community in
which Marion worked as a social justice advocate. In Marion’s view, his attention to racial
inequality was matched by his inattention to gender inequality, especially the impact of both in
Black American women’s lives. Marion described the form of sexism she experienced in relation
to pay equity, an inequality many women tend to encounter at work. Again, Marion describes her
experiences with inequality as something she felt:
I don’t know if it was a racist thing, my boss at the university, he’s a White man who has
been at the university. He has been there 30-something odd years. He’s very much involved
in social justice, justice group, minorities type of thing, but there was some gender, you
could feel the gender issues. There wasn’t a race issue but a gender issue there. How can

37
you pay me at this rate, but you can see that the men, guys, and you are making a different
rate? So, there were some gender inequality things that were happening from time to time
where we had to be aware of and sometimes speak up.
The director who employed Marion, as well as other men employed, some who were
Black, earned incomes that far exceeded the amount Marion earned. The double burden of
racism and sexism in Black middle-class women’s work experiences is further evidenced by
Candice, who describes her experiences with gendered racism at work. The director of marketing
for a government agency in Washington, D.C., Candice is responsible for researching policies,
creating budgets, and staying informed about legislation directly impacting federal contractors.
As a budget analyst, Candice is often responsible for analyzing data for company partners, which
mostly consist of large corporations. Candice has worked as the director for her company since
2007 and has full autonomy over the day-to-day operations within her area. However, she
describes encounters with middle-aged White men who consistently question her ability to
handle federal contracts. Candice says,
I don’t know how familiar you are with the federal contracting space, but it’s dominated
mostly by middle-aged White men. And so, I never know what I’m walking into in terms
of bias and prejudice, or any of that. I think that would be the biggest tension I guess,
dealing with big companies that are ran by men. I haven’t had many direct issues, but I
have had to deal with tone, questioning above and beyond what was appropriate for the
situation and things like that. That’s something that I just had to navigate.
Like Marion, Candice’s direct supervisor is a White man who believes he is inclusive because of
the diverse team working for him. However, his inclusion tends to overlook gender.

38
I have challenges with my boss. He’s a White guy. I think he’s almost 50, and he’s one of
those that believes he’s inclusive and fair because he does have a fairly diverse team, but
he does say some stuff. I think he’s unaware that he does have some biases. My colleague,
White woman. I don’t want to say woke, but she gets it. She and I will share experiences
that we’ve had with him, and there are some commonalities there around sexism. She and
I both do a lot of public speaking, and we were talking one day about how you walk into
these rooms, and you are the only woman, or for me, the only Black woman. You can tell
by the questions they’re asking, like “what is she going to tell me that I already know.” My
boss was there, he kind of rolled his eyes. He made it clear that he didn’t think it was a
thing, that we were being sensitive. So, there’s that.
Gendered racism shape Black middle-class women’s experiences in professional work
organizations. Even though the women in my study are employed in semi-flexible and flexible
careers with much more decision-making power than the men in my sample, the sectors
employing them are racialized (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019).
Standing up, Speaking out
Black women pick and choose how and when to stand up for themselves when
confronted with racism and sexism in work organizations (Wingfield 2020). When Black women
express their concerns, they are careful to do so when the benefits outweigh the cost such as
countering marginalization (Wingfield 2021). Lisa, for instance, attended an Historically Black
College (HBCU) for her undergraduate studies. A math major, Lisa described learning about
math and science at an HBCU as an invaluable experience because she was able to learn without
the pressure of feeling she was not good enough for STEM due to the color of her skin. Knowing
that she wanted to attend graduate school, Lisa’s professors prepared her to enter a graduate

39
program and career with the expectation that she would constantly experience being undervalued
because of the color of her skin. Lisa relied on her undergraduate preparation to manage racism
and sexism in her career as an engineer for the federal government. Lisa detailed a work incident
where she corrected a customer who referred to her as someone he owned.
I had a customer after I delivered a presentation tell me that because I was a contractor and
they were my customer, that they owned me. It was supposed to be a joke, where they
owned me and my time, quoteunquote. I was very confused because I was like, you have
to see that I am the only Black person in this room and the woman in this room, and that,
that is not a funny joke. You can’t be that dense to think that is okay.
Lisa also reported the incident to human resources as well as to her supervisor who was in the
room when the customer made the comment. Lisa’s supervisor, a White man, was not very
supportive and dismissed the customer’s comment regarding owning Lisa and her time:
I remember bringing it up not only to HR but my boss who was sitting in the room with
me and he was like: “Oh, I heard that joke before. It’s just a joke that federal workers make
about contractors.” I’m like nah, that’s not landing well.
Lisa’s supervisor’s dismissal of her experience with the customer is a form of gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a microaggression and marginalized people often encounter microaggressions.
When marginalized people like Lisa encounter microaggressions the response they provide is a
form of emotional labor (Messner 2021; Wingfield 2021). Microaggressions within
organizations not only harm individuals, but also creates an interactional dynamic between
individuals that ultimately reproduces inequality (Messner 2021). That is, the emotional labor
recipients of microaggressions must enact to manage social experiences like gaslighting places

40
the responsibility on individuals to do something about the situation, instead of the organization
taking responsibility (Balsam, Molina, Beadnell, Simoni, and Walters 2011; Messner 2021).
Like Lisa, Candice immediately confronted the racism and sexism she experienced when
her White male colleague publicly hypersexualized her and insinuated that she could provide a
dance to a popular rap song.
I had an incident with another colleague, he’s a peer, White guy. There was an email chain
with our boss who was asking for recommendations for a song that would be playing when
he went on stage for this event. This peer wrote in the email, well, “why don’t you ask
Candice to teach you the dance that goes with this rap song?” It was stereotypically ratchet
[slang for unruly and unpolished behavior], and I kind of took offense to that and wrote
back, well, why are you suggesting that I know who this is and what this is? I’m not the
Black music encyclopedia around here, so let’s not do that. The next day, it got back to me
that he was not understanding why that was an issue. I just approached him and said, look,
you don’t have to understand why I’m offended, just don’t do it again and we’ll be cool.
Unlike Lisa and Candice, Lorraine utilized a retroactive personal handling approach to
manage the racism and sexism she experiences in the workplace. Lorraine works for the federal
government, and she went to an HBCU for undergraduate studies where she majored in
computer science. Upon graduation, Lorraine began her career working with IT systems and
networks. At work, she is responsible for carving computers with “a lot of CPU power into
virtual servers.” Lorraine is passionate about her work, and she values opportunities to learn new
skills, particularly from colleagues or company partners who are known in the technology
industry as the “gurus” of IT. After dealing with a colleague’s insensitive behavior, Lorraine
utilized his paternity leave to remove him from her team.

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Most of the people that I have been working with over the years are White men, so that’s
been stressful. There was a guy that I worked with; he was just downright disrespectful
toward me. He went out on paternity leave and while he was out on paternity leave, the
person that came in to backfill him, I took that opportunity to make that guy permanent,
and to make it so the other guy could not come back because I didn’t want to work with
him anymore. For four years, that guy was just very disrespectful. There were just days
that I would sit in my cubicle and cry because I wanted to work with him. He worked for
the vender of the company of the software we worked with, and to me he’s the guru, he’s
the one that knows it all. He’s the expert and I want to learn from the expert, but he just
never wanted to work with me.
Workplace Expectations and Intersectional Identities
Another aspect of gendered racism that Black women commonly navigate involves the
tension between work expectations and personal identities. For instance, recall Lisa, a
mechanical engineer who works for the federal government. Sitting on Lisa’s couch in her home,
I listened as she described the stress she encountered with work expectations under a Trump
Administration.
In general, I find my job stressful because of it being defense work and I don’t know if that
would change based on what the company was or who the contractor was. I feel like if you
are supporting anything that has to do with someone who is a soldier or fights in a war, it’s
stressful, on top of the fact that I do not agree with this administration. Also, feeling guilty
because I benefit directly from an administration like this; especially one that is so gung-
ho on killing Brown people, don’t let them in and you know beef up our security. It’s a
conflicting thing.

42
Already feeling guilty because she is employed as a defense contractor under an administration
she does not align with, Lisa continues discussing her work-related stress from a much more
personal standpoint. Lisa emphasizes how her identities as a Black woman engineer and current
primary breadwinner for her family compounds work-related stress:
I feel like my work is stressful because in all regards just political climate. I’m a defense
contractor, I’m a Black woman, I’m a Black engineer. I rarely see other Black women
engineers, so it’s layered. On top of it, I am the breadwinner of my family which in both
jobs that I have taken, has been the case.
On one hand, Lisa must try to strike a balance between a political climate that causes her stress
and her personal political identity, and on the other, she must try to strike a balance with her
career as an engineer at the intersection of racial identity, gender identity, and motherhood and
partner identities. Aware of these multiple intersecting identities and the meanings they carry at
the interactional and institutional levels culminates into work-related stress that makes Lisa’s job
challenging. As Lisa says, “It’s layered.”
The intersection of multiple identities combined with the multiple meanings those
identities carry for Black middle-class mothers also frames Gwen’s experiences with work-
related stress. For example, Gwen’s personal identities as a Black woman and mother are infused
into her work. The merging of these multiple identities contributes to work becoming personal
for Gwen. That is, Gwen’s defense of Black motherhood and Black women’s ability to maintain
custody of their children begins with her standpoint as a Black mother. Gwen passionately
described the meaning of her work at the intersection of racial identity, gender identity, and
racialized motherhood identity.

43
I think the work that I do now which is different from when I was a public defender in a
White led office, I get into a lot more of my personal privilege more, which is still
complicated for me because I do this work, like, I’m a Black mother. I want Black
motherhood to survive, selfishly too. I’m hyper aware of the spaces that make me more
privileged in this work, but also, I am deeply rooted in the fact that my Black babies, my
Black body, my Black pregnancy is at risk. I am doing this for the survival of my own self.
So, the community and the work I do, I feel a lot of the relationship. I also very fortunately
not had someone take my child away from me. I feel the risk. I feel the heightened sense
of it, but I can’t say that I have that same experience as community members are dealing
with. So, that is a constant push and pull I feel on the work.
The constant “push and pull” Gwen feels with work-related stress is driven by her personal
racialized motherhood experiences, as well as her awareness of racism’s impact on Black
motherhood, which she further emphasized by naming White racism as the problem impacting
her career as a community organizer:
Feeling complete and utter disdain, literal hatred when people in White privilege
powerful spaces have the ability to really change things financially for the movement and
the work we are doing. You [White privilege powerful] worked nothing for that money.
Yet, you want people who have gone through the bowels of our system to be worthy
enough to you just to be able to survive and organize. It’s disgusting.
Gwen’s experiences with racist funding sources as an attorney and non-profit director, mirrors
the larger experiences Black mothers have with racism and its impact on their mothering
practices.

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This group of Black middle-class women appear to encounter overt and covert forms of
racism in their daily work lives. How work organizations are racially stratified, creates a
challenge for them to commit to the organization (Wingfield 2019). Specifically, because Black
Americans tend to experience gendered racism in employment, it is often hard for them to view
work organizations positively. An exception is work-aligned commitments in service of
communities they engage. For instance, Black professionals often carry out more equitable and
social justice-oriented work demands because they often have the time to do so compared to poor
and working poor Black Americans (Wingfield 2019). By underscoring how their work creates
tension with their identities as Black women and Black mothers, this group of Black middle-
class women are finding ways to reorient work to have a higher purpose. This is evident in the
next section with Candice. Candice’s response also underscores how home becomes a space to
navigate gendered racism in the workplace.
Spillover Into Family Life: “It’s Unclear”
When I asked Candice to describe how racism and sexism at work impacts her home life,
she responded to my question with a simple statement, “it’s unclear.” What Candice means by
unclear is that she is not quite sure if work-related experiences shape who she is, or if who she is
outside of work informs how she manages work-related experiences. Outside of work, Candice is
involved in social justice activities. Community race uplift work is also a part of her workday,
and because of this, Candice is not sure how racism and sexism from work comes home with her:
I’m trying to work through the cart and the horse situation because I don’t know if how I
am and who I am impacts work or vice versa. When it comes to racial inequality, racism,
sexism, xenophobia, and all that kind of stuff, I am extremely passionate. I think that just
being a part of who I am, I think it does affect how I see things at work because I am

45
bringing my human self to the job. I’m an analyst and everything is a data point. If I’m
looking at society in general and I have a personal experience, that adds another data point
that rolls into my view of what priorities should be, what the trends are, where we as a
society should be focusing and all that kind of stuff.
Since so much of who Candice is within her community and household goes to work with her,
she tries her best to neutralize or hide parts of her identity and passion for social justice.
Government organizations rely on Candice to provide them with budget and data points as to
where they should allocate resources regarding U.S. domestic and foreign activities. To
adequately deliver services requested, Candice must maintain neutrality. To do this, Candice
incorporates neutralization practices. For instance, not vocalizing her opinion regarding social
justice issues about race, gender, and immigration. Because Candice incorporates neutralization
practices at work, home serves as the space for her to release from the day and embrace her
entire identity. Candice articulates this point with an example of public speaking on behalf of her
company:
At work, especially public speaking, I have to try really hard to choose my words carefully.
To not be on stage and let my personal opinion color what I’m saying. I have to be very
neutral. So, doing that work, it’s a release when I come home because I can say what I want
to say. I have to have that kind of release because I’m coming across information that you
know it’s difficult to look at it as policy when I can understand the implications for actual
human beings that bothers me.
From Candice’s narrative, it might appear home will serve as a site allowing for the
resistance of racism (hooks 1990). And while doing so, home can also co-operate as a site of
oppression.

46
RACE, GENDER, AND THE MEANING OF TIME IN FAMILY LIFE
In the two narratives below, Jada and Jamie, I show the complexity of self-reliance as it
relates to work and family life. Jada is employed as a flexible worker whose husband is
employed in an inflexible job. Jamie is employed as a semi-flexible worker and married to
someone who is also employed in an inflexible job. What I find is that they are concerned with
two things: a commitment to their marriages and a commitment to their personal time. The tug
between these two concerns lead to personal problems. While exploring ways to reconcile these
personal problems, the Black women in my sample recognize and try their best to push back
against the limits of cultural stereotypes like the Strong Black Woman, and depending on the
employment experiences of their partners, some Black women can manage this better than
others.
THE MEANING OF WORK AND FAMILY LIFE FOR WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
FLEXIBLE WORK, AND MARRIED TO MEN EMPLOYED IN INFLEXIBLE
WORK
Prior to starting her Ph.D. program, Jada felt good about her quality of life. She struck a
balance between work and family. As a lecturer in North Carolina, she was employed in a semi-
flexible job. Her job included predictable hours, which helped her manage strategic mothering
much more than her position now as a flexible worker. As a PhD student and research assistant,
married to a man who is employed in an inflexible job, and mother of two young boys, Jada feels
a stronger push and pull on her time use. Yet, she is still committed to strategic mothering
(Barnes 2016), which means she places parenting and marriage responsibilities before career.
During our discussion of Jada’s experiences with graduate school and working as a
research assistant, Jada described the pressure she felt trying to manage the demanding

47
workload, and the internalized pressure she felt to represent Black American women with
marriage and motherhood:
Grad school honey [laughs]. I mean it has taken me to depths unknown to try and figure
out how to manage. Building a relationship with another person [advisor], trying to figure
out who I can work with, also figuring out how to be present in the department. Particularly
for African Americans, and people of color, you have to be visible. If you fade, the
department forgets about you. That’s my feeling, that’s what I have seen. And so, trying to
attend lectures and brown bags, and not just being in the grad space but also other spaces.
So, those responsibilities, as well as just the RA responsibilities. I’m throwing all of that
in with a husband and two kids.
As a Black woman, Jada believes it is her responsibility to represent the race at work. Viewing
work as a form of race work combined with motherhood and marriage was captured in Riché
Barnes’s (2016) study. Barnes (2016) argued that Black middle-class women often view their
work as being in service to community, and a form of race uplift work. The work they do is not
only for their benefit, but for the benefit of their communities and children. Scholar, Adia Harvey
Wingfield captured a similar finding in her work on Black professionals who were often
employed in racialized jobs. Specifically, the belief and practice of work being reconceptualized
as serving the community.
Jada describes these tensions with career and family as a “double-burden.” Jada
recognizes that she is a Black woman embarking on a career where Black women are
marginalized and underrepresented (Zambrana 2018). Until Jada learned how to “push back” she
felt the constant push and pull on her time at the intersection of race and gender:

48
I had a double-burden of being prepared for every lecture. To make sure that when I made
a comment, it came across well. Like, they’re not going to regret that they let this Black
girl from Eastern North Carolina into this program. I mean, it was really a lot of pressure
to perform like that when other students in the class were like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even
do my paper [whining emphasis], can I get an extension?” And I am like twice as hard,
work twice as hard syndrome. So, juggling all of that has pulled everything. It’s trying. I
learned to push back, but at the beginning, I didn’t know how to push back because I didn’t
know what I could push back against. I’ve learned that now and I feel so much better. It’s
still hard, but I feel so much better.
Like Lisa, Lorraine, and Candice, Jada learned how to carefully push back against racism and
sexism at work. Even though Jada is not expressing overt forms of racism and sexism, the
internalized pressure she describes is connected to a pressure Black professionals feel and
experience at work within racialized jobs. That is, the standard of achievement is different at the
intersection of race and gender (Wingfield 2012).
To navigate gendered racism at work, Jada, as a flexible worker, replaced working on
campus with working at home. “I really try to spend the least amount of time on campus.” But
workplace pressure is just one reason Jada works from home. The other reason she has decided
to work from home more is because working from home allows her to practice strategic
mothering, the strategy of placing motherhood and marriage first. She described the impact her
adjustment has had on her young sons. “So, the boys are like “mommy’s home.” Like, they’re
happy I’m there. I’m there when they leave for daycare, I’m there when they get back.”
Upon further reflection, I learned more why Jada made the decision to adjust her
schedule, what she considers a “non-negotiable.” During the first two years of graduate school,

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Jada worked longed hours. The commitment to work meant Jada was spending less time with her
family. And even though her husband Samuel understood and supported her need to work long
hours, Jada felt she was missing important family moments, and that her husband and children
missed her:
Probably the first two years, I didn’t know how to manage that well and the boys missed
me, my husband missed me. Even if I was home, I was always on the computer, or, I was
kind of rushing [them], go to bed [children], so I can get this done. It wasn’t a very good
work/life balance at all. My husband, basically, he’s been a real big rock. He’s been a
superstar. He kind of just, gave the boys baths, he would tuck them in, he’d read books.
He’d fix me a plate and leave it in the refrigerator. So, I was missing moments like that.
He would just take the boys to the park, so I could study. I kind of made some non-
negotiables. You just got to have those non-negotiables.
When Black middle-class women like Jada, trade in self-reliance to practice strategic
mothering, many craft family availability that includes reducing work hours, temporarily leaving
the paid workforce, and switching positions in their career that allows them to work hours
aligning more with family life. In this case, Jada created some “non-negotiables” because she
prioritized a commitment to motherhood and marriage first, and career second.
Creating “non-negotiables” allowed Jada to recommit to strategic mothering. The
practice of creating “non-negotiables” to prioritize motherhood and marriage first, and career
second led to Jada “blocking time.” Blocking time consists of constructing hard boundaries
between family and work, and always prioritizes family first. Describing what this looks like,
Jada recognizes that her blocked schedule is not an even split:

50
Blocks of time are devoted to family, and blocks of time are devoted to work. They don’t
have to be equal, most of the time they are not. I prioritize the blocks of family time over
the blocks of work time. So, my boys and husband know that I am their number one. If that
means that I can’t get my block of work time until 8:00pm, I’m willing to do that. So,
basically from 5:00pm until 8:30-9:00pm, that’s my husband and the boys’ time.
All the while Jada described “blocking time”, I observed her facial expressions. The joy and
happiness displayed showed how important being a wife and mom is to her. But “time blocking”
is not devoid of constraints and costs. Describing the impact of her decision, Jada stated the
commitment to family first often left her exhausted by the end of the day with minimal time to
commit to important work demands:
[Family time] that’s about four hours of time, and sometimes I’m too exhausted. So, my
block time would be, okay, what can you do from 9:00pm-10:30pm? But the priority will
always be them, that’s what helps me. That’s what work/life balance looks like;
work/family balance looks like to me. Them being the number one priority and honoring
those blocks of time.
Unlike the dominant narrative put forward by Arlie Hochschild in the Time Bind, which
states people use work to escape challenging home life, Jada uses home to escape challenging
work life. When Jada is at work, she feels internalized pressure to represent the race. For a while,
Jada felt she could not push back against work’s time demand because of her race and gender.
This emotional response to gendered racism embedded in work organizations refashioned work
as stressful. In addition, the time commitments of work conflicted with Jada’s personal
commitment to family first, which she enacted through strategic mothering. And while a

51
commitment to the Black American culture of family first is Jada’s priority, it is not without
some costs, particularly personal problems Jada must figure out how to reconcile.
Jada’s Family First Ethos
A gendered aspect of committing to family first is the emotional and physical availability
expected of the women in my study. For example, women commented that the energy of their
home often depended on them and how available they were for their husbands and children.
Carrying the emotional burden of the home, often placed women in a position with little time to
themselves. Jada’s narration of emotional and physical availability underscores the dilemma and
gendered challenges women encounter with family first. Describing her family, Jada says,
My husband and the boys are needy. I’m not saying that in a negative, I don’t mean that in
a derogatory way, but they need what they need. I can’t guilt them for wanting to spend
time with their mommy, wanting to tell me about their day, wanting to tell me about the
sky you know, toddler stuff. Or, my husband coming home, he’s in a very stressful work
environment and wanting to talk about his workday. So, they naturally want to dump to the
one who shows them the most love, nurture, and care.
As mentioned, Samuel is employed in an inflexible job. Samuel’s employment is also a
racialized job, as it is a part of an expanded service economy. He supervises the palletizing of ice
cream. As someone employed in a racialized job, Samuel experiences low pay and low control
over how he uses his time (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). This low control over time use causes
stress and the stress appears at home. Jada, as the one who extends nurture, care, and love in the
family, is available as the person “they naturally” unload emotional angst from the day. But
sometimes Jada is tired, and she feels guilty for being tired when she wants time to herself, away
from her children and husband’s emotional needs:

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I find an internal tension with myself because in the inside I’m like, I just don’t want to
hear it right now, give me some time. Then I feel guilty that I’m thinking that. I really am
trying to navigate how to say, you know what baby [son], just give me 20 minutes, and not
feel guilty about telling him I need 20 minutes. It’s a little easier with my husband than it
is with the boys because this is what a toddler and babies do. They don’t care about your
time you know. They’re older now, so four and two, so I can say “play in your room, and
then mommy is going to come play with you.” So, just learning to put those boundaries
because I almost felt like I hated them.
Taking the 20 minutes allows Jada to breathe, before silently enduring the emotional needs of her
household. Before Jada learned how to set boundaries, she found herself somewhat hating her
children due to her having no escape from those who always unloaded to the one who is
nurturing, caring, and loving.
In her widely read book Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins outlined the impact
controlling images had on Black women, especially if those images were internalized. Related to
work and family life, Collins (2000) described the “Black lady” controlling image which is
predicated on Black middle-class women upholding respectable images of Black womanhood
(Collins 2000; Cooper 2017; Higginbotham 1994). Racist and sexist messages from sources like
media can be at work here, and unconsciously shaping the choices women like Jada are making
to commit to family first, which requires much from them emotionally and physically.
Helping Jada manage the family first ethos is the personal time she carved out for herself.
Jada mentioned that she had recently begun a daily walking program. Walking daily helps Jada
to access alone time away from a demanding work and family life. Jada has noticed the impact
this small change has had on her home life:

53
I have to get that walk in. That has changed my life because my husband told me, “I
don’t know what’s going on, but you’re not snapping, thank you, you’re not biting my
head off.” Because before I had that mandatory me, walk meditation time, I was not very
nice to him. I mean I would take it out more on him than the boys. So, those hour walks.
If it rains, I sometimes will take the umbrella. I still go to do something to get my mind
right, you know.
Walking daily helps Jada handle her personal problem—snapping. But going deeper into our
conversation, I learned that family financial strains might shift her daily walks. That is, Jada and
Samuel are discontinuing daycare to help the family save money, and Jada is concerned about
the impact this will have on her walks, especially since she is the one with the flexible work
schedule:
Now, I’m bringing the boys’ home. I just really don’t know. I’m going to walk with them,
and it will be fun for them. They love when we take our walks, but I’m not listening to
music anymore. I could still kind of pray, but it’s just going to be different because I’m
going to have to say, “stop, sit down, wait, hold on, wait for mommy, don’t pick that up.”
So, I’m still thinking about what I’m going to do because my husband is still going to be
working.
Bringing their sons home creates another demand on Jada’s time, who is already time resource
poor. Since she is the one responsible for fixing her “snapping” problem, Jada is trying to find
ways to accommodate personal time that has had a noticeable positive impact on her and her
family. “I got to figure out what can I do at night. It’s dark, so maybe now [fall 2018], I may
have to start driving to the gym, and we’re just going to have to make it work.”

54
Jada is concerned about the impact bringing the boys home will have on her and her time.
She described how their family decision made her feel:
It really started kind of getting to me this week. I love my boys, and I’m excited because
we can do a lot of fun, discovery things, but that means I’m going to have them. There is
no break from them. My husband will provide a break once he gets up, he’ll take them, but
he’s providing a break so I can do the housework. It’s not like the break is going to be,
“you can go to the movies now.” I’m going to prepare the food. I’m going to go wash these
clothes. That’s the challenge, which I’m not sure he realizes because for him, he’s looking
at we’re saving money. For me, we’re saving money, but you’re about to take all my time.
So, that’s a little challenge. I’m just in prayer about it because I don’t want to resort back
to being this ill, snappy person. I’ve got to figure it out.
On one hand, self-reliance made it hard for Black women to participate in family life at the
intersection of romantic partnering. Specifically, scholarship shows that self-reliance helps Black
women achieve upward mobility for themselves and their families but doing so often meant
delaying romantic partnerships (Dill 1988; Higginbotham and Weber 1992). As women who are
often reared to place their careers and individual success over romantic relationships, Black
women appear to adhere to lessons of strength, and women who can and should care for
themselves (Collins 1987; 2000). On the other hand, however, Black women like Jada must still
use self-reliance to navigate personal problems as they adhere to family first. Jada commits to the
Black American culture of family first, but the commitment also means Jada must personally fix
her problems which reproduces gender inequality in family life.

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Fixing Jada’s Personal Problem: Marriage and the Strong Black Woman Myth
Jada’s meaning making of time use in work and family life is shaped by two forces: work
demands shapes by gendered racism in the workplace, and a commitment to family first. Jada
finds work stressful because she experiences internalized pressure to represent the race. In
addition, the time demands of work led to Jada missing out on important family moments. This
concerned Jada because she prioritizes family first and commits to the ethos by practicing
strategic mothering. But family first is not without its constraints. A commitment to family
leaves Jada with limited amounts of control over her time use, even as someone employed in
flexible work. Jada spends much of her time being emotionally and physically available to her
husband and children, and this causes her to experience tension. To manage the tension, Jada
began a daily walking program. However, financial constraints connected to the type of job her
husband Samuel is employed, and her low wages as a graduate student has led to their family
having to make hard choices regarding childcare. They decided to discontinue childcare to help
the family save money, but this means Jada will experience even more pulls on her time. Jada is
now left with a personal problem, and she is trying hard to fix her personal problem.
As Jada strategized ways to fix her personal “snappy” problem, she also encountered
another problem, her marriage. In our interview she described her and Samuel as being in
“survival mode.” Survival mode is an act of trying to keep their family and marriage together:
Me and my husband are very clear, we are fighting for our marriage life, we’re fighting for
our family, we’re fighting for our financial life. We’re just trying to fight. We both know
what we need, but we just got to keep fighting right now. Our motto is don’t fight each
other, let’s fight together, but don’t fight each other. We just finished couples counseling

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to help us make sure we are not fighting each other, that we’re fighting together, but really,
it’s a fight.
The multiple demands on time combined with financial stress places a burden on their marriage.
Research on Black middle-class Americans in family life reveals multiple dynamic processes, all
stratified by race and gender. Particularly, structural racism in employment, constrains and
enables gender relations in Black American family life (McDonald and Cross-Barnet 2018).
Jada’s description of the fight underscores the fragility of Black American marriages when
having to keep a marriage together while encountering structural constraints.
At the end of our interview, I asked Jada if she wanted to express any remaining thoughts
about work and family life. Pausing momentarily, Jada looked at me and said, “Black women are
too strong.” She described the impact of the phrase “Black Girl Magic” within media can have
on Black women:
I know everybody says that Black Girl Magic, it’s very synonymous with that Black girl
strength. I think we just kind of replaced the mantra. We’re still presenting ourselves as
so strong, and I think we really need to be careful because I should be more week than I
am. I should ask for help you know.
Why can’t Jada ask for help? She is married, so what prevents her from asking for help? The
idea of strategic mothering is to replace self-reliance for motherhood and marriage. However, an
internalized notion that she cannot seek help, reifies self-reliance, a practice Black middle-class
women are attempting to challenge (Barnes 2016).
Continuing her statement, Jada characterized Black women’s strength and people’s
perception of Black women as strong as a “blessing and a curse” because it bequeathed positive

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outcomes, while simultaneously marking Black women’s bodies as unable to be express
vulnerability:
It’s a blessing and a curse that people find so much strength in Black women. They say,
“you know Black women once again saved the elections, Black women once again, as a
Black woman.” I get what people are doing, and I feel like thank you, but then at the
same time, you’re still not allowing me to be weak. And I think we need to find a way to
talk through that. To me, Black Girl Magic is still Black girls being way too strong, and
not being able to show weakness.
Strategic mothering is a bargain with patriarchy, and Black middle-class mothers uphold their
end of the bargain by silently enduring and embodying strength. To prevent the family first ethos
from imploding, Black women like Jada redefine time constraints as personal problems.
THE MEANING OF WORK AND FAMILY LIFE FOR WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
SEMI-FLEXIBLE WORK, AND MARRIED TO MEN EMPLOYED IN
INFLEXIBLE WORK
When I interviewed Jamie, she was 31 years old and living in Baltimore, Maryland with
her husband Thomas and their two children. Jamie is a nurse, and she works 3 days a week from
7pm to 7am. Her shift is Saturday night-Monday night. On her off days, Jamie works as an
outdoor education instructor at her daughter’s school. Passionate about the environment and
social justice, Jamie began an outdoor education program. At the time of our interview, her
program was officially registered as a small business, making Jamie a small-business owner.
Although Jamie has the flexibility to combine a small business with nursing, I still
categorize her as semi-flexible worker. The shift Jamie works itself is not flexible, and the time
commitment to nursing and the outdoor education program creates a different meaning making

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of time than for women employed in flexible worker. That is, I noticed that the predictability of
Jamie’s schedule provides her more time to commit to family, but the small business creates a
tug that she is constantly aware of and tries to manage.
Jamie: Semi-flexible Worker
Jamie’s specialization is pediatrics. Prior to pediatrics, Jamie worked as a pediatric
oncology nurse, taking care of children who were diagnosed with cancer. Jamie switched to
pediatric nursing because pediatric oncology was challenging, causing Jamie to become “uber
emotional about everything.” The emotional labor connected to oncology created stress for
Jamie, and after becoming pregnant she decided to transition out to protect herself and her child.
Now, Jamie cares for children in a pediatric rehabilitation hospital. Pediatric rehabilitation
nursing consists of caring for children recovering from trauma-related events. Many of the
children Jamie cares for have been in car accidents or recovering from in the womb drug
exposure. The emotional carework expected of Jamie when dealing with in the womb drug
exposure is to also help parents learn how to care for their children before allowing them to bring
them home from the hospital.
As an owner of an outdoor education program for youth, Jamie is responsible for creating
outdoor education programs that coincide with the classroom curriculum outlined by teachers.
The purpose of the outdoor education program is to expose children living in an urban city to
nature. The children participating in the program learn about wildlife living in urban areas, and
why it is important to care for nature within urban areas. The goal of Jamie’s program is to teach
children and educators that “nature is everywhere, not just in the forest,” and that people should
not have to travel to “fancy state parks,” to enjoy nature.

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Jamie’s outdoor education program is a form of agency as a semi-flexible worker
connected to a job with a high expectation of emotional carework. Showing this agency, Jamie
described her work schedule:
I only work on the weekends. I work Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night which gives me
the weekdays to really do the work that I want to do with the teachers in their classrooms.
Working with the teachers and the students.
In Jamie’s description of stress management strategies within nursing, she described
mostly experiencing stress with the parents of recovering patients, and with the patients
themselves. In terms of parents, Jamie finds those situations stressful because she is often the
recipient of parents’ frustration and anger. Nursing is a field requiring an emotional labor
response to the often highly gendered “feeling rules” in workplaces and is especially acute in
face-to-face interactions that are germane in the service industry (Hochschild 1983). Jamie says,
The parents of the patients who I take care of, like sometimes they get you know a little
tiffy because this is how they care for their kid, and we are not doing what they usually do
at home. Or, the doctors are not talking to them, so nurses, we have to talk them down and
figure out exactly what they need and get that to the doctor. You know nurses do a lot of
damage control.
A part of the emotional labor within the service economy is to respond with “feeling rules.” In
the case of Jamie, the feeling rules she responds with must help ease parents fears regarding their
children’s childcare, and relay information to doctors, who are in a higher position within the
racialized work organization. Within the healthcare profession, doctors tend to be male, and
White (Wingfield 2019).

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Jamie’s job also required her to incorporate racialized gendered emotional labor with
patients. As mentioned, the patients Jamie care for are children who have experienced traumatic
events. Jamie described how the injuries sustained from trauma sometimes lead to “combative”
encounters during care:
Sometimes we get a lot of kids who have brain injuries. Like I said, they’ve been in car
accidents, and they have traumatic brain injuries and they’re confused. They don’t know
where they are, they can get a little combative. So, we have to deal with that as well.
Recall that Jamie’s shift is 7pm-7am, which means she is with patients during the night.
Minorities are often scheduled night shifts, known as the moonlighting hours (Choi 2017), and
medical studies report that due to biological differences occurring in patients and limited
staffing, patients tend to experience recovery complications during the night (Peberdy, Ornato,
Larkin et al. 2008). Having to care for patients during hospital hours with less staff support and
increased recovery challenges means that Jamie’s emotional labor requires a racialized bodily
response (Choi 2017; Kang 2010; Wingfield 2021). This experience with gendered racism calls
for a racialized response that allows Jamie to continue to do her job, as well as helps inform why
she views her outdoor education program more favorably. And as we will see, it also informs
how gendered racism spills over into the home.
After describing her experiences with parents and patients, I asked Jamie to tell me more
how she managed “combative” on the job encounters. She immediately responded, “I don’t take
them personally.”
I don’t take them personally. I don’t let things get to me because it’s not a personal
matter. It’s not me that they are upset with, it’s the situation. It really helps to have thick
skin in this profession. It’s a line that we have to walk between being compassionate, and

61
then being like, ‘alright I’m going home.’ I say that to some of my patients too when they
say, “I don’t want to take my medicine. I refuse.” I’m like ‘okay, well, at 7:00 o’clock
I’m going home, and you will still be here. You not taking your medicine does nothing to
me.’
Not internalizing experiences, and carefully voicing concerns are racialized gendered
strategies to manage microaggressions. In research on veterans and their efforts to stand for
peace, Michael Messner found that women of color veterans felt the need to either view the
microaggressions toward them as teaching moments, or silently endure. Messner (2021)
underscores that either option, which requires emotional labor to create a set of feeling rules in
compliance with the White male majority can and does have consequences for marginalized
individuals. Specifically, microaggressions within organizations not only harm individuals, but
create an interactional dynamic between individuals that ultimately reproduces inequality
(Messner 2021). Jamie’s response to “not take them personally” is a form of silently enduring
because her position as the carework in relation to parents and patients is marginalized. Put
another way, Jamie does not have the autonomy to assert feeling rules different from what is
expected of someone within the service economy.
Although Jamie characterizes her routine career as low stress, our interview shows that
nursing is highly stressful. In contrast, when I asked Jamie about her small business, she
responded with frustration, and described the stress she encounters with teachers:
I work with some teachers who do not want to be outside at all. They don’t understand it.
They don’t know anything that’s out there. They don’t understand why the kids need to be
outside. They are not comfortable bringing the kids outside because they don’t have that

62
classroom management that is so important inside the building. So, usually, at first, there
is some tension and I do a lot of education for the teachers.
Jamie’s two careers are examples of current scholarships conceptualization of work life at
the intersection of race and gender. As a nurse, Jamie is employed in a career that is part of the
growing service economy. Jamie’s race and gender are consistent with the demographic of
people often employed in the growing service economy (Wingfield 2019). Second, Jamie’s small
business objective is to support urban youth’s knowledge development about the environment.
Jamie’s work is also a form of social justice, and she completes urban education grant
applications to help economically sustain the program. In this way, Jamie is prioritizing a career
committed to racial uplift work (Barnes 2016; Wingfield 2019), and as a member of the Black
middle-class, she has more time available to commit to work in-service of community (Ray
2019; Wingfield 2019).
Scholarship focusing on racialized jobs argues that because Black Americans tend to
experience gendered racism in employment, it is often hard for them to view work organizations
positively. An exception is work-aligned commitments in service of communities they engage.
Reorienting work to be in-service to community is a form of agency, and this agency is often
dependent on the type of racialized job Black Americans are employed (Ray 2019; Wingfield
2019). Stress related to both careers was apparent in our interview. However, Jamie’s
management of work stressors varied by career. Specifically, as a nurse, Jamie created hard
boundaries around her time to manage the stress, whereas with the outdoor education program
she constructed a soft boundary. The hard boundary around nursing, did not spill over into home
life, whereas the soft boundary with the outdoor education program did spill over into home life,

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and Jamie had to work hard to reconcile her personal problem in a way that maintained a
commitment to the family first ethos.
Jamie’s Family First Ethos
As someone employed in two careers that require a significant amount of Jamie’s time
and energy, I wanted to learn more how she balanced both careers with family life. Jamie paused
after I asked the question and proceeded to describe how her and Thomas’s work schedules
impacted family time. Jamie and Thomas work opposite schedules. The days she works, he is
off, and the days Thomas works, Jamie is off. Jamie works at night, and Thomas works during
the day, but returns home between 7:30 and 8:30 in the night. Jamie and Thomas are managing a
split-shift parenting scheduled within a 24/hour economy (Presser 2000). Jamie says,
“Sometimes it gets a little rough because our schedules are so opposite. I work [on] days that
he’s off and vice versa. So, trying to find the family time, and then he comes home like 7:30/8:00
o’clock at night. By that time, we are all spent and it’s about time for the kids to go to bed.”
Sociologist Harriet Presser examined the impact a 24/hour work economy had on families.
Presser (2000) found that nonstandard work schedules created marriage instability because it left
couples time depleted. This was evident in my interview with Jamie. After describing the
challenges with the work schedule, she mentioned marriage counseling, and how helpful
marriage counseling has been for them:
We started going to marriage counseling and that has really helped us kind of like see the
importance of us making sure that we have that time to ourselves. That we’re not talking
about the businesses. We’re not discussing the kids. We’re just you know here, discussing
us and our relationship. That has really helped us a lot.

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Even though Jamie and Thomas are working things out through marriage counseling,
Jamie still feels that she spends more time at work than with her family. Recall Jamie’s outdoor
education program was incorporated into an LLC shortly before our interview. Jamie received a
federal grant to invest in urban renewal. With the grant, she purchased 2 ½ acres of land which
will become an urban farm producing farm to table produce. This new aspect of the business
means Jamie must find ways to attend to important business matters on her unscheduled days,
which also happens to be her days where she prioritizes family. She says, “This farm is a new
venture for us. There are sometimes where I’m responding to emails. Making sure I call people.
Posting things on social media to get more of a following.” Jamie recognizes that her busy
schedule leads to her being overextended, saying, “I need to learn how to take a break and really
relax with this stuff.” But that’s hard for Jamie to do, mostly, because she enjoys the business
and the outcome it is having within her community. “Everyone is excited about it. People want to
know what’s happening. So, they are emailing, and they are calling, trying to get the story.”
To help manage the exciting changes within the business, Jamie has constructed
boundaries to manage her time. “I’ve been trying to be more intentional about you know, well,
I’m only doing this kind of stuff on Thursday. So, I set aside that protected time to run the
business. It’s a work in progress.” In this description, Jamie’s experience reflects what Arlie
Hochschild found in The Time Bind--employees view work as a lower stress environment than
home, because homelife became stressful as it is employee’s personal responsibility to figure out
private affairs. But what makes Jamie’s experience different is that Jamie is employed in two
jobs, the first one within the service economy, and the second, as a small business owner, and
Jamie experiences this tension because she is trying to manage two careers with motherhood and

65
marriage, with one career being a choice, but a choice allowing her to do work she is passionate
about and in service to community.
The way the stress of time in managing two careers with motherhood and marriage also
appeared through parental time. Jamie realized her time commitments needed to shift when she
became snappy, and her daughter asked her to spend time with her:
I think I was getting overwhelmed with everything. I kind of started snapping at my kids
and snapping at everybody. I was like, what is going on with me? I’m working too much
and that’s what the problem is. My kids, they want my attention. They are like being extra
needy. They want extra hugs. I’m like, I got to respond to this email. I got to do this, I got
to do that. I think one day, my daughter was like, “when you are not busy, can you play
with me?” I was like “oh my God. My kid should not have to beg me to play with her,”
how rude. That was when one of the moments I was like, alright, I need to chill out.
Needing “to chill out,” means Jamie is finding ways to incorporate strategic mothering,
between two competing devotions—motherhood and her small business. To do this, Jamie
created another set of time boundaries, which limited the time she spent responding to business
related emails. Now, Jamie only responds to business emails on Saturday. “I’m trying to get into
the practice that I mostly only respond to emails on Saturday, and that’s been working pretty
well. When I started the business, using a disclaimer that I put on my email, just know that my
time is divided, so it will be some time before I get back to you.”
As a new business owner with much potential and opportunity to grow, the first few years
of business development is critical. Business ownership requires a lot of time and care. If Jamie
was not working as a nurse, then her time to commit to the business would not be constrained.
But having to manage a job with a predictable schedule, with a passion career, motherhood, and

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marriage, leaves Jamie with a time depletion problem that she must figure out how to reconcile.
Jamie and Thomas are in marriage counseling, which helps her stratify time, so it does not
compete with the family first ethos. But what is left with limited time in such an infant stage is
the small business, and this is a problem and shows how gendered racism from work comes
home, because it is through the small business Jamie finds joy with work—a common pattern
among Black professionals attempting to find ways to self-actualize within racialized job
structures (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019).
Fixing Jamie’s Personal Problem: Marriage and the Strong Black Woman Myth
Jamie is tired and this fact became evident during our discussion of stress and personal
time. As someone who must fix her personal problem of multiple demands within a time deficit,
Jamie is often left making hard choices. A hard choice she makes is related to sleep. In the past
two years, wellness popular press articles have been written on the importance of sleep hygiene.
Sleep hygiene is the creation of a sleep routine to ensure an adequate amount of sleep each night.
Sleep hygiene prioritizes sleep to reduce health-related risks such as high blood pressure,
obesity, and stress. Sleep hygiene is important because the U.S. has experienced an increase in
sleep disorders like insomnia (Suni 2022). Jamie is a member of the U.S. population who is sleep
deficient “I think it’s more like all the obligations and when I don’t get enough sleep. Because I
am so busy, and I take a nap here and there. Then I’m off to the next thing.” According to
medical experts, Jamie’s schedule can lead to poor physical and mental health (Suni 2022).
While sleep is important, Jamie is also trying to manage the stressors of family life.
Again, she mentions counseling as helping her manage family life because she is learning to not
internalize her feelings:

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Through therapy and working through that, I’ve learned how to voice things instead of just
letting it fester, and then me being pissed off at everybody. Like, you knew I was fricking
mad, why wouldn’t you say anything?
Before therapy, Jamie would silently endure family stressors, which is an internalized response
correlated with the Strong Black Woman controlling image (Barnes 2016; Beuboeuf-Lafontant
2009; Collins 2000; Harris-Perry 2011; Jones and Shorter-Gooden 2004), and what Jamie felt
she needed to silently endure was an unequal contribution to family life between her and
Thomas. This was especially frustrating for Jamie because she is the primary income earner for
the home. Jamie described the tension between her and Thomas prior to marriage counseling. “I
used to be like you know, I’m doing all of this. I’m making the money. I’m paying all the bills.
Now, I got to come home and cook and clean.”
Frustrated and silently enduring, marriage counseling has helped Jamie develop strategies
to voice her concerns instead of letting them “fester.” Marriage counseling also operates as a
space in which she is learning to become empathetic toward Thomas’s experiences as a
technician in the service economy:
We started marriage counseling. Instead of letting things fester and having my blood
boiling, we have been having more conversations around how I’m feeling, what’s
happening when I feel this way, [and] what he is feeling at the time. Because we’ve noticed
there’s a pattern of when he’s not feeling it, I get a little stressed because I feel like I’m
trying to run everything. He has his own issues. He has his own stuff going on with work
and stuff and is not in the mood for anything. I’m like, well, let’s talk. I ain’t in the mood
either, but it still got to get done.

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A job as a technician means Thomas is employed in an inflexible job within the expanded
service economy. Like Samuel, Thomas has less control over how his time is used at work, and
low control over time is an outcome of employment in a racialized job (Ray 2019; Wingfield
2019). The description of Thomas “not in the mood for anything,” shows that his job requires
him to embody racialized gendered emotional labor. When I interviewed Thomas, he mentioned
encountering White customers who were often uncomfortable with Black technicians entering
their home, and like Jamie, he tried to not take racist interactions personally. But from Jamie’s
statement, experiences in racialized inflexible work do come home, and shapes how Jamie
handles her personal problem with multiple demands and commitments pulling at her.
In therapy, Jamie has learned how to express her concerns with the division of
housework, emotional labor, and expected primary income earner demands. Before therapy,
Jamie felt she was embodying the Strong Black Woman image, and therapy has helped her see
that she does not have to embody strength:
Prior to starting therapy for myself and then doing couple’s therapy, I felt like I had to
take on everything. I had to grit and bear everything because I’m a Strong Black Woman
and I don’t need no man. I learned it takes two. Both of us have to be present and
engaged to make this thing called life that we built together work and be cohesive for all
four of us. So, yeah, I have gotten more better at that.
Embodying strength and implying “I don’t need no man,” supports scholarship that argues the
impact controlling images have on Black womanhood and manhood. In fact, mentioning “I don’t
need no man,” is a contemporary redefinition of the “Black lady” controlling image.
The “Black lady” controlling image can also impact Black women’s marriages.
Specifically, Collins (2000) argues that Black middle-class women who internalize the “Black

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lady” controlling image, are often objectified by Black men as being women who prioritize work
and competing with men over romantic partnering. Instead of viewing Black women’s self-
reliance as for the good of the family (Harley 1990; Jones 1982), this group of Black women are
considered lacking in femininity, which explains their inability to attract a man and marriage
(Collins 2000). This was evident for Jamie as she continued describing her interactions with
Thomas, and the impact the Strong Black Woman stereotype had on her marriage:
Thomas and I were having a conversation, [and] I was talking about every woman in my
family is like a Strong Black Woman. He was like, “that’s interesting because I don’t see
it that way at all. I see it as a lot of women have failed at relationships, so they have to be
strong because they have no one else.” And I was like, “oh snap, you just said a word.” So,
that was definitely a moment when I was like okay, maybe the image that I have of a Strong
Black Woman is not the image, it’s not what I think it is. You can still be strong and still
be vulnerable. I can still be strong and knowing myself, and wanting things for myself, as
well as being a mom and being a wife.
By agreeing with Thomas’s perspective of Strong Black Women as Black women who
“failed at relationships,” Jamie regained perspective, which meant prioritizing family first, and
by extension recommitting to a Black patriarchal understand of work and family life. That is,
Thomas is committed to a Black American culture of family first and used the Strong Black
Woman controlling image to make sure Jamie figured out her problem, and to ensure how she
figured it out was not at the expense of motherhood and marriage. Thomas’s perspective
accomplished the goal of prioritizing family, because Jamie feels better, and she feels better
because family is first:

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I’m definitely better. I feel like I know myself better. I’m more in tune with my needs as
well as his needs and the needs of my family. I guess I’m more in tune to everybody now
that I am taking care of myself. Whereas before, I was kind of like floating around trying
to figure this shit out. I think I got a pretty good handle on it now, to really be present and
engaging and available for my family.
Jamie has figured out her personal problem. Her predictable schedule is still the same
because it is the primary income for the family. Her small business is handled on her days off,
and she waits until Saturday to respond to emails related to the small business. Jamie also naps
throughout the day and does not sleep much. All of this, so Jamie does not embody the Strong
Black Woman controlling image. But Jamie is embodying strength, and the strength she
embodies has shifted to make sure her marriage does not fail, her family stays intact, and her
career is maintained, but in a way that is for the good of the family.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I examined the strategies Black middle-class women use to integrate work
and family life. As women reared to be self-reliant, Black middle-class women under the new
racism are trading in self-reliance for motherhood and marriage. This is known as strategic
mothering. The women I interviewed practice strategic mothering, which results in personal
problems between the multiple demands on their time. At work, this group of Black women
show how gendered racism in workplace culture creates a variety of challenges. They respond to
those challenges by voicing their concerns, emphasizing their racial identity and gender identity,
and reorient their commitment to work to be in service to community. Gendered racism due to
workplace culture spills over into home life, and findings reveal that Black middle-class women
must construct a series of strategies to manage their work demands, their partner’s work

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experiences, and ensure that however they structure time it is in support of family first. This
meant women were in a time deficit. To make meaning of the time deficit, Black women embody
strength, while actively trying to resist strength. Accordingly, I show how practicing strategic
mothering allows Black middle-class women to release self-reliance, while also placing them in
a position of practicing self-reliance when the demand on their time appears to have an impact on
how their husbands and children expect them to perform in family life.
In the next chapter, I examine Black middle-class men’s experiences with work and
family life and show how their meaning making of the two commitments largely drives the
Black American culture of family first. That is, Black women and men commit to family first,
but it appears that men’s position in the home as involved husbands and fathers, shapes the
overall home dynamic and expectation of family first.

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Chapter 3
His Work: The Family First Ethos for Black Middle-Class Men

Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous
Or boastful
Or proud
1 Corinthians 13:3 (New Living Translation)

In the world the Black woman comes from,
The best man is automatically defined
As the man with the most money
And “power” that he can get.
Michelle Wallace, Black Macho and the Myth of the Super Woman

“My purpose is husband and father…my season right now is strengthening my bond with my
spouse and my bond with my kids (Sebastian, Statistician, Washington, DC).”

“There has to be a decision point that a person needs to make, and it’s a very difficult one to make,
which is, is the money worth it? I found that because I had the blessing of having a very flexible
work environment, I recognize how detrimental chasing dollars can be towards the overall health
of your family (Marley, Financial Management Officer, Maryland).”

“The priority is home, and work understands that (Nate, Policy Manager, Washington, DC).”

“There’s nothing a boss could say that’s going to come before my kids. Like, you’re never going
to be more important than my kids (Noah, Entertainment Industry, Los Angeles).”

Variations of these comments were interwoven in 25 interviews with Black middle-class
men who are trying hard to place their families first. Separating men’s ability to completely
accomplish this Black American cultural expectation, is the type of middle-class work in which
they were employed. Men employed in careers with built in flexibility were best positioned to
accomplish what I call the family first ethos because they experienced more control over how
their time was used physically and emotionally. Men in the middle, employed in semi-flexible
careers were able to gain more control over how their time was used to accommodate the family
first ethos, but doing so required them to make adjustments in work. At the bottom were men
employed in inflexible jobs. Men in this group had low control over their time use, and work-

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related stress manifested in the home much more. I show how these three categories responding
to the culture of family first are shaped by gendered racism in the workplace, and Black
American cultural expectations of Black men in family.
Structural racism has often created barriers for Black men to realize identities as ideal
workers. Under the new racism, Black Americans are underrepresented in what would be
considered contemporary professional jobs. Instead, many including this sample of Black
middle-class men are employed in careers that are considered to be a part of the expanded
service economy such as education, health care, and technology (Wingfield 2019). By virtue of
their positions in racialized jobs, respondents often have less control over their time use on the
job. Lower control over how time is used within and outside of work, can impact planning for
the future (Ray 2019). Navigating workplaces often experienced as White space can lead to
Black men’s lower positive viewpoints of work in their lives (Wingfield 2021). By exploring the
extent to which Black middle-class men claim the family first ethos, I show how Black middle-
class men redefine manhood outside of the confines of the ideal worker—an ideal often
associated with men and how they position themselves in family life (Christiansen and Palkovitz
2001; Gerson 1993: Rao 2020). Black middle-class men’s incorporation of family is a culturally
specific response to their racially stratified positions in the market economy to combat racism
and racial inequality (Johnson and Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and Dyson 2010). Accordingly,
this group of Black middle-class men are forging the family first ethos in response to negative
experiences in racialized jobs, and the performance of fatherhood and marriage within the few
options available to them.

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UNBENDING STRUCTURES AND THE MEANING OF WORK AND FAMILY
LIFE FOR BLACK MEN EMPLOYED IN INFLEXIBLE WORK
What does it mean to maintain the family first ethos within unbending structures? The
men I interviewed who were employed in places with an inflexible work culture, revealed how
some Black middle-class men manage partnership and parenthood within unbending structures
like work, time, and money. Depending on the stress men emphasized, namely financial and
emotional carework, I show that men are forging the family first ethos and doing so in relation to
inflexible work culture that places them in less control over their time and money. As salaried
men navigating inflexible work culture, some emphasized the impact of financial strain on their
ability to control their time and accomplish the family first ethos. Others emphasized the
emotional carework expected of them at work as an impact on their time, and ability to
accomplish the family first ethos. Specifically, five men underscored financial work, and four
men underscored emotional carework. Nine men fall within the inflexible work category.
This group of Black middle-class men are employed in careers like banking, IT, logistics,
program coordinator, sales, security, and technology, in sectors that are constraining either
financially or emotionally, and with low decision-making power (Collins 1997; Ray 2019;
Wingfield 2019). These jobs are considered racialized jobs. Five men are managers and shift
supervisors, and all men are salaried. When men described how they balanced work and family
obligations, they emphasized the benefit of being salaried and how that position allowed them
much more flexibility than hourly work. For example, I often heard comments like the one
Malcom made when he described balancing work and parenting demands, such as coaching his
son’s baseball team: “I try to remember when those days come that there’s a little bit more
privilege, I have than being a typical sales employee or hourly employee.” Drawing a boundary

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between his type of employment, and hourly employment, Malcolm maintained the perspective
that he is privileged even with experiencing inflexible work culture. However, by virtue of his
position in a racialized job, Malcolm has less control over his time, which impacts the few
options available to understand work and family life as someone in a racially stratified position
in the expanded service economy.
Samuel: Financial Worker and the Family First Ethos
When I met Samuel, he, his wife Jada, and two sons were living in Maryland. The family
relocated from North Carolina to Maryland because Jada was admitted into a PhD program.
Sitting down at a restaurant, enjoying milkshakes and french fries, Samuel expressed how
frustrated he was with the cost of living in Maryland. He reminisced about life in North Carolina,
which included cheaper housing and a better quality of life for himself and his family. Although
frustrated with the cost of living, Samuel emphasized how proud he was of his wife for the
opportunity she received to realize her dream of becoming a professor. Samuel conceived Jada’s
acceptance into a PhD program as part of her purpose and destiny. “I always knew she wanted to
get a PhD. It was always [a] part of her purpose and her destiny from the beginning. So, I always
knew we were going to make a move, have to move.” Moving for Jada’s destiny came with some
sacrifices. In North Carolina, Samuel was employed as a firefighter. Although the pay was not
exceptionally high, it aligned well with the cost of living in their town, and it was a career
pathway Samuel enjoyed. In Maryland however, the firefighter career pathway did not produce
enough income, for a family of four, with one adult working on a graduate student stipend.
Knowing he needed to look for employment with higher earning potential, Samuel activated his
bachelor’s degree, and landed a job as a logistics supervisor at a warehouse.

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Diving deeper into our conversation, I discovered that maximizing earning potential was
one element shaping Samuel’s decision to work in logistics. The other was the time commitment
for firefighters, which would have him working away from his family in 24 to 48-hour shifts.
“To be honest, if I could have started off with the same pay, I probably would have. But away
from family, and working those 24 to 48-hour shifts, they probably would have been alone a lot.
So, I probably still would have chosen the supervisor position because I am home a lot mostly.”
Being a logistics supervisor included 10-hour shifts, which depending on the season, meant
Samuel must awaken at 2am and arrive at work by 3am, working his shift until 12noon. The
logistics supervisor career pathway provided Samuel more physical time with his family, but a
combination of financial strain correlated with inflexible salaried work and mental stress related
to work, left Samuel feeling as if he did not live up to the family first ethos.
Samuel’s Inflexible Work Culture
Samuel supervises palletizing ice cream, “the good stuff” he describes. While Samuel
views his job as a means to financially provide for his family, he also appreciates the supervisory
position because it provides him an opportunity to build leadership skills. Reflecting on life
before logistics, Samuel described having support available to him, which made it possible for
him to avoid administrative tasks:
I like it [logistics supervisor] because it’s expanding my abilities. It’s exposed my
weaknesses. Pretty much all my life, having a sports background, I always had someone to
help me as far as administrative staff. I just had to show up and do what I do, and work in
my strength. I used to work in mental health. I used to work with kids. Even when you
have to do documentations, the ladies at the front desk were like “it’s okay, we’ll help you.”

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I always had someone to help me administratively, [and] I was always able to focus on
what I’m good at.
As a college athlete, and in early career experiences post-college, Samuel worked in the pink-
collar service economy positions. As a man employed in a women-dominated job (health aide
with children) he could rely on women to help him burdensome administrative tasks. This gender
dynamic allowed him to have more control over how he used his time at work. However, as a
logistics supervisor, administrative tasks are at the core of his position and a continuing point of
stress that makes the job challenging.
The strains Samuel experiences with administrative work expectations is complicated by
his position in relation to the other logistics supervisors. Samuel’s supervisor is a Black woman,
and many of his co-supervisors are Black women. Unlike his previous experiences, Samuel’s
supervisor and co-supervisors do not help him complete administrative tasks. To make sense of
the tension with the “racialized glass escalator” present in his current position (Wingfield 2009),
Samuel used gendered descriptors. “The major stress I’ve experienced in this job, the work
environment that I’m in, is African American lead. We have a female, she's African American,
my counterpart is a female, and she is African American. So, it’s a very catty and cliquish
environment. If you don’t roll like them, it’s kind of like you’re an outsider.” Refusing to “roll
like them” could also lead to someone losing their job. Samuel’s prediction of job loss is
sustained by those he supervises who confirmed that previous supervisors had a hard time
working with his supervisor and co-supervisors, and as a result, no longer worked for the
company. Samuel emphasized that his supervisor “knows how to play that game,” of finding
reasons why someone is not adequately doing their job, which aligns with stories about the
higher ups on the warehouse floor.

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Since Samuel is challenged with administrative tasks, his job and what he describes as his
supervisor’s cliquish behavior, causes concern about job security. However, upon further
reflection, cliquish behavior and “playing the game” is just one aspect causing stress for Samuel
at work. A second stressor is the misalignment between his expectation of gendered “feeling
rules” in the workplace (Hochschild 1983; Wingfield 2021), and the treatment he receives.
Reflecting on his first ten months at the warehouse, Samuel expressed frustration with his
supervisor’s unwillingness to extend care and concern to him. Help he was used to receiving
from women co-workers:
She never had a meeting with me from the beginning saying, “hey, come with me. I got
your back. Tell me what’s going on.” It was none of that. I knew where I stood with her.
She’s kind of standoffish. You know how you have a person in authority who’s helping
you, [who] ask you “how was your day? How are you doing? What’s going on in your
life?” You don’t get any of that. So, the stress. There was no initial conversation from the
beginning that said, “hey, I know you are going to go through this, but if you have any
problems at night, feel free to call me, call me anytime.” It was after I went through a bunch
of problems. I feel like from the beginning it should be like, “hey, if you need anything feel
free to call me, call me anytime” because I was working the night shift.
Previous women co-workers had provided Samuel emotional care at work, which provided him
more control over his time and made room for him to “show up and do what I do.” However, at
his current job concern for Samuel was shown once he proved he needed help adjusting to the
supervisory position. The lack of emotional care and concern toward him culminated into stress
and Samuel’s perception of his supervisor as cliquish and standoffish.

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Since the earlier days of work, Samuel’s work conditions have improved. He has adjusted
to the administrative expectations of him and has even admitted that he was partly responsible
for the stress at work because he was used to always having someone to help him. But with time,
and help from his wife, he developed a routine to ease work-related stress, which included
writing down important notes. Even though work life has improved, Samuel underscored that if
he was single, it would have taken him less time to learn the administrative expectations of his
position because he “could just grind it out and stay at work for 15 to 16 hours.” However,
already feeling guilty about the time he spends away from his family, Samuel could not
rationalize spending more time at work. As someone employed in a racialized job, Samuel
experienced low pay and low control over he used his time (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). If
Samuel could have things his way, he would work in a job that provided him more time and
proximity to his family. Samuel’s incorporation of family is a culturally specific response to his
racially stratified position in the market economy (Johnson and Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and
Dyson 2010). An emphasis of family first is an embrace of involved fatherhood and marriage to
combat racism and racial inequality.
Samuel’s Family First Ethos
For the most part, Samuel does not bring work home. What comes home are mental and
financial stressors. Samuel struggles with “leaving it [work] mentally there.” During the
adjustment period, he consistently brought home work-related mental stressors, thinking, “oh, I
might get fired.” Although Samuel now brings home less mental stress with a strong possibility
of losing his job, he does think about how his job does not allow him to create an ideal family
environment. Reflecting on the multiple tasks Jada juggles in a day—including school, part-time

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work, and childcare—Samuel described how “as a man” he would prefer earning an income that
allowed Jada more flexibility in how she showed up in career and family life:
As a man, I’ve always wanted to be able to create an environment where my wife has the
option of working. I know my wife works, that’s just her, she’s going to. When I mean
work, she will be writing a book, blogging, doing things she loves to do. I’ve always wanted
to create space for her to be able to do it. I feel a little bit of guilt just because I haven’t
been able to provide her that type of environment because she has had to work since she’s
been doing her PhD. The perfect example would be, I could provide her a nanny, and they
could be together. When she needs to write, they can take the kids. That would be the
perfect environment that I would like to provide, but I haven’t been able to fulfill that.
Following the family first ethos, Samuel sacrificed financial comfort and sojourned to Maryland
for Jada’s career. However, he still experiences guilt because he cannot financially provide an
environment that accommodates Jada’s demanding career and motherhood expectations.
Accordingly, Samuel’s inflexible salaried job does not prove financially beneficial, because it
does not provide him more control over his time and is low paying. Both cases, outcome of a
racialized work structure creates a challenge for Samuel to fully embodying the family first
ethos.
The financial stress connected with low pay is not confined to the ideal environment
Samuel would like to create for Jada. It is also apparent in the financial instability his family
experiences, even with him receiving a promotion at work:
Even though I got this big promotion, we don’t make enough to pay for our boys to go to
daycare. She got a scholarship to go here, but we needed the money [loans] to help with
living expenses. We want to do things like get my wife a car, but that’s another bill. We

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are considering cutting the cable off because you know we can save money, but my wife
likes to watch basketball. That’s something she likes to do in her free time. Everything
hinges on our finances. We live in an apartment now and we would like to get a house, so
the boys can play around. Everything over here is so much more expensive than back home.
Day care, a second car, cable, and home ownership are symbols of middle-class status (Landry
and Marsh 2011; Rao 2020). They also symbolize the successful achievement of the family first
ethos. Samuel’s inability to create financial and family comfort allowing more control over time
like day care, personal transportation, and homeownership is a point of financial and mental
stress for him. These stressors are compounded by his expectations of men in family life, and his
wife’s expectation of him in Black family life:
As a man, I feel a little bit bad because I feel like I should be able to create that environment
[day care, second car, cable, and home ownership], but do I go out and work four jobs and
not see my kids? I could work, and then Uber, and do all these things, and some women
don’t care if they’re husbands do that, but my wife values our time. She would rather me
be home with the boys, then live a life where I do these things where I am away from the
family.
On one hand, Samuel feels guilty because he believes as a man, he should provide a financially
comfortable lifestyle for his family. On the other hand, Samuel, and Jada, are committed to the
family first ethos embedded in Black American culture, which emphasizes involved fatherhood
and emotional and psychosocial forms of support in the family (Johnson and Young 2016; Roy
and Dyson 2010). In addition, when Black fathers like Samuel are resourced constrained, they
often perform fatherhood embodying what they believe is expected of them within the few

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options available (Johnson and Young 2016). By committing to the home and refusing to work
additional jobs, Samuel is also combatting the controlling image of the “absent Black father.”
Samuel and Jada Don’t Do Divorce
Trying to accomplish the family first ethos while employed at an inflexible salaried job,
compounded by financial stressors is challenging. At one point, Samuel brought home mental
stress regarding job insecurity, specifically the threat of job loss. And now, Samuel brings home
mental stressors concerning his family’s financial health, and the impact inflexible salaried work
can have on realizing improved financial conditions (Ray 2019). But what helps Samuel manage
the financial worker outcome of inflexible work culture is his marriage.
Samuel emphasized the importance of marriage by stating, “don’t get divorced.” Samuel
drew this conclusion while describing his and Jada’s faith, and examples of long marriages in
their families:
For us and our family, faith has been a major thing that has gotten us through some really
tough seasons. My wife’s dad is a pastor, and my grandfather was a preacher. We pray
together. Doing those things have really helped us. My wife and I come from families that,
on both sides of our family, don’t get divorced. You don’t quit. I’m not saying that my
parents’ marriage is the best, but they ain’t leaving each other. We got that attitude. We are
going to stay together. We truly love each other, and we want to be together. I think that
foundation has helped us through rough times.
As a participant in Black American family culture, Samuel underscores the importance of his
faith, his wife’s faith, their marital bond, and the love they have for each other to endure
challenging times. The goal is not to get divorced. Even with financial worker challenges

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connected with inflexible work culture, Samuel stays the course, confident in his commitment to
his partner and family and their commitment to him.
Malcolm: Emotional Worker and the Family First Ethos
At the end of my interview with Malcolm, I asked him if he could describe the most
stressful life situations he was currently encountering. “Parenting,” he said, with no hesitation.
Parenting his son and daughter were the most stressful because he recognized that most of his
time was spent managing work-related emotional stressors. I was surprised by this concern
because Malcolm praised his employment, as it offered him salaried work and more flexibility
than hourly work. If Malcolm had access to salary work with much more flexibility and control
over his time than hourly work, why then was the time he spent at work a point of stress for him?
Could it be because the toll of emotional carework is an outcome of an inflexible work culture,
causing tension with his ability to fully embrace the Black American culture of family first?
Malcolm’s Inflexible Work Culture
Malcolm lives in Los Angeles, with his wife Diamond, and their two children. Malcolm
used the word “privileged” to describe his employment. With a high school degree, and a career
portfolio that includes former bank manager, and current manager of a cemetery, I understood
why Malcolm described his employment as privileged. Within two years, he quickly moved up
the ranks from sales to management. Despite a privileged position, Malcolm’s narrative about
work and family life shows how burdensome his career can be, when tied to expected and
unavoidable emotional carework. Expected and unavoidable emotional carework is typical of
individuals employed in the expanding service economy, where many Black Americans are
employed.

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Malcolm’s workday begins at 5:00am and ends at 5:30pm. He is not obligated to be at
work at 5:00am in the morning, but he is usually on his computer sending and responding to
emails to get a head start on the day. Malcolm describes his work responsibilities as “a
combination of consultation work and management.” He reports to the cemetery’s board of
directors and oversees daily operations. Malcolm directly supervisees three people. Work tasks
are different each day and completing them depends on whether the cemetery is supporting
funeral services. On non-funeral days, Malcolm facilitates team meetings, supports the sales
department, and completes clerical work like communicating with customers.
Malcolm’s description of customer relations revealed how emotional carework appeared
in his daily work life (Hochschild 1983; Wingfield 2021), and the strategies he incorporates to
manage emotional stressors. For example, Malcolm must help customers prepare for and finance
their loved one’s death during an emotionally stressful time. In most cases, Malcolm works with
customers who are disproportionately minority and working-poor and are not financially
prepared to undertake costly funeral services. This means he must conduct business with clients
who are grappling with financial cost while emotionally vulnerable:
Grief comes with a lack of logic. So, just in terms of dealing with customers, that’s already
a stressful situation because we’re talking about people who have had the worst possible
thing happen to them and are now forced to make a decision that is going to be fairly costly.
I think the biggest part about that is people usually don’t want to make these arrangements
in advance. So, usually the people that we end up dealing with, at least the more stressful
and the ones that have a big piece of their logical thinking missing, those are the ones that
have no plans in place.

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Customers without “plans in place” create stress for Malcolm because it requires him to provide
emotional carework in relation to an already emotionally difficult experience, death care. As
someone working in a racialized job, Malcolm is expected to show up to work prepared to assert
a level of emotional care. When relating to minority and working poor customers who are
finance-strapped with no plans, Malcolm must muster up more emotional carework because
customers without funeral plans in place, are managing costly services and losing a loved one.
This work dynamic is an example of a typical job Black Americans are hired in—jobs geared
toward serving a minority and under-resourced customer population (Collins 1983; Ray 2019;
Wingfield 2019). These jobs often carry high emotional labor with low pay.
Management and customer relations also require Malcolm to shift his company’s
business model to fit the service industry’s concern with “customer satisfaction.” But shifting the
managerial services at the cemetery is not easy, which creates stress for Malcolm:
There’s a culture that I am trying to change and that creates a lot of stress in terms of
dealing with people. They [the cemetery business] historically made decisions that were
convenient for them as a business, but not convenient for the customer. Businesses are all
about the customer now, so trying to foster that change creates a little bit of anxiety because
you have people who have been led to believe that how they do their job is okay, and they
don’t necessarily have to be accountable for certain things, and that’s always going to
create a little stress.
Malcolm uses the word anxiety to describe his experience with shifting outdated workplace
culture and practices at the cemetery. Anxiety is connected to an unbending workplace that is
pushing against a new service industry culture embedded in customer satisfaction. This work-
related stress places Malcolm in a position where he must coach his team to embrace new

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emotional carework practices that are not typically associated with the death care industry.
Specifically, Malcolm is modeling the new service industry culture of customer satisfaction,
which requires individuals who work in the service economy to emote much more than other
industries (Hochschild 1983; Kang 2010). Jobs like Malcolm’s require burdensome emotional
labor from their workers; and this is often gendered (Hochschild 1983). The meaning and
demands of emotional labor are stratified by race (Wingfield 2021). For example, in a study on
Black male nurses, Wingfield (2009) learned that Black male nurses embraced care and
nurturance to combat racism and racial inequality. Malcolm’s awareness of why management
needs to shift their business model to be more attentive to their disproportionately minority and
working-poor customer base is an assertion of care and nurturance to combat racial inequality.
The emotional carework expected of Malcolm leaves him feeling drained at the end of
the workday, and there are moments where the stress of emoting becomes too much, causing
Malcolm to experience anxiety. Most times, Malcolm tries to push through the day, working
through the anxiety and stress related to expected emotional carework. Malcolm also internalized
emotional carework stress by creating personal accountability strategies to make sense of
customer satisfaction workplace culture. He described, “In situations where I have long days, I’ll
ask myself, “okay, what did I do to actually deserve this? To earn me being here at this point.
Where did I drop the ball? I try to always figure out what dealing I had and try to use that as a
reason to get through it and do what I need to do.” By holding himself accountable, figuring out
where he “dropped the ball,” Malcolm tries to make sense of having to work through emotional
carework stress. But upon further description, what Malcolm is trying to make sense of is the
lack of control he has over his time:

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If someone comes in on a Monday and they have a funeral on Wednesday, there’s a lot that
I have to set aside to make sure that that person gets what they need. I think it is a little
easy for me knowing that what I do, the situation could always be worse for me, but there
are moments that happen where I do not have a whole lot of control over. There are certain
situations where I don’t have a lot of control over. That’s part of management in general,
but it’s also a big part of the industry that I work in.
Dealing in grief is at the core of Malcolm’s job. To manage the emotional carework
expected of him, he maintains perspective and holds himself accountable. But unfortunately, the
stress and anxiety connected with his inflexible salaried job does come home, and manifests in
how Malcolm interacts with his children. Malcolm’s desire is to place family first, and time with
his children is important to him. However, the emotional carework spills over into the home,
shaping how he shows up in family life.
Malcolm’s Family First Ethos
Like work, Malcolm tries to maintain perspective when he is unable to meet the desired
family first ethos. What helps is the clear boundary he can draw between the differences in
workplace culture for salaried employees, versus hourly employees. Having experience with
hourly and salary employment, Malcolm remembers being emotionally drained from hourly paid
work, which prevented him from being available for his family.
When I first started working at the cemetery, I was in sales and a big part of being in sales
at the cemetery is dealing with those families that don’t have any property. So, a lot of
times, especially when he was firstborn, there were things that they would go out and do,
and I would either be at work or at home. I wasn’t trying to go to somebody’s birthday

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party if I had been to work and sat in the same room with somebody for 5 hours about their
mom, husband, or child. It just wasn’t something that I wanted to do.
Although salaried employment often makes his work difficult to compartmentalize, Malcolm
says that in some ways promotion to salaried employment has provided him the opportunity to
gain more control over his time:
For the past three months my son had baseball games on Saturday. So, I would go to his
game because I coached the team, and I would go to work after. That’s not something I
would be able to do if I was an hourly employee. Even right now [time of interview], I
broke my shoulder blade about two weeks ago and I have been working from home ever
since. So, to have a situation occur where I could have otherwise been forced to go on
disability and get a fraction of my paycheck, I’m given a privilege to answer phones, and
send emails from home so I can keep my regular salary.
Employment in a salaried job provides Malcolm more control over his time than an hourly job.
But the type of salaried job Malcolm is employed requires him to make personal adjustments to
ensure that his time meets the timed expectations of the death care industry. That is, Malcolm
can coach his son’s baseball team, and work temporarily from home while recovering from a
shoulder injury because time adjustments are created that fits within the standard set by his
company. Accordingly, what Malcolm experienced is a shift in position within a racialized job.
Moving into a higher position provided Malcolm more stability, increased wages, work security
benefits associated with salaried status, and more control over his time us (Ray 2019; Wingfield
2019).
Salary work privilege matters and underscores the importance of the family first ethos in
Black American culture. It is important for Malcolm to coach his son’s baseball team, and hourly

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work would make it much harder for him to participate in an activity he describes as “near and
dear to my heart.” In addition, drawing a clear boundary embedded within a positive perspective
helps quell feelings of disappointment Malcolm experiences when he must choose between
family gatherings like BBQs and birthday parties, and work commitments. He states, “there are
situations where I much rather had been at a BBQ or someone’s birthday party, but at the same
time, got to do what I got to do, and I realize that some of it is what I signed up for.” Inflexible
salaried employment is a constraining privilege allowing some access to the family first ethos.
Even though inflexible salaried employment allows Malcolm more control over how he
uses his time than hourly employment, it does little to change the impact of emotional carework.
Still, there are moments when Malcolm comes home from work emotionally drained. The
emotional drainage is a form of work-related stress Malcolm experiences with the death care
industry and by virtue of his employment in an expanded service economy. Work stress
manifests at home through Malcolm’s lower tolerance with daily family life stressors. He says,
“When I am stressed out, I usually do not have as much tolerance and patience for a lot of the
things I normally would. You will see that most often in me dealing with my children, and
probably Diamond too.” Malcolm’s lower “tolerance and patience” is related to parental
management, especially his son’s verbal temper tantrums:
I feel terrible about it, but I told my son, he will cry about something small, and I told him
I listen to grown people cry all day, I don’t want to listen to you cry right now. I will tell
him to stop, cut it out. He’s just being a kid for the most part. I’m tired. I had a 12-hour day
and I’m trying to tell these people how to do these things, and now here you are, I just
walked through the door, and you are challenging me again. So, it definitely surfaces itself
in that way. Just no patience, no tolerance, no nothing because I felt like I had been dealing

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with it all day, and in actuality, I haven’t. I haven’t been dealing with him all day, I have
been dealing with other people.
Managing employees combined with the emotional carework expected of individuals
employed in the new customer satisfaction priority middle-class industry is stressful and
challenging. And for Malcolm, “there are some similarities between managing people and raising
kids.” The hard part for Malcolm, however, is that most of his emotional energy is spent at work,
managing a team, and managing grieving customers. Upon arriving home, his tank is low, but
the family first ethos requires an emotional and time investment and commitment to children
(Johnson and Young 2016). Thus, Malcolm feels terrible about his interactions with his son, and
why he describes parenting as the most stressful life situation he is currently encountering.
Accordingly, gendered racism stemming from racialized workplace culture comes home, and
shapes Malcolm’s interactions with his children.
To help manage low tolerance and patience with his children, Malcolm relies on
Diamond for support. When he experiences a challenging day at work, Diamond provides him
space to sort out his emotions. “She [Diamond] generally knows when I’m frustrated or stressed
out. She’s great about just kind of leaving me alone and letting me kind of figure it out on my
own.” Malcolm acknowledges Diamond’s emotional support, but it is predicated on Malcolm’s
employment in the death care industry. That is, in Malcolm’s previous employment, banking,
Diamond drew boundaries regarding how work-related stress entered the home:
When I worked at the bank before working at the cemetery, she would call me out on it.
One day, she mentioned, “You either have to find another job or figure out how to deal
with this stress.” That actually was more stressful than the cemetery when I worked at the
bank. So, very early on in our relationship, I kind of was put in a situation where I had to

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learn how to leave it at work, and when I come home, come home. Sometimes that’s
easier said than done, but I’m generally on guard, and I try not to pass that off to them.
Malcolm shifted employment to accommodate their shared commitment regarding work-related
stress at home. However, he still experiences work-related stress, but this time it's connected to a
much higher level of emotional carework--grieving customers. Given the adjustment, Diamond
provides more space for Malcolm to sort through work-related emotional stressors, but Malcolm
still tries to maintain the boundary as to how emotions show up at home. To maintain his end of
the bargain, Malcolm compartmentalizes his emotions.
The challenge I usually get with that though [drawing boundaries of work-related stress at
home] is that I may not get the opportunity to vent often because I don’t want to bring that
stuff home. I will try to leave it at work and compartmentalize. It’s something that I won’t
bring home.
Diamond’s hard line with work-related stress coming home, and Malcolm’s adjustment to
the precedent through seeking new employment and compartmentalizing provide further support
regarding a Black American culture of family first. Malcolm’s employment in the death care
industry is a racialized job. The job is racialized because the industry represents the expansion of
the service economy, and the service economy is largely comprised of people of color and
women (Wingfield 2019). Further, fewer material and financial resources as well as communal
expectations shape the meaning making of fatherhood in Black families. When Black fathers are
resourced constrained, they often perform fatherhood embodying what they believe is expected
of them within the few options available (Johnson and Young 2016). Involved fatherhood and
emotional and psychosocial forms of support in the family may be seen as Black middle-class
men’s responses to their racially stratified positions in the market economy to combat racism and

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racial inequality (Johnson and Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and Dyson 2010). But in the case of
Malcolm, racialized gendered emotional labor and his privileged position within racialized job
structure, still makes it hard for him fully commitment to involved fatherhood the way he
desires.
Making Great Decisions in Life
A hard line against work-related stress coming home means Malcolm must
compartmentalize his experiences and emotions. Creating these partitions between work and
family life can lead to a pressure cooker buildup within someone, and an unfortunate outburst to
those closest to them, especially family members. But the silver lining for Malcolm is his
perspective, and his marriage. Diamond draws hard lines for the good of the family, and
Malcolm is grateful for her care and attention to the family’s needs, and ensuring he too stays
committed to the family first ethos.
Although Malcolm discussed at length the impact emotional carework at work has on
him, and his ability to show up in family life, he maintains the perspective that balance is
important but not as important as partner quality. He says, “I think work-life balance is always
important, but maybe even as equally important just knowing who you are with.” Describing his
marriage, Malcolm says, “best decision that I’ve made.” What makes marriage to Diamond the
best decision is the fit, and how conflict tends to be handled:
I really do think I ended up fortunate with Diamond and the things she believes in, and it
all kind of meshed. I don’t know if my brain energized me telling me, “yeah, this is a good
choice,” but with our lives and our work, there could have been other things that could
have ended up being fights, and they ended up being conversations. So, you just have to

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find that. If you can find that before committing to marrying somebody and creating
children, then all of this other stuff, you can figure out along the way.
Diamond’s strategy regarding work and family life and time-use, fits the family first
ethos. Committed to the ethos himself but challenged with unbending structures like work and
time, Malcolm sometimes comes up short emotionally. However, the hard lines Diamond draws
between work and family, allows Malcolm to emote, but in a way that maintains commitment to
family first. Scholar bell hooks examined how the Black home can operate as a resistance space
responding to white supremacy. Work organizations do not provide care and concern for Black
women and men, but the home does. Diamond and Malcolm’s marriage represents care and
concern and exemplify an intimate interpersonal dynamic co-constructing support and burden.
The burden is on Diamond to make sure the home stays committed to family first, so sometimes
she carries the emotional burden, and other times, she draws boundaries around how emotional
stress shows up in family life.
ADAPTABLE STRUCTURES AND THE MEANING OF WORK AND FAMILY
LIFE FOR BLACK MEN EMPLOYED IN SEMI-FLEXIBLE WORK
Men employed in inflexible salaried jobs experience unbending work, time, and money
structures. In some ways, these men are privileged because they can make small adjustments as
they attempt to achieve the Black American culture of family first. But oftentimes, small
adjustments are belied by financial stress and emotional carework demands, outcomes often
associated with inflexible salaried jobs. Like their inflexible counterparts, Black middle-class
men employed in careers with semi-flexible workplace culture are driven by the family first
ethos. What sets them apart from their inflexible counterparts, is the type of racialized jobs
employing them. Specifically, Black middle-class men employed in careers with a semi-flexible

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workplace culture encounter adaptable work, time, and money structures allowing them more
access to the family first ethos. Nine men fall within the semi-flexible workplace culture
category.
Men who fall within the semi-flexible category are employed in careers like education,
engineering, graphic design, government agencies, real estate, and IT. They are employed in
more easily compartmentalized jobs. Some men are expected to provide emotional carework, but
not to the same degree and impact on their family life as men employed in inflexible racialized
jobs. Although this group of men have more control over how their time is used, five men
engage in small businesses or side gigs like face painting services, lawn care services, tutoring
services, coaching, and music and design art to bring in more money to secure the financial
health of the home. Three men do not engage side gigs but are currently thinking of ways to
change employment that brings even more balance between work and family life. The selected
narratives from this group, underscore the time adjustments men make to place family first, and
the unintended stressors men encounter within a family first ethos.
Nigel: Semi-Flexible Worker and the Family First Ethos
Nigel and Mia are both graduates of Howard University and reside in Maryland with their
two daughters. Our interview occurred in the summertime, and their oldest daughter was home,
after attending her first year of college. Their youngest daughter was preparing to enter high
school. Nigel, Mia, and their children are what I consider an artistically talented family. Nigel
participates in cosplay and is a face and body artist, Mia is a tattoo artist, and their daughters are
avid sewers and painters. Bonded together by love and closely aligned shared interests, Nigel and
Mia have been able to creatively construct a household that is committed to work life, but not at
the expense of family first.

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As Nigel described his commitments to work and family life, he mentioned his children,
and the adjustments he made with work to ensure that family always comes first. A commitment
to family first was further supported in Nigel’s explanation of personal time. If Nigel felt that his
personal activities impacted his children’s perception of him being away from the family, he
adjusted accordingly. Motivating Nigel’s strong commitment to the family first ethos, is his
investment in being a great father, especially since he remembers growing up in a two-parent
home with a father who was present, but emotionally distant. Nigel is committed to making sure
he and his daughters cultivate an emotional bond. Investing in involved fatherhood and
emotional and psychosocial forms of care is typical of Black American men because they are
often employed in careers that are resource constrained (Johnson and Young 2021; Roy 2004).
Accordingly, involved fatherhood and emotional and psychosocial forms of support can be
viewed as pathways to combat racism and racial inequality, especially the controlling image of
the “absent Black father” (hooks 2004; Johnson and Young 2016; Neal 2005). As someone
employed in a semi-flexible racialized job, Nigel can make as many adjustments as needed to
place his commitment to family first because he has more control over his time (Ray 2019), but
these adjustments are not without consequences. Nigel’s narrative reveals the complexity of the
family first ethos and the unintended stressors this commitment can have on individuals.
Nigel’s Semi-Flexible Work Culture
Working in downtown DC, Nigel’s title is customs specialist. The arm he manages is
technical support. Nigel described his staff as small and views his job as a “customer-service
oriented job.” As a manager, Nigel is responsible for guiding the day-to-day needs of the staff
team, which includes responding to work-related conflict. Managing conflict presents a
challenge because Nigel tries to avoid conflict. Conflict averse, Nigel becomes stressed as he

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tries to handle situations. “When things are running smoothly in the office, it feels really good.
When I got instances where we have problem children so to speak, it does get really stressful.”
Unfortunately, it takes time for Nigel to release work-related conflict. His wife Mia is a strong
support system for him. Her support and his ability to retreat into video games, or his side gig
helps Nigel to “calm down and take my mind off it.”
Nigel’s side gig as a face and body artist began when his oldest daughter was 6 years old.
When he carried his daughter to a birthday party, he noticed a woman face painting. He asked
her about the work, and where she bought her supplies. Nigel purchased supplies, began
practicing, and since has developed a global following, and is employed as a face painting
instructor in “one of the world’s largest body art organizations.” Nigel works part-time doing
face and body art because it is something he enjoys, while contributing extra money to the
household.
Nigel’s side gig requires him to spend time away from home during some weeknights and
weekends. He is mostly busy from spring, “right up through Halloween.” To accommodate his
side gig’s encroachment on family life, Nigel has found a way to integrate family into his work.
That is, his family is with him sometimes, activating their artistic skills, which refashions the
side gig as a family business:
I do face painting, but my wife Mia also does airbrush tattoos. So, there may be an event
or two where we are both out at the same time working the same event. In fact, just last
week [time of interview], I was doing face painting, Mia was doing airbrush tattoos, and
our oldest daughter was doing henna designs. We were all at the same event.
Although Nigel adjusts how he uses his time to incorporate his family, particularly with
side gig work, I wondered if he felt work pulled him away from his family. I asked Nigel if he

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could describe the meaning of work and family balance. Immediately, Nigel responded “family
obligations really have to come first.” This was made particularly clear with Nigel’s primary job
in customs. “If I’m working and we don’t have any plans with the family, then yeah, I’m going
to do my job. But if I made plans with my wife or my daughters, then that’s going to come first,
and my supervisors know that’s going to come first. That is more important.” Motivating Nigel’s
commitment to make it clear to his supervisors that family comes first, was centered on his
perception of fatherhood. Nigel wants to ensure his daughters that their father is present and
involved in family life:
I wanted to make sure as a father that I was always going to be there, available for my
daughters. I wasn’t going to be at work all the time, not showing up until it is almost time
for them to go to bed. And you know they ask, “why aren’t you here?” They are not going
to get that I’m working so that we can eat, as opposed to what they would probably like to
have is a dad that spends time with them
Previous research on Black men and fatherhood, underscores the importance of participant
fatherhood in Black American culture (Council (revise and resubmit); Johnson and Young 2016;
Roy 2004; Roy and Dyson 2010). Nigel’s description of work life in relation to fatherhood,
further supports this research because he adjusts how his time is used, to ensure he provides
emotional and psychosocial forms of support to his children. Accordingly, Nigel commits to
work, but not to a degree that work takes precedence over the Black American culture of family
first.
The governmental department employing Nigel does not require him to commit to longer
hours or make up hours if he places family first. Instead, he is only required to get work done by
deadlines and within the time-specified 40-hour work week. He says, “As long as my job gets

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done, they’re not pushing me to work any overtime or anything like that. “Why do I have to
come in late? [if asked]” I have to drop somebody off at the metro station. Fortunately, my job is
very understanding about it.” An understanding job, and a side gig that allows Nigel to
sometimes refashion work as a family business, meets his expectation of family first. And while
Nigel can achieve family first, a deeper analysis reveals that placing family first connects with
personal sacrifices and unintended stressors.
Nigel’s Family First Ethos
Nigel’s commitment to family first is informed by his childhood. He grew up in a two-
parent home, but his father could not provide him the emotional care and support he needed to
develop a positive self-esteem. As a child and teenager, Nigel constantly sought his father’s
approval. As an adult, Nigel remembers this time period, as he aims to not repeat this parenting
strategy with his children:
I grew up in a household with both parents, but my dad was a great father, but he wasn’t
big on communication as far as his sons go, or at least as far as it went with me. And as a
result, there were things that I needed from him that I can’t say I got as far as you know
feeling that I had his approval. That he approved of me as a son. I grew up thinking that I
didn’t meet his standards and it did things as far as interfere with my own self-esteem. I
wanted to make sure that my children don’t experience that sort of insecurity.
Challenging the father-parental culture he grew up with, Nigel constructed fathering practices
predicated on emotional care, nurturance, and connectedness. This includes listening to his
children, showing love and grace toward them, and validating their opinions even when he
disagrees:

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I’ve always made sure to not just talk to my daughters, but to listen to them as well. I can
validate their feelings and concerns, be there to actually listen to them, not just to judge
them. If they are wrong, I’m going to let them know they are wrong, but I’m not going to
not listen to them if there is something I don’t understand, or I don’t think is important. I’m
not going to talk to them like they are not important or invalidate them.
Every day, Nigel tries to set the tone that he is open and available. That his daughters can
view him as a resource who is also invested in their emotional wellbeing. Nigel’s investment in
this parental strategy was cemented before he had children, underscoring his commitment to
family first, especially as an emotional pillar of the household. He says, “I try to create an
atmosphere as a dad where they can feel comfortable coming to me and talking to me. That was
something I decided on long before I had children, that was the type of father I needed to be.”
“Creating an atmosphere as a dad,” showed up in a couple of ways in the analysis. The
first included making sure time was set aside to be an active parent. Nigel appeared in spaces his
daughters operated in the home, playing videogames with his youngest daughter, and prior to
college, participated in activities with his oldest daughter. “If it’s like in the evening, I’ll come
downstairs and play videogames with my youngest. That’s something she really likes to do. My
oldest she’s in college now. She’s back home for the summer, but the same token. I would make
sure to spend time with her as well. To create moments that they remember as stuff they did with
their dad.” Using his childhood as a reference point, Nigel works hard to ensure his children do
not experience a father who embodied patriarchal male headship fatherhood--providership and
emotionally unavailable (hooks 2004; Neal 2005).
Nigel’s commitment to family first helps him realize a fatherhood pathway he desired as
a child growing up. But his constructed fatherhood pathway is not without its challenges. During

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our conversation, I learned that Nigel’s commitment to the family first ethos often leads to
adjustments that undermine his personal wellbeing. For example, Nigel stated he once
participated in mixed martial arts for fitness. However, one night after coming home from a
session, his daughter mentioned he did not spend enough time with the family. Considering his
daughter’s comment, reminded of his childhood, and committed to the family first ethos, Nigel
decided to quit mixed martial arts:
I used to take mixed martial arts training. I used to train on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I
enjoyed it a great deal, and that was something that was great at relieving stress. One day,
my daughter asked me, she was probably about 10, I don’t know if she was upset, but she
mentioned that I wasn’t spending enough time with the family. I wasn’t home enough. The
very next day, I quit. So, I stopped doing it.
Nigel has not replaced mixed martial arts with a wellbeing activity accommodating more
family time. Instead, he has incorporated activities allowing him to integrate family time. When
Nigel learned his oldest daughter was into comic books like him, and she desired to attend
Comic Con, he went with her. Now, Nigel is a cosplayer along with his daughter. Adjusting how
time is used to accommodate the family first ethos provides Nigel an opportunity to create an
emotional connection with his children, that he was denied growing up. Nigel’s commitment to
family first might be for the good of the family, but as learned, it is not without some costs. As
Nigel sacrifices and invests in family first, unintended family stressors abound.
Nigel’s the Family Martyr, and Depression Lurks Nearby
Although most of Nigel’s time is spent accommodating family and work life, he still
values personal time. In fact, when I asked him how important personal time was, he stated “It’s
very important.” Even though Nigel stressed the importance of personal time, he quickly

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followed up with a sacrificial comment. That is, personal time is only important if it does not
conflict with family life. Nigel spoke with pride and confidence about his choice to sacrifice
personal time for his family.
I saw a picture of a story. A father was eating with his family, and they said something
along the lines of “are you from a family where the father eats first, or he gets the big piece
of chicken?” And me, it’s almost the opposite. I make sure that if it has to be an order, I
will eat last. I would serve them all first before I serve myself. My job is to make sure they
are comfortable before I am.
Scholars focusing on Black masculinity and fatherhood, suggests that Black men should replace
patriarchal male headship with caring and nurturing forms of fatherhood (hooks 2004; Johnson
and Young 2016; Neal 2005; Young 2021). As men who make meaning of life circumstances
often with fewer resources and within environments placing them at risk of turbulence, threat,
and uncertainty (Young 2021), the behavioral choices they make to contend with life problems
might look different from men who are not encountering similar circumstances. Black men like
Nigel embracement of care and nurturance can combat racism and racial inequality. On one
hand, Nigel is redefining the controlling image of the “absent Black dad.” On the other hand,
with fewer resources because of the type of semi-flexible work he is employed at the intersection
of race and gender, Nigel uses the few options available to him to underscore involved
fatherhood.
Placing family first is not confined solely to protection or adjusting how time is used to
ensure personal activities integrate the family. It is also present in how Nigel views spending
money. Mia handles the family’s finances and has made it clear that their household could afford
for him to participate in mixed martial arts. Mia recognizes how important mixed martial arts is

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to Nigel, and she hopes he returns. But even still, Nigel feels that the money spent on mixed
martial arts is frivolous and takes away from the family’s financial wellbeing. Accordingly, he
redefines mixed martial arts as an “if I wanted to” activity:
If I wanted to go back and do marital arts, Mia would be in favor of it because she knows
how much I enjoyed it. But in the back of my mind, I’m wondering whether or not that’s
something we can afford to do. Whether that counts as frivolous expenses that we don’t
need to spend money on. I don’t want to be the reason why we may not have enough money
because we’re spending it on me doing something that I like that would otherwise be
considered not as important.
Although Nigel and Mia are doing well financially, homeowners, with one daughter in college,
and the other in private school, Nigel still maintains family first when describing household
expenses. But what does this commitment to family first cost Nigel?
When Nigel practiced mixed martial arts, his health was better, and he experienced
confidence and joy. “I was in better shape. I felt more confident. I felt like I was accomplishing
something. I was learning something new, and I was doing something that not only I was good
at, but something I enjoyed.” Mixed martial arts provided Nigel balance, and he misses the
practice. Further, he often thinks about returning to the practice, but his commitment to family
first, even when financially possible to participate, serves as a roadblock.
As someone who suffers from depression, he cannot afford for the family first ethos to
falter because his depression spirals when family members are upset with him. The adjustment to
time use afforded him as a semi-flexible worker provides him the avenue to place family first at
his 40-hour-week job. His side gig accommodates family first, as there are times the business
becomes a family affair. In each case, Nigel is fighting against a childhood memory, careful to

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not repeat his father’s mistake of being emotionally distant. But Nigel desires certain activities,
like mixed martial arts, but forgoes them because he fears that it might be at the family’s
expense. He learned this when his daughter was 10 years old, as she simply asked him why he
spent time away from the family. Nigel could have made a different adjustment to his time, or he
could have carefully explained the importance of personal wellbeing to his daughter but doing so
could perhaps invalidate her feelings—which Nigel tries to avoid. Accordingly, there are
unintended stressors for men like Nigel who commit to the family first ethos, especially when the
commitment is at the expense of personal wellbeing.
Kyle: Semi-Flexible Worker and the Family First Ethos
“There is nothing vanilla about this.” This is the comment Kyle made at the end of our
time together. He enjoyed our interview and explained that the questions were more in-depth
than he anticipated. As we laughed at the “vanilla” comment, we spoke candidly about the
challenges of work and family life, and how both demands do not always allow for people to
pause, reflect, and process daily life. The interview provided Kyle an opportunity to process
daily life, and me an opportunity to learn more about the strategies semi-flexible workers like
Kyle use to place family first. I also learned more about the unintended stressors connected to
family first, essentially the proverbial, “what keeps someone up at night.”
Kyle resides in Maryland with his wife Robin, and their daughter a few months over 1-
years-old. Kyle is a teacher and Robin is an insurance agent. As a new parent, Kyle is constantly
trying to find ways to manage work and family life and trying hard to maintain balance between
the two. Aiding Kyle in his attempt at managing both is his position as a semi-flexible worker.
That is, Kyle can adjust how his time is used when he feels too much of his time is spent away
from family. But an ability to place family first, a desire he is committed to is complicated with

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unintended stressors like placing more pressure on the family, particularly Robin, to ensure he is
showing up in family life in the best possible way.
Kyle’s Semi-Flexible Work Culture
Kyle combined educator and salesman to describe his career. He views teaching as
spending each day trying “to sell the kid on doing his homework versus playing video games.”
For him, “selling” education to children brings joy to the career. At the time of our interview,
Kyle had been a teacher for 10 years. He began his post-college work life in actual sales work
(five years). After attending graduate school, finding employment was challenging, particularly
finding a job that was the right fit for him. Frustrated with this outcome, Kyle transitioned to
education, and did so because he needed a steady income and he perceived teaching to be easy
and manageable. “I went to grad school and could not quite get the job after that I wanted, so
education provided that opening. I was like, hey, I need money, and this is not difficult, at least I
thought.” Although Kyle went into teaching believing it would not pose many challenges, he
quickly changed his perspective. To manage emotional stressors correlated with teaching like
classroom management, team meetings, and parents, Kyle stated he maintained transparency
with co-workers, parents, and students. Transparent expectations provide Kyle more control over
how his time is used in and out of the classroom.
Before transitioning to middle-school, Kyle was employed at a high school. Describing
his experience, Kyle stated he was “forced out” because his administrator documented him as an
incompetent teacher. Upon further reflection, Kyle drew the conclusion he was “forced out”
because he was not a team-player. In high school, he maintained that he was only responsible for
teaching, and refused to participate in the school’s full academic culture:

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To make sure that I didn’t make the same bad decisions I made in high school [earlier
career]. “I’m not doing this; my job is to teach the kids and that’s it.” And it was like, that
might be one of the reasons I got sent out, or not given the benefit of the doubt. So, like,
let me make sure I actually play these political games.
After multiple experiences with underemployment when career-tracks fell through, Kyle
has decided to take on more responsibilities at work to maintain employment. He is also
motivated by the potential opportunity to move up within the school system to administrative
levels. To do so, he must prove he is a team-player and invested fully in the secondary education
academic culture. A part-time job like helping with Saturday school and applying for team lead
are adjustments he makes regarding time-use. This time adjustment is to secure the future.
However, working part-time on Saturdays while good for the career, prevents Kyle from
spending time with his family. Still committed to the family first ethos, Kyle described the
strategies he uses to accommodate work and family life. I show that these strategies are
achievable because Kyle is employed in semi-flexible work.
Kyle’s Family First Ethos
Although Kyle’s motivation for Saturday school is invested in improving his career
portfolio, he also appreciates the extra money generated from Saturday school. From a financial
standpoint, Kyle, and Robin view Saturday school as an opportunity to paydown debt and
maximize financial opportunities in other ways. “I wanted the financial cushion because it’s not
often you see hours being thrown out for teachers. My wife was like, “hey, if we can pay this
down [we can] go into other things”.” As a man committed to the family first ethos, Saturday
school provided Kyle an opportunity to advance in the field of education, and an opportunity to

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help secure his family’s financial wellbeing. Accordingly, Saturday school provides short and
long-term payoffs for the family.
From Kyle’s description of Saturday school, it might seem like the positive outcomes of
part-time work would override a strong commitment to family first. Contrary to Kyle’s positive
perspective regarding Saturday school, he feels the money earned is not worth the time he spends
away from his family:
I wanted to take advantage of all the extra money that was on the table. I didn’t want to
leave any money on the table. Saturday school, it’s like, yeah, giving up three hours of my
time. It’s not really worth it anymore. The margins are not good enough for me to spend
[more] time working than with [my] family.
For Kyle, commitment to the family first ethos overrode any extra income a part-time job
provides. This further supports the embeddedness of family first in Black American family life.
Robin agreed with Kyle’s decision to work on Saturdays, mentioning the amount of debt their
family could pay down. At the beginning, Kyle agreed with this decision, as well as saw it as an
opportunity to improve his career portfolio in preparation for an administrative position.
However, months into the position, the time Kyle spent away from family became too much, and
part-time work was redefined as “it’s not really worth it anymore.”
No longer interested in spending time away from his family, Kyle created an adjustment
with time use. As a semi-flexible worker, Kyle has access to a set number of paid personal days
and sick days. When he wanted to spend time with family, he would call in sick. He says, “I feel
sick [presumes fake cough]. There were a couple of sick days, a mental health day. For Saturday
school, I just can’t make it. This is extra money. This is not part of my job requirement. This is to
check boxes.” Saturday school gets recast as just “extra money” and “not part of my job

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requirement.” What used to be an opportunity to realize short- and long-term goals for the good
of the family becomes low priority.
When Kyle calls in, or does not show up to Saturday school, it is because he is prioritizing the
family. To manage feelings that might arise from choosing family over work, Kyle defends his
decision as taking a break from work life:
There was always a point where I was like, hell, I need to take a break from it all. When I
look at my wife and I’m seeing her and my daughter, “you want to go to the Gymboree?
We are going to go here.” I’m like, “I’m going to go to Saturday school.” I’m not doing
that. I’m doing this instead. The kids will be just fine, it’s Saturday.
Taking “a break from it all” and “the kids will be fine, it’s Saturday” are justifications Kyle
works through as he chooses family over non-stop work culture. And yes, the kids will be fine,
but will the family? That is, what happens in family life when the adjustments made still produce
constraining outcomes?
Kyle and Robin Sacrifice for the Family, But Robin Shoulders the Pressure
When it comes to family life, Kyle and Robin often make sacrifices for the good of the
family. Each sacrifice made involves time, and how time is used—either on themselves, or with
the family. For example, Kyle and Robin eagerly seek personal time to rest, exercise, and
decompress from the day. Some days, it is easier for Kyle and Robin to access personal time, and
other days, it is not. Kyle views Robin as the parent who makes the most sacrifices because as a
breastfeeding mother, most of her time is spent making sure their daughter receives nourishment.
Acknowledging the time and emotional carework involved with breastfeeding, Kyle has made
the choice to place Robin’s need for personal time first. “I’ll be the one who says, “hey, listen,
I’ll miss the gym if it means you can get up and go run.” Kyle also sacrifices personal time when

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their daughter is sick, and both he and Robin are trying to catch up on much needed rest. He
described, “My daughter is sick and I’m the one who is like, alright, I got to get up and make
sure she is fine so my wife can get her sleep.” Both of us can’t be tired at work, so one of us is
going to have to take a loss.” Even though Kyle and Robin are making important sacrifices for
the family, when it comes to time-use that improves wellbeing, Kyle will always make a
sacrifice for Robin.
Making sacrifices for the family, particularly for Robin’s wellbeing as the nurturer of
their daughter, can cause Kyle to experience stress. When time constraints prevent Kyle from
participating in personal time, or he feels he has gone too long without personal time, it
manifests in his attitude and treatment toward others. Kyle becomes snappy, and might take his
frustration out on others, by way of his tone of voice. This is particularly apparent when Kyle is
not happy:
I’m going to always make sure that I am a happy person. In the moment that I’m not a
happy person, then that becomes problematic for everyone because I indirectly or directly,
I’ll take out my frustration. The passive aggressiveness comes out. My response becomes
snappy. That’s when I know it’s either time for me to go to sleep, eat, or just go somewhere
else and take a break.
As time-constrained parents who are trying to figure out how to care for their individual needs,
and their daughter’s needs, Kyle and Robin are both sacrificing personal time. As a man
committed to the family first ethos, Kyle acknowledges Robin’s daily sacrifice, and decides her
wellbeing should take priority. Having to manage family life in this constrained way can lead to
moments where Kyle participates in less individual time, and when this occurs, his mood shifts,
resulting sometimes in passive aggressive behaviors. Even with more control over his time by

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way of a semi-flexible workplace culture, Kyle still feels pressure and time-constraints as he tries
his best to commit to family first.
Kyle’s love, care, and attention to family is apparent. As a semi-flexible worker, he has
some control over his time, and thus, can strategize ways to commit to the family first ethos. In
some seasons, this appears with him taking on more work demands to help secure the financial
health of the household and improve his career portfolio for advancement. When those
commitments become too much and infringe on family time, Kyle uses paid time off and
reframes the meaning of additional work for the family’s wellbeing. And there are times when he
and Robin are trying to care for themselves, but time is constrained. To adjust, and honor
Robin’s position as mother and nurturer, Kyle will place Robin’s personal wellbeing first. These
actions show Kyle’s commitment to placing family first. Yet, Kyle still feels stress about family
life.
The stress Kyle feels is mental and related to how he shows up as a husband and father.
Although this mental stress is not ongoing, he still ponders if he is being the best version of
himself for the family:
Being the best spouse, parent, person I can be for those who depend on me. That’s the one
thing that is never ongoing to the point I find it debilitating I can’t function, but knowing
that, alright, whatever I do now doesn’t [just] affect me, it affects two other people. So,
how do I make sure that I am the best version of myself for everyone else that needs me.
Part of Kyle’s strategy to be “the best version” of himself is decision-sharing with Robin.
Describing this process, he says, “[I] run this by my wife to see if this is the best thing for us to
do. If not, what else can we do to make it a better decision, a better bad decision if at all
possible.” Aware that decisions do not always correlate with a positive outcome, Kyle relies on

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Robin to help him make important family decisions. But what complicates an on the surface
egalitarian practice between partners is that Kyle incorporates Robin because he lacks confidence
in his ability to make the right decision:
I find that having someone as a sounding board just to bounce the idea off of, it makes the
decision making a little smoother. What I would have thought of, she would probably think
of something different that will get the job done even more efficiently.
In this way, Robin is a “sounding board,” while carrying out more emotional labor. Kyle’s
mental stress regarding being “the best version” of himself is supported and shared by Robin,
who completes tasks efficiently. Accordingly, Kyle’s commitment to family first can lead to
constraining outcomes at the intersection of gender. That is, both Kyle and Robin are making
sacrifices for the family, but Robin shoulders the pressure.
ACCOMMODATING STRUCTURES AND THE MEANING OF WORK AND
FAMILY LIFE FOR BLACK MEN EMPLOYED IN FLEXIBLE WORK
The final group of men are employed in flexible careers that best support accommodating
structures of time, money, and work. The seven men in this group are mid-level managers for the
government, a real estate developer, and a statistician. When at work, this group of men can
focus on work demands. Two men in this group worked hybrid—one of them working four days
in the office and one day at home, and the other working from home with an occasional day at
the office. All seven men had the flexibility to adjust their time to come into work early, leave
early, be there for pick-ups and drop-offs and after school activities, and leave work if their child
felt sick and needed to be picked up early. Having this flexibility showed in their description of
work life. For example, stress was minimized, and men felt confident in their ability to

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compartmentalize work and family life. That is, while at work men in this group focused on
work, and for the most part left work physically and emotionally at work until the next day.
One member of this group is employed in a 40-hour week job and a side gig, he owns
rental property. When men discussed the financial health of the home, five made similar
comments like “we’ve been very fortunate as far as finances” and “we don’t live outside of our
means to put a lot of financial stress on ourselves.” The two men who experienced financial
stress were not impacted in a similar way as semi-flexible and inflexible men. In terms of stress,
five men emphasized stressors outside of the family household including extended family
members, community work, and maintaining property and challenging renters.
Because of the types of positions employed, they have the most control over their time
and low financial stress or need to secure the financial household. However, a deeper analysis
shows that for some men in this group, there exists a threat of flexibility falling through.
Specifically, control over time is fragile, and with a slight change, the family first ethos can shift.
Randall: Flexible Worker and the Family First Ethos
From Baltimore, Randall lives in New York City with his wife Gwen, and their two
young children. Randall works in real estate and Gwen is an attorney and works as the director of
a non-profit she co-founded. In both interviews, I learned about the importance of family.
Capturing Randall’s care and love for his family, he described the role Gwen, and their children
play in his life, “I have two children, they and Gwen are a really big source of joy for me.” It was
evident from the interview how important Randall’s family is to him. What helps him commit to
his family in intimate ways is a fixed work schedule.
Randall’s workday begins between 8 and 9 in the morning and ends between 5 and 6 in
the evening. He works from home on Fridays, and when the workday is over, he fully transitions

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to family time—leaving work in the office until the next day. Randall is committed to family life,
and he enjoys having a career that supports his commitment to family. But analysis reveals that
Randall is constantly anxious about his job, and the choices he makes to ensure work flexibility
is not undermined. Accordingly, Randall’s narrative underscores the penultima of family first in
Black American culture, but how quickly the penultima can be undone with the slightest change
in life.
Randall’s Flexible Work Culture
Randall began his career as a housing developer because he was passionate about
affordable housing. He transitioned into real estate, and now works in the real estate department
within a utility company. Randall is responsible for “buying and selling buildings, managing
agreements, and working on project teams.” As someone responsible for multiple work
assignments, a day at Randall’s job is busy. During some parts of the day, he is in meetings with
property owners and city, state, and federal government liaisons reviewing contracts and the
negotiation of buying and selling property. At some points, he manages deals with property
owners and the utility company as to placement of wires. Lastly, Randall might have to meet
with attorneys to ensure leases and agreements are “in place” and ownership rights are secured.
Randall is constantly moving at work, negotiating, and reviewing contracts.
Since Randall is responsible for managing multiple assignments in a day, it meant he
engaged with many people. I asked him to describe any tensions that might arise given his
position in the company. Reflecting on the question, Randall answered from a position as a
“person of color.” As a person with multiple responsibilities within a company, Randall
encounters tensions related to offensive interactions, nepotism, and favoritism:

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It’s typical being a person of color in a space where there are people who are not of color
dominate. There are some subtle, offensive things that happen that you have to manage and
call out, that some colleagues might not have to. Navigating situations where there can be
nepotism and favoritism and deciding how you are going to comment. How are you going
to I guess make a stand against things that are unjust without putting yourself in the position
[where] you are excluded from the process going forward. That’s something I have to deal
with throughout my career.
At work, Randall is navigating a position of power as a Black man. He has an MBA, and
he oversees multiple important contracts and negotiating selling and buying of properties. With
this position, he encounters White clients and colleagues who make it hard for him to assert
himself and voice concern about office practices, without fear of losing his position.
Time and years of experience navigating the professional White space helped Randall
build confidence as he tries to voice concerns, and support younger professionals of color within
the company. He says,
I have gotten more confident in myself as a person. I want to stand for and really trying to
think of ways I can make an effect for me, and younger people that are coming behind me.
Being somebody that they can talk to if they need advice on navigating this space.
In professional spaces like his, White coworkers and clients often expect him to “bend to their
wishes,” but he refuses, saying, “I will put my foot down and say no, I’m not going to do that.
Feel free to talk about me to somebody else, but I am telling you right now, that’s not something
I am going to do.” Accordingly, standing up for himself provides personal benefits, while also
modeling support for younger professionals of color.

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Racial interactions within the White space reflects the general composition of the
company employing Randall. Describing racism at work, Randall spoke about structural racism.
In meetings, where he tends to be one of few Black people, Randall has noticed the race and
gender inequity built within the company’s leadership. “I do see a lot of sexism. I notice
structural racism. When you look at people who are in management positions and people who
progress into higher leadership positions, they are not people of color. I started to make it a point
to count how many people of color are in the room, and how many are in the group. I am the
only person in the room, [and] often on group emails.” The organization structure frames the
racial interactions Randall encounters as a Black man in an important position within the
company. Because the space is majority White, and the leadership is White, coworkers and
clients feel safe to act in offensive ways, and the only one holding them accountable is Randall.
Randall’s work experiences within a flexible work culture aligns with research on
organizations (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). That is, race is a defining characteristic of
organizations and informs the structure, hierarchies, and power of social actors in the space.
Even though Randall is in a leadership position which places him in charge of important
company tasks, his position is a racialized position. This means within the company he is
provided decision making power, but he must often defend this power carefully, so it does not
result in him being pushed out from important networks.
Although Randall encounters stress from managing racialized work culture, he tries his
best to limit how work-related stress shows up at home. What helps is the flexible nature of his
work. For example, Randall takes walks to help him clear his head. Once he feels better, he
returns to work assignments. Other strategies he uses includes discussing his concerns with the
person he is experiencing conflict with, soliciting support from his friendship group, and relying

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on exercise. He only views Gwen as a source of support when work-related stress is extreme. He
says, “I feel comfortable talking with Gwen about it on occasion if it is something that is really
bothering me, or something that I don’t feel like I can think of the best way to handle.”
Incorporating these strategies allow Randall to practice compartmentalization, the process of
creating partitions between work and family life, to ensure work does not create much stress at
home. The break away from compartmentalization only occurs in extreme cases, when the main
sources of support cannot help Randall resolve work-related conflict and stress.
Randall’s Family First Ethos
Work is stressful, and Randall incorporates multiple forms of support to manage work
stress and minimize how much and how often it enters the home. Randall endorses the mindset
to not “let [work] stress me out. I go and do my job, do the best that I can.” When work stress
cannot be minimized, Randall will withdraw momentarily to calm down and “come back to
myself.” But these moments are rare. The rarity of work-related stress coming home, combined
with multiple forms of support outside of the home to manage work stress, helps Randall view
his job positively. As someone committed to family first, Randall’s describes himself as
fortunate as he discussed his work schedule:
I think I have been fairly fortunate with this current job. My role is really structured hours
wise, and it does allow me some flexibility to work from home on certain days. On the
weekends, we usually do family things, and I don’t feel like I am in a position where I’m
working all the time and my kids never see me.
The flexibility Randall experiences at work makes it easier for him to manage racialized
work culture. This is important because in prior careers, Randall believed the positions he held

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did not provide him as much control over how he used his time. He also recognized that the
positions were not conducive for parenting small children.
Prior jobs I had; the schedule was a lot less fixed in terms of what my day looks like. There
were times I would have a meeting I needed to go to, and I wouldn’t get home until like
11pm. A lot of the meetings I would have in my last two jobs, would be after the workday
was over. So, I didn’t get the time to chill with my wife, and that time was stressful. I don’t
think that would be as sustainable now with two children. I think it would be much more
of an issue coordinating schedules and being able to spend time if I were in that position
now.
The company Randall works for allows him more control over his time use—a coveted resource
workers tend to desire. Accordingly, racialized work culture operates in a way whereby it
exposes Randall to marginalization, while also increasing his ability to self-actualize (Ray 2019).
The self-actualization Randall is committed to is placing family first.
Randall’s work is stressful in that he encounters racialized work culture he must navigate
carefully to ensure he is not pushed out of important networks. To cope with the stressors from
work, he relies on a variety of strategies including confronting the source of conflict, taking a
break, soliciting support from friends, and exercise. Trying his best to compartmentalize work
and family life, he only seeks Gwen’s support when he encounters work situations that are
significantly stressful. Sustaining Randall is the fixed schedule he has, which provides him a
secure pathway into the family first ethos. And while it appears that all is well with men like
Randall, a slight shift in life, or the possibility of a slight shift in flexibility, can pose a threat to
the family first ethos.

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When Randall described his stressors, or life situations he encounters that causes him
stress he stated, “Where are we going to be as a family in the next five years and making plans to
get to that.” At the time of our interview, Randall and Gwen were engaging discussions about
leaving New York City and moving back to Baltimore, where their parents reside with a ready
extended family support system for them and their young children. However, the choice to move
is not easy because Randall would have to search for new employment. Even though Randall has
high credentials, and received his MBA from New York University, he is still concerned that he
will not find employment aligning with his salary requirements:
So, we had discussions Gwen and I about moving back down to be closer to our parents,
but looking at the job market, and what I need to make in terms of a salary. Finding
something that I would like to do, and qualified to do, or that meets my salary requirements
in Baltimore has been a little tough. It’s kind of a stressorswith that. So, how do we get to
the next step right now.
Since Baltimore is close to Washington, DC, Randall has considered applying for a
government position there. However, at the time of our interview, Randall was not sure he
wanted to work for the government given that he would be employed under a Trump
Administration.
I was looking at going to work in federal government as an option before the current
administration. I am really weary about working for an agency. Even if it does have a stated
goal of something I’m interested in, but how it is interpreted under this administration,
forwarding a goal, and not really having an option or an opportunity to not do it because
I’m just a cart on wheels at that point.

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As “a cart on wheels” Randall is not convinced he can work for the federal government under an
administration with which he is not aligned. Unlike his current employment at a company with
racialized workplace culture which provides him a fixed schedule, a transition to the federal
government would bring new parameters around time use, as well as lower opportunities for him
to decide how he will navigate workplace politics to ensure he is not pushed out of important
networks. Randall’s dilemma underscores the fragility connected with flexible work, especially
when the flexible work is negotiated within racialized organizations, that often employ Black
Americans in jobs with lower control over how their time is spent, including planning for the
future (Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019).
Although salary and political climate are primary concerns shaping Randall’s decision
between being closer to family, or staying in his current situation, he is also concerned with
finding employment in Baltimore that allows him to keep his fixed schedule. For Randall, if a
job offered more money, but he can no longer access a flexible schedule, then it is not worth the
move. Accordingly, accommodating the family first ethos is a priority, even when more money
is available: “I don’t want to find something making the amount I’m making now, or more, but
results in me not being able to spend time with my family, like that’s a net loss to me.” More
income is not enough to convince Randall that work should come before family. Randall’s
determination to place family first further demonstrates that the ethos is a core aspect of Black
American work and family culture.
Constructing a five-year-plan is something Randall constantly thinks about. He desires to
leave New York because it is expensive, whereas Baltimore is cheaper while also placing him
and his family close to extended family. But Baltimore’s job market is posing a problem. Randall
has yet to come across a job that would provide him a great salary and the flexibility he desires

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to accommodate family life. The control Randall has over his schedule is much to precious to
give up. He can choose how he manages racialized workplace culture, and he works fixed hours,
with some days at home. This schedule allows him to minimize work-related stress at home, and
show up in family life, caring for Gwen and their children, which as he stated, “are a real big
source of joy for me.” Any slight change in family life, if not a positive change, threatens the
family first ethos. Randall’s dilemma as the man at the top, underscores how fragile flexible
work is, and the stress men within this group encounters if they try to self-actualize in other ways
for themselves and their family.
Conclusion
Although work cannot be avoided, it can operate as a site individuals attempt to
compartmentalize, especially individuals who encounter gendered racism in the workplace either
overtly or covertly (Wingfield 2019). As learned, the men I interviewed are employed in
racialized jobs, with most working in jobs associated with the expanded service economy (Ray
2019; Wingfield 2019). Men employed in inflexible salaried jobs must make hard choices
emotionally and financially to commit to the family first ethos. Those choices include foregoing
extra work to account for financial constraints, which would keep them away from their families,
and compartmentalizing their processing of emotional carework as to make sure their emotional
response at home caters to the family. However, when they do compartmentalize, emotional
stress still emerges, manifesting when they interact with their children. Men in the middle are
employed in semi-flexible salaried jobs which provides them more control over their time use.
However, many men in this group have side gigs in order to secure the financial wellbeing of the
home. The adjustments men make regarding time becomes a form of sacrifice, and sometimes
the sacrifices made create unintended stressors in family life. Lastly, men at the top, have the

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greatest control over their time use because they are employed in flexible salaried jobs. If men in
this group experience a shift in their time use, or attempt to self-actualize in new ways, they
encounter stressors that pose a threat to the family first ethos, and high control they have over
their time.
The choices this sample of Black middle-class men make regarding work and family life
aligns with current research on Black men, marriage, and fatherhood, which underscores the
embeddedness of emotional and psychosocial forms of support (Council (revise and resubmit)
Hunter and Davis 1994; Hunter and Sellers 1998; Johnson and Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and
Dyson 2010). According to Johnson and Young (2016), fewer material and financial resources as
well as communal expectations shape the meaning making of fatherhood in Black families.
When Black fathers are resourced constrained, they often perform fatherhood embodying what
they believe is expected of them within the few options available (Johnson and Young 2016).
Involved fatherhood and emotional and psychosocial forms of support in the family may be seen
as Black middle-class men’s responses to their racially stratified positions in the market
economy to combat racism and racial inequality (Johnson and Young 2016; Roy 2004; Roy and
Dyson 2010). For example, Media at the intersection race, gender, class, and sexuality, amplified
Black fatherhood and the “absent Black dad” image as an outcome of Black men’s
hypersexuality and use of fatherhood to perform Black masculinity, while foregoing involved
fatherhood expectations (Collins 2005; hooks 2004). By advocating for family first, Black men
are asserting manhood identities despite race and gender oppression. Next, I explore how the
family first ethos, which at its best makes room for compartmentalization practices and more
control over time use, operates in romantic partnerships.

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Chapter 4
Their Work: “And It Was Love”

Love never gives up,
Never loses faith,
Is always hopeful,
And endures through every circumstance
1 Corinthians 13:7 (New Living Translation)

First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes baby,
In the baby carriage.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G Nursery Rhyme

The type of workplace culture someone encounters can lead to a variety of experiences
and emotional responses (Wingfield 2020; 2021). Some days are stressful, and some days are
joyous. A factor that tends to contribute to varied experiences and emotional responses is the
amount of control people can obtain over how their time is used on the job. The same can be said
about family life. In both cases, one’s ability to assert control is conditioned by a set rule of
engagement. That is, at work, people are accountable to others, and are responsible for
completing tasks. Depending on the position and structure of the workplace and its
corresponding culture, individuals can enact autonomy as to how they show up as accountable
social beings to others. In contrast at home, although a set rule of engagement is proscribed, the
intimate bonds at the intersection of gendered identities creates (at least theoretically) more room
for someone to assert a higher level of autonomy than they would in public spaces like work. But
what happens when the autonomy asserted in the intimate bond encounters racialized gender
oppression? In particular, how do Black women make sense of their time use within a couple
dynamic? Conversely, how do Black men make sense of their time use within a couple dynamic?

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How do race and gender co-construct the dynamic between the couple and time use within work
and family life?
In this chapter, I show how Black middle-class couples reconcile time use, whereby the
way time is structured at home adheres to the Black American culture of family first. I find that
gendered racism from workplace culture shapes the ways in which Black women and men show
up in their marriages, and by extension their families. In this way, these couples are trying to
forge ahead despite structural constraints and cultural conditions impact on them (McDonald and
Cross-Baret 2018). By adhering to family first, and articulating “team” and “partnership”
descriptors of marriage life, I argue, Black middle-class couples can and do resist white
supremacy. However, this resistance is not without some costs. That is, the choices couples make
“for the good of the family” provide Black men an opportunity to enact masculinities steeped in
headship and respect, provide Black women access to support and care, while also leaving Black
women with problems that they must reconcile in time constrained ways.
A VALENTINE’S DAY KIND OF LOVE: BARBARA AND AUSTIN
I interviewed Barbara and Austin in their cute townhome located in Maryland. They are
married, and the parents of two elementary-aged sons. I walked in, and immediately noted how
cozy their home appeared. It was warm inside because Maryland was having a late spring that
was warm enough to sip on a cold bottle of water, but not warm enough to turn on the air
conditioner. Beginning the interview, I asked Barbara and Austin to tell me their love story.
Barbara and Austin met in 2006. Austin, working security by day, and moonlighting as a
bouncer by night, described him and Barbara as “almost missing each other.” Austin almost
called out for the night, and Barbara almost cancelled her girl’s night out. But making more
money, and Barbara’s desire to enjoy a night out with girlfriends, influenced their decision

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making and served as the catalyst leading them to becoming a couple they describe as “11 years
strong.”
When Austin met Barbara, he felt confident in their connection. Sitting outside the club,
he and Barbara engaged in an intense conversation, carrying him away from his job
responsibilities as a bouncer. “Like it could have been a fight breaking out. It could have been
somebody getting stabbed, I don’t know. I wouldn’t [have] even recognized it because I was just
locked in on our conversation.” They talked about everything—politics, movies, and music, just
“going on and on.” A few months into dating, Austin knew Barbara was the one, and before they
had been together for a year, he was prepared to propose marriage.
Three months into their relationship, Austin began saving for a ring. Unaware of the
impending proposal, Barbara believed he was struggling financially. She said Austin made
comments like, “Hey, I’m strapped. I don’t have any money.” Feeling bad, Barbara thought
about ways to help him out as a young teacher, with a humble salary. “I was like, ‘this suck.
Man, that’s too bad.’ Like let me try to help out with my first-year teacher salary.” But with time,
Austin finished paying for the wedding ring, and proposed to Barbara on Valentine’s Day 2007.
Like many in the U.S., Austin described proposing on Valentine’s Day as cheesy, but he did so
because he wanted Barbara to experience a Valentine’s Day to make up for previous years, and
unfilled romantic promises:
Yes, I proposed on Valentine’s Day. Main reason why, I know it’s cheesy Valentine’s Day,
but she had mentioned to me that she had a lot of bad experiences with Valentine’s Day. A
lot of guys she dated or talk[ed] to didn’t acknowledge her. So, I was like, “You know
what, I’m going to try to do it on Valentine’s Day.” So, that’s why it was kind of tough
because I was trying to squeeze all my bills and also on top of saving for a ring.

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Hopeful in his plan to create a Valentine’s Day Barbara would remember, Austin spent
months “eating kind of rough.” He planned to take Barbara to Benihana’s, a local restaurant. But
Maryland’s February weather conditions made it impossible. Having to change the restaurant on
the day of the big proposal, Austin was relieved by Barbara’s flexibility, or what he characterizes
as her “down-to-earth” personality:
We were going to go to Benihana’s, but it was icy that time. I didn’t want to take the chance
[of] driving too far. That’s another thing I love about her too, she’s so down-to-earth.
Previous women I dated if I say, “We are going to Benihana’s, ah, we can’t do it. Let’s go
to Famous Dave’s.” They’re like, “Famous Dave’s? I don’t want to do that.” But she’s like,
“Heck yeah. I love barbecue.” So, I’m like yes.
Even though some plans changed, the proposal was a success, and Austin created an
unforgettable Valentine’s Day.
The story of Barbara and Austin’s engagement provides an avenue into understanding the
strategies they construct to manage work and family life together. Austin is determined to
commit to family first and appreciates Barbara’s “down-to-earth” personality as he negotiates his
position as an emotional worker within an inflexible salaried job. Barbara is determined to
integrate work, family, and career as someone employed in a semi-flexible job. Having learned
how to practice strategic mothering (Barnes 2016), Barbara still carries around guilt about her
position as a wife. Specifically, she often wonders if she is being a good wife and try to find
ways to care about Austin alongside motherhood and career. What helps Austin, and perhaps
causes stress for Barbara, is her “down-to-earth” personality that Austin fell in love with.
Accordingly, Barbara and Austin are trying to figure out how to do work and family life in ways
that accommodate both of their expectations of hers and his time in Black family life.

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Their Funny Little Valentine: Barbara
As Barbara described her work experiences, she sighed multiple times. Not because she
was unhappy with her career as a music teacher, but because of forces outside of her control like
state and local school budgets, which decided how she embodies her career. When I met Barbara,
she was 13 years into teaching, and had worked at four schools during those years. As a music
teacher, Barbara is not afforded the same level of job security as other teachers in the secondary
education system. Instead, Barbara’s position is dependent on school and local budgets, and
when school budgets are experiencing a squeeze, “music and a lot of art teachers, tend to end up
being the first things people want to cut.” These moments of uncertainty, however, often result in
a lot of stress for Barbara because she cares about her work. But Barbara’s care is not always
enough to maintain her employment, because again, she was describing work life shortly after
going through months of stress where she almost experienced another budget cut.
A few months before our meeting, Barbara had learned that due to changes in the school
budget, her position was going to be reduced at the school. When Barbara experiences a reduced
position, she is placed on a timeline to ensure she can acquire full-time employment at another
school in the county. This is known as an “involuntary transfer.” As soon as she learned this
information, Barbara described experiencing an emotional rollercoaster. Already concerned
because it was the fourth time she had experienced an involuntary transfer, Barbara became even
more concerned because she knew the news was going to impact her family.
Despite Barbara’s efforts to maintain a partition between work and family life, the
uncertainty she experiences due to budget cuts means that she brings the mental and emotional
stress home with her, which creates a cloud over the household:

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I really care about my job. So, anytime something goes down at work, I try really hard not
to let it affect the family, but it always does. Because if my mood goes down then
everybody’s, it’s like a cloud is floating overtop the house. And it sucks, because I don’t
want that to happen, but it is harder to be normal at home if work is totally out of balance.
Characterized by Austin as having a “down-to-earth” personality, Barbara is the emotional
caregiver and nurturer of the family, and she knows her mood tends to shape the emotional
dynamic within the household.
As Barbara navigated frustration due to the school’s decision to reduce her position, she
also experienced overwhelming support. The collective action efforts provided by co-workers
and parents which included letter writing campaigns, protests, and news media interviews, led
the school board to reconsider reducing her position. Barbara was able to continue at the school,
and by the time I interviewed her, she described how the collective support from others changed
everything, creating a relief that transferred the emotional dynamic of the home:
I found out that my position did get fixed. The amount of relief I had. You can tell the next
day almost that you know, it was going to be okay. I didn’t have to make all of these
adjustments, do all this crazy stuff over the summer. It changed everything. I even started
doing more regular things around the house. There were just things I mentally was too
exhausted to handle.
The relief Barbara felt is important to underscore, because Barbara internalizes the emotional
dynamic of the home, and tries her best to balance three things: career, children, and marriage.
Black feminists theorize this balance as “strategic mothering,” a pathway Black middle-class
mothers use to help them place motherhood and marriage along the same level of importance as
career (Barnes 2016). As women reared to be self-reliant, Black middle-class women are often

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trying to find ways to trade self-reliance with a reliance on their husbands. A part of doing this is
finding ways to minimize career demands, and place career within a position so as to not
compete with family and marriage. With time, Barbara has been able to develop routines to help
her practice strategic mothering. Summarizing her management of career, motherhood, and
marriage, Barbara referring to work says, “I have to be careful with how much time I am willing
to give them.” Barbara can easily spend more time at work, and she has worked hard to improve
on taking time off to place family first. She says,
I feel like I’ve gotten better about knowing when I need to take off. If the kids are sick, or
something special is coming up, or even if I need to take a day. Now, I will just do it
because I know that everything is going to be fine, and I will be back the next day. It will
be fine.
In framing work as “it will be fine,” Barbara compartmentalizes work demands in order
to prioritize motherhood and marriage. Still, Barbara described feeling guilt and pressure in her
attempt to manage career, motherhood, and marriage:
In the past, I felt guilt, well I guess I still do sometimes. There’s definitely an expectation,
or a pressure that I feel to be a career woman, a good mom, and a good wife. It’s not like
anybody’s coming in my space and saying, “you should be doing this, you should be doing
that.”
Although no one is saying to Barbara she needs to balance well career, marriage, and
motherhood, she has internalized an expectation that Black women must balance each well
(Barnes 2016; Dow 2016). The integration of work and family helps them to accomplish the
demands expected of them in Black American culture—to participate in the paid workforce full-

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time while participating emotionally and physically in family life (Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003;
Dean et al. 2015; Dow 2016).
Barbara and Austin referred to their marriage as “11 years strong.” From this perspective,
it would appear Barbara has figured out a strategy as to how she integrates career, motherhood,
and marriage. However, upon further reflection in our one-to-one interview, Barbara mentioned
that she has begun seeing a counselor, and concerns about her marriage are often discussed.
Barbara is not concerned about the marriage per se, but the position she believes she is supposed
to embody in the marriage. As someone who is constantly being pulled in multiple directions,
Barbara believes she does not show enough care and concern toward her husband.
I started going to counseling in the fall (2018), and one of the things that’s come up a
couple of times is that [being a great wife] because there’s so many different directions of
things that are being asked of me. Instead of thinking about Austin, like I think about him
throughout the day, but I don’t think about taking care of him throughout the day. My
thoughts are about the kids, like wondering what they are doing. With Austin, it’s more, I
hope he’s having a good day today. We’ve been married for 11 years and just had our 11
th

anniversary this weekend, we are not in a bad place, we are comfortable for sure. And so,
we have to make an effort to pay attention to each other, and I feel like when stress is high,
he [her husband] ends up being at the end of the day.
By saying “the end of the day,” Barbara expresses uneasiness with the state of her
marriage. Despite them not being “in a bad place,” Barbara is still concerned with where Austin
stands in her life in relation to motherhood and career. The time demands of motherhood and
career places Austin’s needs last, and Barbara is not happy:

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Come home from work, make dinner for everybody, bath time happens. If there [are]
chores that either of us need to take care of, whatever needs to be done that happens. And
then, there is like this tiny amount of energy left. What are we going to do with it? Are we
going to watch a show together? Or are we just going to fall out and go to sleep? A lot of
the times, it just turns into we are just going to fall out [go to sleep]. I’ve been bringing it
up a lot because I’m not happy with that, but I keep finding myself falling back into that
pattern.
Not happy with the state of intimacy with Austin, Barbara has defined the time
constraints on their marriage as a Barbara problem. As the person unhappy with the demands of
children and career, Barbara desires to fix the problem. However, “tiny amounts of energy” at
the end of the day pushes Barbara “back into that pattern” of “the end of the day,” where their
intimacy is wrapped within falling asleep.
Barbara’s feelings about her marriage, and her problem with the lack of time spent with
Austin reflects bigger problems Barbara encounters with career, motherhood, and marriage—the
constant push and pull on her time. As Barbara mentioned, by the time she reaches the end of the
day, she is running on tiny amounts of energy. And while much of this is due to multiple
demands on time associated with work and family life like managing the end of the year arts
performances at work and coaching their oldest son’s soccer team, Barbara is also dealing with a
no problem. That is, the demands aside, Barbara believes she is always encountering a “constant
ask,” and she feels obliged to accommodate them. Reflecting on a recent breakdown because of
the constant asks, Barbara had this to say:
It was in February where I was already stressed. It was about to be Valentine’s Day, and
my husband’s cousin and his wife were going to be in the area from San Diego. They were

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going to be staying with us, and neither one of us wanted the house to be totally jacked up
when they got here. But I walked out of work, I had two texts from two different people at
work, and I had a text from my husband about when you get home can you just do these
three things. I was driving home, and I was so tensed, and I picked up the kids and they
were both talking to me at the exact same time about some snack they wanted. I gave my
sons the key to go into the house and I just burst out crying because I couldn’t do it that
day. My phone was blowing up with all these expectations, with all the things they needed.
That constant ask. There’s always an ask.
Since Black women are often reared to be self-reliant, gender, work, and family scholars
have examined how Black women reconciled self-reliance with marriage and motherhood
(Barnes 2016l Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et al. 2015; Dow 2016; Taylor et al. 1999).
Responding to the work and family demands on Black women’s time, scholarship found that
Black women construct a work-family integration schema (Blair-Loy and DeHart 2003; Dean et
al. 2015; Dow 2016). The work-family integration schema has been primarily examined among
Black women within the middle-class and shows that the integration of work and family helps
them to accomplish the demands expected of them in Black American culture—to participate in
the paid workforce full-time while participating emotionally and physically in family life.
Accordingly, always preparing for an ask combined with multiple expectations places Barbara in
a constant push and pull. As someone who feels pressured to meet internalized perceived
expectations of career, motherhood, and marriage, Barbara consistently encounters highs and
lows. This combined with a semi-flexible career riddled with uncertainty, and a personal
expectation to bring back intimacy in her marriage are stressors on top of the pressure cooker
known as work and family life.

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Their Funny Little Valentine: Austin
If Barbara’s work stress and internalized pressures had an impact on Austin, it did not
become apparent during our time together. Instead, we focused on his job, chores, parenting, and
how he spent personal time. He did not mention the care, attention, and unhappiness with a lack
of intimacy with Barbara. In fact, when Austin discussed his marriage, his voice changed,
becoming cheerful. Austin’s cheeriness appeared when he discussed the network of support his
marriage provided.
Austin is employed as a “project manager for a security company with the Army.” As a
federal contract employee within the security sector, Austin, was employed in an inflexible
salaried job stratified by race (Collins 1997; Ray 2019; Wingfield 2019). The sector he worked
consisted of mostly people of color. He is responsible for managing personnel and making sure
employees’ needs are met throughout the day. As a 24/7 employee and project manager, Austin
is always on-call as well as expected to cover shifts if someone calls out and coverage is needed.
Another part of Austin’s job is being emotionally available for employees. As the manager, he is
constantly holding employees accountable and making sure work tasks are being completed.
Emotional labor is often expected of people employed in the expanded service economy, and this
emotional labor is racialized, often responding to gendered racism in the workplace (Hochschild
1983; Wingfield 2021).
Outside of staff, Austin must also deal with government clients who are in higher
positions them him within the government and contractor world of the U.S. nation-state job
sector. In the department Austin works, he described encountering many clients above him
whom identified as Republican. Individuals political party was more apparent to him because he

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encountered clients who identified as Republicans at the time of the Trump administration.
Given this, Austin described being careful about the types of conversations he had at work:
Where I work, it is heavily Republican. With the last two presidents, with one being the
current [Trump], and the prior [Obama], I have definitely you know seen some different
behavior from certain people where it stands as far as which side of the fence they are on.
You just got to watch what you say and your opinion. You can’t put your opinion out there
as often as you would like because you don’t know which side of the fence they are on.
You kind of know, but you’re not 100%.
Austin’s “kind of know” is attributed to personal encounters he has with some members
of the government employee side, the clients of the company he works for. Describing
encounters, Austin said, “Some of the members that work there, they’re either contract workers
or military. You walk down the hallway, and you say, “hello” and they kind of give you that
hmm [grunt sound], don’t talk to me type of thing. So, it’s nothing over the top, but it’s one of
those things like, yeah, I can tell we are not going to be anything outside of work.” Austin tries to
not let Republican clients’ interactions get to him. And while he refrains from certain
conversations, and tries his best to “let it go,” when opportunities arise, he remembers previous
interactions, which shapes how he attend to their customer requests:
I just let it go. I don’t forget anything, so I know if this person wants something from me
later or needs something, because we control the access of the area. So, they are going to
need a favor or something like that. If I know I tried to interact with you on a basic hello,
and you didn’t respond, or give me a little eye, don’t talk to me, or whatever, I’m not going
above and beyond for that person. I’m not, not going to do something for somebody, I will

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never do that, but I’m not going to go above and beyond for you. I will just do the bare
minimum.
Despite the race and job position hierarchy which prevents Austin from responding to
“heavily Republican” White customers directly, he continues to remember interactions and relies
on memories of racialized interactions to assert a form of pushback when the opportunity arises.
This approach is often used by Black men employed in middle-income jobs with high emotional
care work and limited opportunities to assert autonomy (Wingfield 2009). Austin’s practice of
finding ways to assert autonomy is a response to gendered racism at work: “I don’t forget
anything… I’m not going to go above and beyond for you.”
Austin tries his best to compartmentalize and leave work-related problems at work. In the
case of racialized interactions, like Randall, the flexible worker, Austin will only talk about
work-related troubles with Barbara when racialized interactions become too much to “let go.” He
describes, “I might talk to my wife about it every now and then.” However, unlike Randall who
has access to social networks outside of his wife, when Austin tries to not incorporate Barbara,
he again refers to “letting go,” by rationalizing White customers behavior as evident of the
continued need for race-related progress. “It’s kind of like yeah, we’ve come far but we have a
long way to go still, you know, and kind of just shrug it off.”
The encounters with White customers are microaggressions. Austin’s attempt to “shrug it
off,” is a strategy known as silently enduring. For example, in research on veterans and their
efforts to stand for peace, Michael Messner found that the impetus to bring more diversity into
progressive organizations, especially women of color into leadership positions was often
undermined by the microaggressions women of color and non-binary members experienced as
they voiced their concerns regarding the lack of inclusion within the organization. As the

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individuals experiencing microaggressions, women of color veterans felt the need to either view
the microaggressions toward them as teaching moments, or silently endure. Messner (2021)
underscores that either option, which requires emotional labor to create a set of feeling rules in
compliance with the White male majority can and does have consequences for marginalized
individuals. Specifically, microaggressions within organizations not only harm individuals, but
create an interactional dynamic between individuals that ultimately reproduces inequality. Austin
can “shrug it off,” but as we will see, this stress comes home and informs how Barbara manages
her personal problem.
In addition to racialized interactions at work, Austin is on-call 24/7 and as a manager, he
is responsible for shift coverage if employees call out. This inflexible aspect of his salaried job
can add stress to the family because it places him in a position where he must work a double day.
When this occurs, Austin describes the schedule as causing an upset in the family’s daily routine:
I do have [a] 24-hour coverage. So, if somebody calls out of a shift, and I can’t get
somebody to fill it, I’m the last resort. So, whatever hours are remaining for that shift, that
could add to the ripple of our daily activities. If I have to stay over and work an extra shift,
it [causes] a little stress on what we normally have to do because I have to rush home, pick
the kids up, take them to school, and come back, go back to work.
To manage time away from the family, Austin focuses on the support provided by Barbara,
grounded in her position as a semi-flexible worker. As a teacher, Barbara has summers off,
which helps Austin regain access to family time. “Summertime is good. My wife teaches and
summertime she is off, she is not obligated to go to work. So, that helps with you know getting
family time.”

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Even though Barbara carries guilt because she believes Austin is placed at the end of the
day, from my time with Austin, it appears he is not placed at the end of the day. That is, when
racialized interactions at work become too much for him to “let go,” he knows he can confide in
Barbara. Further, when Austin feels his 24/7 on-call schedule begins to intrude on family time,
Barbara’s predictable schedule as a teacher provides a calm within the storm. Outside of these
forms of care provided by Barbara, Austin also receives phone calls from her throughout the day,
which helps them both “make light,” of work-related stress. And even in rare occasions when
work-related stress comes home, causing Austin to get “snappy” with the children, he finds
comfort in knowing that Barbara will get him back in line. He says, “My wife, she keeps me in
line too. She makes sure that I’m not lashing out extra because she knows my normal behavior
patterns. And if it is off, she will let me know.”
As with racialized interactions, Austin tries his best to not allow management-related
work stress to come home with him. But sometimes it does come home. And when self-
regulation is not available, Austin knows he can rely on Barbara to help him adjust his mood.
Yet, Barbara is still concerned with two things: Austin’s position in her mental space related to
the children and work, and the low intimacy between them at the end of the day. Barbara’s
marriage concerns are constantly brought up in counseling, and she tries her best to fix her
personal problem. But from Austin’s perspective, Barbara is available and provides care
throughout the day, not just at the end of the day. What then, does Barbara’s marriage problem,
and Austin’s “down-to-earth” love predicated on Barbara’s flexibility reveal about her and his
time in marriage, work, and family life.

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Their Funny Little Valentine: Barbara and Austin, Her and His Time
“Tests here and there just to check the armor,” is the phrasing Barbara and Austin used to
characterize the infrequent but noticeable tensions in their relationship related to work and
family life. And while they referenced this phrase many times, it was particularly interesting as
they described schedule miscommunication, and the impact work could have on the household
dynamic. Barbara is the keeper of the schedule. Her talents and ability to manage the schedule
along with finances and budgets do not go unnoticed. Austin, the recipient of information
appreciates Barbara’s management of the schedule, because it helps him maintain organization
as well as remember important family tasks like doctor’s appointments. But sometimes,
schedules are forgotten, and tasks are left off the calendar. When this occurs, tension arises
between them. Barbara described,
We have to talk a lot about what all the moving parts are. It can be hard to make sure that
we know what’s going on because I know sometimes, I forget if I told you [Austin]
something or I’ve said it and I emailed it. I feel like the only time we really have tension,
that’s probably why. We just had some kind of miscue about when we were supposed to
be somewhere.
Even though Barbara summarized the tension being attributed to both she and Austin,
Austin followed-up Barbara’s point saying, “It’s my fault” because he often forgets the schedule.
“If I don’t put it in my calendar, make a reminder, I’m going to forget. That is just me. So, a lot
of times it’s my fault because she told me, and I know she told me.” As a couple who lead busy
lives with multiple commitments to work, family, and community, a consistent schedule and
communication are integral to keep the family routine intact. A noticeably stressful moment on
the family routine was during Barbara’s previous period of employment uncertainty:

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That context of this stuff with work when I was like it was within the week where I had to
go to an interview and a job fair. There was a day where Austin had to pick up the kids.
And I was like, “What are you guys doing for dinner?” He texted back, “huh?” He was like
“I don’t have the kids.” And I was like, ‘What do you mean?” So, that was rough because
I was so frustrated. I was like ‘How could you not know?’ But then I felt guilty because I
was like he didn’t know because I didn’t say anything. There’s always some kind of break
and it’s almost always a miscommunication. But then, it’s a blessing and a curse I guess
because we’ll release everything that had built up, and then we move on and do better the
next time.
When miscommunication occurs, Barbara and Austin view the miscommunication as a
“blessing and a curse” because it provides them an opportunity to release built up tension in their
attempt to reconcile hers and his time in a couple dynamic. They also respond with a team
perspective underscoring that they must work through tensions together. Barbara described, “We
never feel like there’s a bailout option. Even if we don’t say it, I think we know that we are a
team. We are going to figure it out together regardless pretty much.” Bailing out off the table,
Barbara and Austin combat marital tension with tests and team perspectives.
When I asked Barbara and Austin about the impact of work demands on their family, I
learned that responses to tests and the team perspective were gendered. That is, when Barbara
described Austin’s work demands, she also drew on care and concern regarding Austin’s health.
In contrast, Austin confirmed Barbara’s personal narrative regarding her work stress impact on
the household. There responses underscore their commitment to family first, but in gendered
ways.

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Frustrated with his staff team’s dependency on him, Barbara underscored the impact
work can have on Austin’s health. Turning to him, she said:
I feel like you balance work demands well. I wish people would call you less often because
I know they could figure things out by themselves [laughs], but they don’t. So, I feel like
you don’t get quite as much off time brain-wise like just off [from] having to think about
work stuff because they are always calling. I definitely noticed that your stress level would
probably be lower if people didn’t have to contact you as much outside of when [you’re]
there. That’s when I feel concerned for your stress, health.
The impact of Austin’s 24/7 inflexible salaried job is evident at home and shows up as
concern for Austin’s health. Having to always be on-call means Austin is inundated with work
challenges, providing him less control over his time at home emotionally and mentally.
Barbara’s concern also exemplifies Black cultural beliefs regarding womanhood and manhood,
notably a push against the “Black lady” and “endangered species” controlling images. The
“Black lady” controlling image is predicated on Black middle-class women upholding
respectable images of Black womanhood (Collins 2000; Cooper 2017; Higginbotham 1994). The
respectable image is a “hardworking Black woman professional who works twice as hard as
everyone else (pg. 89).” Further, the endangered species myth provided a pathway for Black men
to access power in their interpersonal relationships (Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978).
If Black men are viewed as endangered, then what becomes reified is an idea of Black men
experiencing more oppression than Black women. The deployment of this controlling narrative
can and does have an impact on Black women, and the strategies they construct in their
interpersonal relationships with Black men (Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978).
Accordingly, Black women like Barbara are still enduring Black cultural mandates of loving

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Black men, but in patriarchal ways that often means Black women silently endure, or in this
case, hold guilt for not being able to execute emotional and physical availability during a
stressful moment like job uncertainty.
As the emotionally and mentally available person Barbara’s work demands can have an
impact on the entire household. Austin emphasized this when he described his concerns
regarding her work stress, especially the last few months dealing with the possible involuntary
transfer’s impact on the family. Turning to her, he said:
I feel like you balance well, but recently with the possibility [of] you having to go from
high school to elementary school that’s been added stress onto us. That uncertainty
definitely added stress to us and how we did things around the house. How we interacted
with the kids because that’s stress over our heads. “What’s going to happen?” And we just
got done doing this a few years back when you had to go to middle school. So, I feel like
you handled it well, and we handled it well, that as a couple. It definitely was some trying
times. Like I said, test armor. Kind of revalidate our teamwork and how we can work
together and get past any kind of obstacle thrown in front of us.
Austin’s description of the household dynamic during Barbara’s work uncertainty aligns with
Barbara’s perspective of the “cloud floating over top the house.” She knew her family was
impacted by her stress because she is responsible for being emotionally and mentally available
for the household. In Austin’s perspective, her stress is and was to “test armor,” and validate
their team approach to handling external challenges as a couple.
After describing his perception of Barbara’s work stress on the family, Barbara sighed in
relief. Already uncertain about the impact her work might have on the family, Barbara
responded, “I’m paranoid about that because I don’t want work stuff to mess up how we’re

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doing. So, I’m glad it’s not worse because I thought it might be worse than what you said.” In
response, Austin reassured Barbara that her work stress did not impact the family. Instead, as a
form of care, he views her temporary stress as a challenge placed in front of them to handle
which ultimately strengthens their marital bond:
I understand what’s going on, and I know [those] things [are] out of your control. So, I just
got to stick to it and whether the storm and pick up your pieces as we get through it and
just keep moving. I tell you all the time, I always feel like God doesn’t put anything in
front of you that you can’t handle. So, putting things like that in front of us, He knows that
we can handle it as a couple. We could probably handle it as individuals, but we handle it
better as a couple.
Austin’s emphasis of “handling” external stress like work as a couple underscores the
importance of the marital bond in Black American family life (Barnes 2016; Council 2021;
Foster 2010; Hunter 2017; McDonald and Cross-Barnet 2018). Scholarship on Black marriages
in the U.S. underscore the fragility of Black marriages in relation to the workforce. That is,
historical and contemporary experiences of employment uncertainty can make it challenging for
Black marriages in the United States (McDonald and Cross-Barnet 2018). Accordingly, Austin
and Barbara are trying their best to keep work out of the home, but when it becomes
unavoidable, instead of letting the stress overpower them, they view the challenge as an obstacle
they are meant to face as a couple.
Passing an armor test helps reassure Barbara and Austin in their marriage. And while this
is important, Barbara still maintains concern about the intimacy between her and Austin.
However, their time with me also revealed that Austin is concerned with the lack of time they
have together. Immediately after I asked them to describe the time they spend together, Austin

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responded, “Not enough. We’ll sum that up, not enough.” Barbara, smiling, urged Austin to
answer the other part of the question about how they spent time together, and again, Austin
responded first underscoring a need for more time:
Barbara: So, when we get together, what do we like to do?
Austin: Well, I mean,
Barbara: That was the question.
Austin: Oh well, I just ran with that part because I want to make sure that’s known [low
amounts of time alone].
Moving through their playful banter, Barbara and Austin described the ways they spend
time with each other like participating in activities that includes an overnight stay away from
their children. But these dates are far and few in between each other, and Barbara and Austin
desire to spend more time as a couple.
Since the minimal time they spend together is a Barbara problem that she is trying to fix,
she again mentions counseling, and her frustration in trying to strategize ways to increase
intimacy:
I talk about that in counseling when I go. Each time I’ve brought that up because I’m like,
“ugh.” It’s another thing where it’s something I want to take care of and cultivate but then
here comes this other [thing]. It’s like bocce ball. The ball knocks the ball out of the way.
And that’s what I don’t want to keep doing. We definitely have that desire to make that
better.
There is a desire to cultivate deeper intimacy in their marriage. But other demands on their time
continues to move partner intimacy to the bottom. And as the emotionally and physically

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available partner, who is the nurturer of the home, Barbara’s time is spent trying to find ways to
support intimacy between her and Austin, and when “bocce ball” occurs, she is not happy.
Their Funny Little Valentine: Fixing Barbara’s Problem is Hard
Three sets of interviews reveal the gendered patterns driving Barbara and Austin’s
commitment to family first, as well as challenges their commitment to family first. Interviews
revealed that Barbara is concerned with internalized pressure and expectations regarding career,
motherhood, and marriage. Barbara is trying to find ways to balance well each expectation. But
what consistently comes up and causes her to feel unhappy is the marriage aspect of the three.
Particularly, her position as a wife. For Austin, he tries his best to minimize how his work
impacts the home. He prioritizes the family, and only includes Barbara with work concerns when
they become too much to bear alone. What concerns Austin the most, is how Barbara’s work
impacts the family, especially when she experiences uncertainty in employment. They both agree
that Barbara’s work-stress leaves a bigger impact on the family because he and their children’s
mood is dependent on Barbara’s emotional and mental availability. Helping Austin understand
and cope with Barbara’s work stress is his construction of the stress as a challenge, a test,
helping them becoming a stronger couple. However, in terms of spending time together, which
they both agree they need to do more, Barbara alone is trying to strategize ways to fix her
problem because she is unhappy with the game, known as marital bocce ball.
Already in counseling, Barbara recognizes the important impact of individual counseling
to improve mental health. To make sense of her support of counseling, and Austin’s
acknowledgement of counseling, but reservation, Barbara constructs a gendered binary of
women and men in marriage life:

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I think on the mental health side, which I think is probably a little bit typical of many
people; I feel like I’m more willing to reach out if I feel like I’m not doing as well as I’d
like to, or I think maybe we’re having a moment or a phase where we could work through
it better.
By incorporating “which I think is probably a little typical of many people,” Barbara
acknowledges a common problem many heterosexual couples encounter together, and women
and men encounter individually, is the ways in which gender shapes emotional vulnerability and
use of mental health services in the U.S. nation-state (Real 1997).
Continuing, Barbara alludes to specific marriage practices within the Black community,
and her disagreement with those marital practices. Specifically, she challenges the idea “keep it
in your relationship,” and views counseling and talking with others as important resources meant
to help couples work through marital conflict:
It seems like mental health and relationships you should be able to figure it out by yourself.
It just seems like that should be the case. And that there’s a lot of sayings about if you’re
having problems in your relationship keep it in your relationship and just fix it together.
But I mean, I feel like it’s just like everything where you can learn from other people how
to figure something out. You don’t always have to struggle incessantly to figure it out. So,
I definitely feel like that’s one thing where I think I’m more apt to try to reach out to get
support on.
Barbara seems to be encountering multiple conflicts. On one hand, she wants to fix her personal
problem, and she is doing so in individual counseling. She wants to continue to try and fix her
personal problem in marriage counseling, but “typical of many people,” Barbara is more likely to
seek external support than Austin. On the other hand, she not only encounters resistance from

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Austin, but she is dealing with a larger cultural problem—women seek counseling broadly, and
Black community practices specifically, of “keeping it in your relationship.”
Austin has alluded to the Black community practice of “keeping it in your relationship.”
For example, his constant mentioning of “armor test,” confronting external challenges as a
couple, and the old and embedded Black church cultural phrase, “God, won’t put more on you
than you can bear.” These references underscore Barbara’s challenge against “keeping it in your
relationship and just fix it together.” He confirmed these cultural sentiments, as he responded to
Barbara’s comment regarding counseling. He says, “I’m definitely stubborn when it comes to
that, just reaching out for help.”
Austin explained his childhood, and his position as a “Black man in America,” as factors
influencing his perspective on counseling services. Beginning with childhood, he says,
I was the oldest, and I [did] everything. I [had] to figure things out growing up. So, I’m
just used to figuring it out on my own. I’m just used to that. The way I was raised, reaching
out for help is like a sign of weakness. I know it’s not, but my mind, the way I’m wired it
automatically defaults to that.
When I spoke to Austin alone, he mentioned growing up fast and having to be responsible for
household needs he should not have been exposed to at such a young age. Austin’s parents
divorced when he was young, and he and his brother relocated to California with his mom to be
close to her family. Austin returned to Virginia during summers to spend time with his father.
With most of his time spent with his mom, and as the oldest, he became co-helper of the home.
Accordingly, he learned at a young age to personally fix problems, and not seek outside support.
But as Austin continued his reflection on counseling and personal responsibility and
problem solving, he extended and included how societal composition shaped his view of

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counseling as a Black man. That is, the minimal forms of support Black boys and men have
access to, results in them having to rely on themselves to fix personal problems:
It’s going to take time [counseling] because I’m set in my ways to a certain degree, and
this is the way I’m wired. It’s like my default for like that’s weakness. Like, nah, you,
you’re a man. You’re a Black man, American. Like you got to figure that junk out. You
know what I’m saying? Reaching out for help no, you don’t need that. So, I definitely can
do better with that for sure.
Aware that he “can do better,” Austin is still what he describes as reserved when it comes to
counseling.
But Austin’s reservations are not solely influenced by his childhood and his general
experiences as a Black man in the U.S. nation-state. They are also influenced by his workplace
culture. As mentioned, Austin works in “a heavily Republican” environment. Specifically, he
works alongside Republicans who appear to be in support of the Trump administration, which is
known for its stances and support of white supremacist organizations, thoughts, and practices.
And at the time of our interview, Austin was strategizing ways to carefully navigate what could
be a racially hostile work environment, particularly White federal employees’ perceptions of
Black Americans. Accordingly, Austin views counseling as another way someone who is
unfamiliar with him, can judge him by appearance, instead of his character. He described,
Sitting down and talking to a therapist. I’m like, I don’t want to talk to somebody that don’t
know anything about me and they’re going to judge me. That’s one thing I talk about often,
like I don’t like people judging me because they don’t even know anything about me.
They’re going to quickly judge. So, like I told you, at my job there is a lot of Republicans.
They’re quick to judge this, that, and the third. They don’t know anything about me. I’m a

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nice guy. If you get to know me, you would actually want to say hi to me. But because of
my appearance you’re going to give that little, “Hey, I don’t really want to talk to you type
of thing.” So, that puts me on a defense, and I don’t want to open [up] to people. So, I’m
definitely not open to that. I definitely can do better with that; I know I can.
Austin knows he can do better, and desires to do better in supporting Barbara’s need for marriage
counseling. But childhood, and internalized expectations of Black men in America that is upheld
by racialized interactions with White employees confirm Austin’s position of figuring “that junk
out.” Counseling can be beneficial, but it has the potential of exposing Austin to gendered
racism, something he already experiences as an inflexible salaried worker.
What matters is that Austin’s fears of judgement are known within the home. Barbara is
aware of the impact of gendered racism on Austin, and by extension, on her ability to fix her
marriage problem. But being the down-to-earth person Barbara is, she activates emotional and
mental availability by showing care and understanding toward Austin. Responding to Austin’s
explanation of why he is resistant to counseling, Barbara simply stated, “I knew this.” He
responded, “yeah, she knows.” However, as a knower, Barbara does not push the subject, and
she is hopeful that with time and positive media influences, things will change:
[It] can be hard because I know there’s just little things that could give us a real boost, but
I’m not going to, I also don’t want to push it because then it’s not going to help. But I’m
glad that there’s also some outside small influences that make it easier. We [Barbara and
I] talked about Black(ish) that episode where they were going to therapy. So, I’m glad that
there’s more images to help people, especially us who feel reserved still with kind of some
stigma about mental health and just relationships and support with therapists. That it’s okay

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to get that support and that you don’t have to feel like you’re on an island and you had to
do it yourself.
Moving from personal to community, Barbara underscores how resistance to counseling is
bigger than her and Austin. By emphasizing the community problem, Barbara is not solely
implicating or problematizing Austin. Instead, she problematizes Black communities’ stance on
mental health services, and maintains hopefulness that the broader Black community is slowly
changing its perspective.
Barbara’s redirection is also a form of care and nurturance of Austin, as he easily agrees
with her that there exists a stigma within the Black community regarding mental health services
(Head 2005). Going back to Black men, Austin extends his previous perspective as a community
problem, that needs shifting:
Our community especially with just Black males. It’s a sign of weakness. Like we should
not ask for help. There’s a lot of situations where you know if you just sat down and talked
to somebody you probably would not have made [the] decision you made. Might not have
reacted violently in a situation. But mental illness going on in our community, we just don’t
speak about especially with Black males. We just feel like it’s a sign of weakness. That’s
how we’re raised, “Don’t cry. Men don’t cry.”
But the Black community is not the only problem. Including historical and current forms
of racism, Austin described economic and institutional practices that prevent Black Americans
from accessing mental health services. He says,
If you could afford it [therapy], they [White institutional practices] wouldn’t let you have
it because you’re Black. So, figure it out. So, it’s been going on for a long time. So, it takes

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some time to get out of that. But the more we talk about it, I think it will start getting
resolved and actually getting involved in that kind of stuff.
Like racialized interactions at work, Austin refers to how things are changing, but more work
needs to be done regarding racial progress. Accordingly, an acknowledgement of racial progress,
but still far from being solved, appears to influence Austin’s response to spaces outside of the
home, particularly spaces and practices visibly marked as White.
Acknowledgement on one hand and waiting for more racial progress on the other hand,
co-influence, and shape Austin’s fear of counseling. He wants to do better, but he is afraid of the
impact therapy will have on his standing within his Black social circle, and others perception of
him as a family man:
I’m open, but it’s like double dutch. I know I need to jump in there, but I don’t know when
because I’m scared to get my feet tangled. I don’t want it to be tangled, looking crazy.
Everybody is looking like “aha, aha, he went to therapy. Somethings wrong with him.”
That’s a mentality. Nothing [is] wrong with me. I just need some little extra help. So, I’m
definitely open to it.
Open to it, but as someone already dealing with judgement and low respect at work, Austin
cannot afford to lose respect and the perception of him as the Black family man within his social
circle. Gendered racism from workplace culture comes home, and couples like Barbara and
Austin are trying hard to strategize ways to place the family first, and in ways that are careful as
to not cost them their marriage. We know that men are more reluctant to access mental health
services than women are (Real 1997), and we also know that Black men are especially reluctant
because of systemic racisms and controlling myths regarding mental health and pain for Black
men (Head 2005). It appears then, that fixing Barbara’s problem is hard.

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A LEGACY KIND OF LOVE: CORINNE AND SEBASTIAN
Corinne and Sebastian both hold PhD degrees and are both employed in flexible salaried
jobs. When Corinne met Sebastian, she was on the tenure track, and Sebastian was at the final
stage of dissertation writing. After he won a prestigious fellowship, Sebastian’s dissertation
committee encouraged him to relocate, and live somewhere that would serve as a support system
while he wrote his dissertation. Knowing he wanted to extend his network, he moved from the
south to New England, and was hosted at a university. He met Corrinne at the university hosting
him, and since their first date, Sebastian has felt sparks:
When I met her my thinking was, she was attractive, she was smart, she was successful. I
think we had dinner just to talk. As I [was] there, we really hit it off. I think from that
time on, spending more and more time together and just getting to know her, sparks flew
from there.
Corinne may not have felt the same immediate sparks, but she said that meeting
Sebastian was like meeting a “kindred spirit.” Even if they were not to work out as a couple,
Corinne knew Sebastian was “good people” and someone she believed she should know and
cultivate friendship. She says, “I knew he was good people, and I was like, okay, this is someone
I should know. Even if he’s just a friend, we have a lot in common. I enjoy his company. I
definitely want to get to know him.” Getting to know Sebastian worked in Corinne’s favor.
Sebastian made it clear that he wanted to get to know her and made the decision to stay in New
England instead of returning to his university in the south. Their relationship was solidified
through a love gesture as she traveled for research:
When we met, I was going to be traveling to sub-Saharan Africa for some research, and he
was towards the end of his fellowship. So, a couple of months after we met. Maybe six

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weeks after, we should have been going off to our respective corners, but he decided he
was staying. And so, when it was that last day and time for me to go, the taxi came to pick
me up [to] take me to the airport. He was standing there, and he had an envelope in his
hand with a card, and he said, “don’t open it until you get on the plane.” I said, “okay.”
And when I was on the plane, I opened the card and there was a very nice note, and it said,
“I’ll be here to pick you up from the airport when you come back.” And so, within that
short period of time, we kind of knew that that’s my husband, that’s my wife.
One year later, Corinne and Sebastian were married.
Sebastian’s relocation provided him more than a work network; he fell in love. Corinne
met a “kindred spirit” whom she shared many commonalities. Love and shared commonalities
shape the commitment Corinne and Sebastian have to each other, and their four children who are
ages 6 and under. Throughout my time with them, I learned how their commonalities not only
shape their commitment to each other but informed the reconciliation practices incorporated to
manage her and his time as a couple. That is, commonalities can operate as forces solidifying a
marital match, as well as a conduit that combats gendered racism, as well as provide a pathway
into building a legacy. In addition, commonalities can also lead to diverging gendered time use.
They are Legacy Builders: Corinne
When I met Corinne, she described herself as “a recovered academic twice removed.”
After Sebastian secured employment with the federal government as a statistician, they relocated
to Washington, D.C. When their family moved to Washington, D.C., Corinne briefly became a
consultant, but returned to academia, and served as the director of a graduate MA degree
program. Corinne left the director position after three years and returned to consulting, but this
time as an owner and operator of a consulting group.

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Corinne’s consulting group conducts “culturally competent and equitable research
evaluation support for organizations.” The organizations Corrine mostly works with are non-
profits, foundations, and community-based programs, and most recently, Corinne has acquired
consulting opportunities with the federal government. Days vary, and as the founder and lead
consultant, Corinne wears “many hats in the business” including providing support, subject-
matter expertise, organizing presentations, and team management. Describing the start to her
day, Corrine said, “If it is like this morning [day of our interview], it starts with our 3-year-old’s
school where they are having a costume party. It’s helping with extra hands, taking pictures, and
engaging in their festivities, and rushing to the office.” A mother to four children, Corinne’s
consulting group provides her an opportunity to practice strategic mothering.
Creating a consulting group also allows Corinne to merge her passion for research with
equity and community engagement. In her prior career as an academic, Corinne believed equity
was largely missing. A part of incorporating equity means recognizing racism and finding ways
to end racism within work organizations. Critical of academia, Corinne described why she left,
stating diversity and equity are integral, especially for Black women in higher education:
My transition out of the academy and into business is precisely because I was over the
microaggressions and not taking initiative in higher ed. They are all about diversity and
inclusion, but no one wanted to touch equity really, and they just fall flat, and higher ed is
a very toxic place for Black women. So, part of the transition out was really me taking
more ownership over what my day looks like, what I’m doing with my time, and just being
able to follow through with some practices that I value in the work that we do.
In addition, business ownership, allows Corinne to choose the organizations she’s willing
to work with, which helps her combat gendered racism in the workplace. She says, “I get to pick

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and choose. So, that’s been a big part of you know navigating microaggressions. I’m choosing
whether or not to engage in those spaces.” However, gendered racism still permeates all
institutions, and when this happens, Corinne feels empowered to call things out because she is a
business owner and has a level of protection she did not have while in the academy if she chose
to openly voice her concerns about social injustice:
When those kinds of conversations [social injustice] came up earlier on in my career, I felt
the injustice. I didn’t have the words for how to combat them in the moment in the room
without being the stereotypical, angry, or whatever else. And all those emotions are fully
human and definitely allowable, but if we carry them around with us every day, then we
will continue to die early because of all the stress we are feeling and festering. So, I feel
very empowered today to call people out on their stuff with a smile, but without blinking.
It is not a joke, it’s serious. We are going to deal with this. I’m also grateful to be in a state
where I am surrounded by colleagues and clients who call this stuff out, so I don’t have to
be the racial equity microaggression police person.
By replacing the professoriate with business ownership, Corinne has become empowered to
speak out against racial injustice because she knows speaking out will result in change.
Scholarship has examined the impact the academy can have on Black women’s health
and well-being. The gendered racism Black women experience in the professoriate can cause
mental and emotional stress and can lead to what Corinne describes as a “toxic place for Black
women” (Zambrana 2018). When Corinne left academia to create a consulting group, she
realized an empowered definition of self. The ability to gain more control over gendered racism
within workplace culture is important for Corinne because she must live a long life for her
family. “I need to live a long life. My husband needs to live a long life. We have four children

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who need their parents. It is incumbent upon us to live life and fight the battles that we deem as
appropriate fighting, so we can be here for them.” The health consequences of choosing a career
with less control over time related to gendered racism in the workplace was too high, and for
Corinne, not worth the possible impact those health consequences could have on her family.
Corinne’s concerns about work-related stress impact on personal health is not unfounded.
Corinne lost her father during her freshman year of college to pancreatic cancer; he was 48 years
old. One of six, she observed her older sister’s declining health due to a high-stress career, and
she was only 40 years old. These experiences combined with her family’s health history, served
as warning signs to strategize ways to place career in a position that is not at the family’s
expense. As a Black woman within the middle-class, Corinne describes being best positioned to
take back some control over her life, particularly as it relates to work and its impact on
personhood, and by extension the family:
One of the things that we [her and her sister] are fully aware of [is] the privileges we carry
as middle-class Black women. Middle-class, educated in this society, the choices that we
have and that we can make. What really grounds us is our faith and understanding of who
guides our lives, and what we are called to do. It is not to find ourselves in the ground at a
young age where we die early. And so, we understand all the reasons why we do it for a
period of time, for a lifetime, we understand all of those reasons, but liberating yourself
from that is a need.
Corinne recognizes the privileged position she is in compared to working-poor Black women as
it relates to financial stability, gaining some control over how her time is used, and how work is
positioned in her life. Corinne’s description also underscores the reality of the controlling
racialized stereotype, the Strong Black woman, and its commonplace in workplace culture, and

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external and internal expectations of Black women in the U.S. nation state regarding work and
family life (Barnes 2016; Beauboeuf-Lafontant 2009; Dean, Marsh, Landry 2015; Dow 2016;
Landry 2000; Wingfield 2020).
Experiencing liberation, Corinne has more control over how her time is scheduled. This
is important because she works hard to place motherhood and marriage within the same level as
career, which includes making herself available to drop her children off to school in the
mornings and pick them up in the afternoons. In addition, as a flexible worker, Corinne can
block her calendar for work-related meetings to occur within a specific time frame, 9:30am-
2:30pm. In describing her work schedule, Corinne says, “I do recognize that my flexibility and
freedom is supported by others maybe not being able to be so flexible.” That is, with employees
in various time zones and locations, Corinne’s schedule might not always be convenient for
them, but it is what’s best for her as the company owner, who desires to maintain a commitment
to family first.
A blocked 9:30am-2:30pm schedule means Corinne only has 5 unbothered hours to
commit to work, and much of that time is spent in meetings with clients. Corinne admits that she
must maximize her work time, and she even believes that a business works best with a higher
time commitment at “10 hours a day.” But Corinne is not committing to 10-hour workdays.
Instead, the season she and her husband are in, has her spending most of her time managing her
children’s busy activities schedule. When I asked Corinne about her children’s activities
schedule, she began with “my husband is the mastermind of all of those things.” And this is true
and was confirmed when I spoke to him. And while Sebastian has a positive view of their
children’s schedule, Corinne believes their children are overscheduled. Specifically, she
describes her children’s schedule as “insane.” On Monday their middle child has soccer and their

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oldest children, twins, are in ballet. On Tuesday, their twins have tap class. On Thursday, their
children are in swim lessons, and on Friday, their twins have violin in the morning, and all
daughters have gymnastics in the evening. Their only unscheduled weekday is Wednesday. With
this schedule, Corinne and Sebastian are tag-teaming pickups and drop offs. The overextended
schedule has created busy children and tired parents, and for Corinne, a dynamic wherein much
of her time consists of family first, and career second, leaving her time deficient to personally
care for herself.
Throughout our time together, Corinne often referenced health and wellbeing, and how
important her health is to her given her family’s health history. At one point in our interview,
Corinne mentioned she used to hold negative views regarding her health because of her family’s
health history. As mentioned, Corinne’s father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died at
48 years old. One of her older sister’s was diagnosed with high blood pressure caused by the
combination of family genetics and high-career-related stress. Other family members like her
maternal grandmother, had high blood pressure, a heart condition, and was on dialysis and died
at 75 years old. Her paternal grandparents died in their 50s and 60s, one from heart disease, and
the other from skin cancer. This family health history led Corinne to believe that at some point in
her life she would meet a similar fate. “When I was younger, I used to think, “I’m going to die in
my 30s.” Like, that’s the way things are happening. It’s very morbid. I used to walk around with
a cloud over my head, like, “okay, I got a good three or four decades on this planet. So, let me
think about how I am using it.”” But an awareness of family health history, health at the
intersection of race and gender, and a commitment to her husband, have helped Corinne
reexamine her views regarding life expectancy. “Nowadays, I’m aware of all the reasons family
wise, society wise, Black women are dying early. And my husband always reminds me, I

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promised to give him too I’m 100 years old. I’m like okay.” Corinne’s changed perspective with
the help of knowledge and her marital promise has provided room for her to develop a new
outlook.
But the new outlook alone is not enough: the time to commit to exercise, something
Corinne desires is nonexistent. Large proportion of her time is devoted to family, a limited
amount is compartmentalized in her career, leaving little time to devote to self-care. With a
growing business, Corinne is left in a time depleted position, whereby the possibility to exercise
has not been realized. She says, “I would like to be more active again. I just haven’t figured out,
all those other calendar movements and all that stuff we talked about earlier, where to fit in
momma goes to the gym. Haven’t figured it out yet.” In not figuring it out, it has been two years
since Corinne’s been to the gym. Inactivity combined with pregnancy health challenges can
undermine the new outlook, especially since Corinne believes pregnancy health challenges
“foreshadows some health challenges you might have later in life.” And for Corinne, that is
concerning.
Leaving the professoriate allowed Corinne to experience empowerment and reduce her
stress, which impacted her health. By replacing the toxicity of academia with creating a
consulting group, Corinne gained more control over her time, and how she encountered gendered
racism within workplace culture. As a business owner, Corinne can create the culture and values
she would like to foster in the workplace. Consulting also provides Corinne a pathway into the
family first. That is, work is confined to five hours, and before and after work, Corinne commits
to family. But the low commitment to work hours, while fully embraced by Corinne, still causes
some stress to occur. For example, when I asked Corinne about life stressors, she mentioned
timing and unrealistic expectations. Both going hand in hand, Corinne’s maximization of five

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work hours, means she is constantly managing which tasks will get done, and which tasks will go
undone:
So, the timing piece is you are trying to do something in 15 minutes, and it takes an hour.
That’s really stressful. Unrealistic expectations [are] you know you somehow have 20
things to do this week, and there’s no way that is going to happen. You really have to
make priority what can happen now, what has to happen later, what somebody else needs
to do, [and] what doesn’t get done at all.
Accordingly, it appears that Corinne’s flexible schedule is creating time constraints that protects
Corinne one on hand, while reproducing racialized gender inequality on the other hand. That is,
Corinne is protected from gendered racism stemming from workplace culture, but her
commitment to family first, perhaps leaves her in a position in which she must maximize work
time and forego exercise. And she does so, as someone who is trying to manage heightened
concerns about personal health and family health history.
They are Legacy Builders: Sebastian
When Corinne described her first encounter with Sebastian, she used the phrase “kindred
spirits.” An integral part of their kindred connection was Sebastian’s unwavering commitment to
family first. Corinne grew up with an involved father, and her father played an integral part in
not only his children’s lives, but also in the lives of children with non-residential fathers in their
community. Corinne desired to marry a man like her father, and Sebastian can and does fulfill
this desire. As a statistician for the federal government, Sebastian has a flexible work schedule.
Work is completed during work hours and is not brought home, and he has complete control over
his schedule, allowing him to place his family first.

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Sebastian arrives to work at 6 in the morning, and leaves at 2:30pm. A typical day at
work includes comparing survey data from previous years of the survey he manages. He is also
responsible for checking data, creating tables, and analyzing survey data for public use. For two
days out of the week, Sebastian works from home. Overall, Sebastian appreciates his work
schedule, and describes the government sector employing him as laidback, and not impacted by
the market, whereby Sebastian feels he must constantly work hard and produce an outcome.
“How it’s structured, it is very laidback [work]. It’s not affected by the market. We don’t have to
work faster or harder. You just have to make sure that the quality of your survey is there in the
end.” The structure of Sebastian’s work is supported by what he describes as a “very family
oriented” workplace culture. Specifically, Sebastian’s supervisors emphasize family first, and
encourage the staff team to not work during non-working hours. “Everyone has a family, your
boss. Everyone is like “don’t take work home, do work at work. When you are at home, you are
with your family.” That’s how it is structured, so it makes it very easy.” With this support,
Sebastian has created a work environment which allows him maximum control over his time.
The work environment Sebastian created was evident when we discussed racism at work.
As Sebastian reflected on my question about experiences with racial discrimination at work, he
stated, “Honestly, it [racism] probably does [occur].” His unawareness is largely due to how he
structures his time while at work. As a PhD, with colleagues who also have PhD’s, Sebastian
recognizes that the sector he is employed is not racially diverse. But he is unbothered by this
because he has constructed hard boundaries between himself and his colleagues. That is, he does
not interact with work colleagues enough to decipher if racial discrimination is apparent:
My personality, I’m very to myself. So, I don’t interact a lot, outside of the daily team. I
don’t do a lot with my colleagues at work. So, I’m insulated a bit from that [racial

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discrimination]. At my employment, the majority of my colleagues either have PhDs or
master’s, so in that, it’s not as diverse as other parts of the government. But for me
personally, I try to insulate myself in a way. I haven’t personally experienced overt racism,
or microaggressions that I have experienced.
Using social isolation and constructing hard boundaries is a strategy Black men employed
in professional careers often use to manage how they are impacted by gendered racism in
employment (Wingfield 2012; 2020). Sebastian confirmed this when he described work’s
position in his life, especially what it is meant for, and what it is not meant for:
I went to a Black college. I’ve been in all-Black spaces with top people. So, when I’m, at
work, I’m just at work. I don’t think of it as a friendship, bonding environment. I’m like I
don’t need to go in making all these friends, which other people went into with that, they
might experience those things [racism at work]. They’re having more personal
conversations and interactions that might play that out. But for me, when I go to work, I’m
going in at 6:00am. Most people don’t get there until 9:00am. So, I already have 3 hours
where part of my workday is done. I don’t go to lunch. I go to the gym instead of lunch.
I’m not in the lunchroom, I’m in the gym by myself. I leave at 2:30pm, and I don’t spend
extra time at work hanging out. I want to go home to my family. So, that may you know
intercept that because I’m not interacting in a way where those things can play out.
From this description, Sebastian has constructed a hard boundary between work and personal
life. How Sebastian structures his time reveals two things: social isolation which helps manage
gendered racism, and the privileges of being a flexible worker, which allows him to maximize
work time in a way that it does not impose or compete with the family first ethos. Further,
Sebastian’s schedule underscores how her and his time is stratified by gender. That is, Sebastian

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and Corinne both leave work at 2:30pm, but Sebastian’s schedule is balanced more wherein he
can spend more time at work, and thus, does not experience the stress of time like Corinne.
Sebastian can also begin his childcare commitments once the workday is over.
Having this schedule is important to Sebastian because “family is first.” In fact,
Sebastian’s commitment to family first is a driving force structuring most of the decisions he
makes. For example, Sebastian views work as way to bring in an income to meet providership
and protection expectations of men in family life, but in a way that is not at the expense of family
time. He says, “You have to make enough to keep your family safe and secure. I think that’s
important, but if I work super hard and I don’t have a chance to actually raise my children, be
around for my spouse, then I feel like it defeats the purpose. Don’t go out there chasing
something that will impact your family.” Redefining the meaning of providership as a form of
security for the family, but not at the expense of the family is embedded within a Black
American culture of family life (Council revise and resubmit; Hunter and Sellers 1998; Johnson
and Young 2016; Roy 2004;). Accordingly, work has its purpose, and should be confined to
doing enough to help secure the family financially, but not overpower time with the family.
As a man committed to family first, and with the career and salaried means to commit to
family first, Sebastian is deeply involved with daily home and childcare activities and duties.
One duty he is mostly responsible for is making lunches in the morning and cooking meals.
Sebastian is a vegetarian and had been for almost two decades when he met Corinne. Corinne
became a vegetarian, and they are rearing their children on a vegetarian diet, and Sebastian’s
expertise regarding vegetarianism is utilized in meal preparation. In terms of their children’s
activities schedule, Sebastian is involved. As mentioned, he tag-teams with Corinne in pickups
and drop offs for weekday activities. Describing the busyness of the week, and life home, after

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work, Sebastian said, “When I’m home, I’m with them [his children]. I’m not thinking about
work. I’m with them running around, playing with them, asking them about their day.” Although
the weekdays are busy, and as Corinne stated, “insane”, Sebastian can manage. Having the
ability to create a strict boundary between work and family life, Sebastian has maximum control
over his time use, and can fully commit to something he and Corinne have in common, family
first.
Since Sebastian is mostly responsible for his children’s busy afterschool schedule, I
wondered if he felt he did not spend enough time with them. When the schedule works the way
he plans, Sebastian does not experience parental loneliness because he knows the weekend
provides him unbothered time with his children. However, at the time of our interview, Sebastian
was dealing with a schedule conflict that made him feel he was not spending enough time with
his children, and that his weekend time was being overcrowded by their children’s schedule. For
example, when one of their twin daughters was cast in the Nutcracker, this required her to spend
her weekends in extra rehearsal time until the end of the show season. Before the Nutcracker,
Sebastian would spend his weekends relaxing, but now he spends his weekends in ballet
rehearsal:
I feel like the weekend I had time to relax with them, but with ballet class, it goes on in the
middle of the day. So, it’s hard to do things around it. I don’t have as much time, but during
the week it’s like I’m fine. But the Nutcracker makes it harder to navigate and have that
time with them. I feel like the weekend is harder. I wish I had more flexibility there.
Like with work, Sebastian has constructed a boundary around his children’s activities schedule
and how he desires for it to fit into their commitment to family first. However, extra rehearsals
due to a shift in one child’s schedule is causing some time control conflict, whereby Sebastian

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would like to have more flexibility. Sebastian emphasized the extra rehearsals impact on his time
use, by acknowledging his daughter’s excitement, but not foreseeing the Nutcracker as
something their family will continue to participate in the future.
Another commonality Sebastian shares with Corinne is the limited time he has for
himself. As a busy involved father to four children, and husband, Sebastian does not access much
personal time. However, Sebastian views lower personal time as a season, and part of a larger
purpose:
My purpose is husband and father. Yeah, I need time to myself, but those are also things
that are very important to me in my life [husband and father]. I had time to myself before
I was married. Right now, in life, I have four very young kids. So, my season right now is
strengthening my bond with my spouse and my bond with my kids. I’m married. I’m
supposed to be with my family and strengthen those bonds.
As a flexible salaried employee, Sebastian can control his time use, and commit to his purpose of
husband and father fully without minimal pulls on his time.
The ways Sebastian constructs his time, he can accomplish many things. First, he can
manage gendered racism and its impact on him. By socially isolating at work, he lowers
opportunities where he might encounter gendered racism. At home, he has complete control over
his children’s activities schedule, and they are scheduled in a way that still provides him
opportunities to relax. The children’s activities schedule is only stressful when unexpected
activities arise, like the Nutcracker. But the Nutcracker has an expiration date, and Sebastian
already foresees his family not participating in future seasonal ballet activities. In this way,
Sebastian participates in family life as he desires, and also as Corinne desires. Accordingly,
Sebastian does not see a need for more personal time, because for him, “the hobby is the family.”

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Sebastian’s commitment to the family first ethos is motivated by his marriage. Sebastian
describes his commitment to family first as a move away from individualism to a unit mindset.
That is, he is a part of a collective, and each member of the collective must work together for the
greater good of the family:
You are in a unit, and you’re not an individual anymore. I feel like the friends that I have
who are having the most trouble in marriage, part of that is you still see yourself as an
individual. You still make it about what you want, your self-care. Now you are a unit. So,
my wife is an entrepreneur. She is growing her business. I’m doing the things that I have
been doing, the job I have, I am able to support her business. So, part of that is because I
see us as a unit. Not like, she’s winning and I’m losing. No, we’re winning because we are
able to now mold this thing that is her passion.
Within the marriage, Sebastian and Corinne can accomplish more, like Corinne replacing the
professoriate she described as toxic to Black women with business ownership. Sebastian can also
solidify the partition between work and personal life, and safeguard against gendered racism by
viewing social isolation from others as a decision in support of family first.
Sebastian describes his commitment to marriage and family as a good choice. Helping
him confirm marriage and family as good choices is his network of friends, who are also
married. He says,
A lot of our friends are married. Most of my friends are like me, parents of my children’s
friends, or people at church [who] are married. They’ve all helped to value what we are
doing. What makes this marriage or kind of union, spouse and developing children, what
makes that successful? What makes it work? I think for us a big piece is having a network
of married couples. That’s the thing that helps us to sustain and value that. Like, I’m

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making these choices and they are good choices because I have other friends in good
marriages making similar choices. It’s not like I’m on an island. My friends who are
married are in bed by 8:30pm. We have kids. We’re tired. We are not hanging out. It helps
make what I’m doing successful.
Social networks and supportive friendship circles engaging a similar lifestyle co-contribute to
Sebastian’s framing of marriage and family as a good choice. These similarities provide
Sebastian the support he needs to endure and make sure he maintains a commitment to the family
first ethos.
Corinne and Sebastian’s time use reveals a few things. For one, their narratives
underscore their “kindred spirits” as Corinne described them to have as they are both committed
to the Black American cultural practice of family first. However, their commitment to family
first is stratified by gender, and upon deeper analysis, it is revealed that their gendered time use
is informed by gendered racism within workplace culture. Corinne and Sebastian have
encountered gendered racism, and their commitment to family and marriage have provided them
a pathway to combat gendered racism. For Corinne, this means replacing the professoriate she
describes as toxic to Black women with business ownership. In contrast, Sebastian stays in the
traditional workforce as a flexible worker, but he constructs hard boundaries around his time to
manage gendered racism. An outcome of their good choices, for the good of the family has
resulted in two flexible workers who can devote to family first, but with different outcomes for
their personal time. That is, even though Sebastian does not have personal time when home, the
way he structures his work hours, provides him time to exercise. Corinne, on the other hand, is
dealing with time depletion, whereby family comes first, work hours are maximized second, and
exercise is nonexistent. What makes this worrisome is that Corinne is concerned with her health

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given her family’s health history and personal pregnancy health challenges. Accordingly, like
Barbara, it appears Corinne has a personal problem--health and stress, and she must find a way to
reconcile this personal problem in a way that is not at the expense of family first.
They Are Legacy Builders: Corinne and Sebastian, Her and His Time
The management of her and his time within a strong commitment to Black Christian
principles of marriage was evident during Corinne and Sebastian’s couple’s interview. They
view their marriage as bigger than them, with a higher purpose. To fully participate in the
purpose, Corinne and Sebastian have established who is the head of the household. They agree
that Sebastian is the head of the household, and during their interview Corinne confirmed this
joint decision. “My husband is a husband in the true sense of the word, the Biblical sense. He is
the head of our household. He is the steward of how we grow.” Corinne’s view of Sebastian as
the head of household is based in his commitment to the family, and the integral way he
structures his time to commit to family involvement. And for Sebastian this means doing
“whatever is necessary” to make sure the family is meeting their purpose while maintaining the
family first:
Corinne: Right now, I’m starting the business. There’s a lot of time working in the business
and on the business. He encourages that, he supports that, but it’s also important to keep in
mind what all of this is for. It’s not just about the business or the work. It’s about a legacy
we want to build for our family, for our community, for this world. And so, within that,
you can’t work yourself ragged, right? You have to make the time to be with self, be with
family, and others.

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Sebastian: I think for me, whatever is necessary. So, if that means that I have to be home
more so that she can do it [work on business], then I’m gonna do that. I’m hoping that as
our kids grow that we model that. It’s not about roles and things like that, it’s more about
what is your larger goal, what’s your purpose, and how do you actually achieve that?
Achieving that in the union with a partner who is also faithful.
Even Sebastian states it is not about “roles” but purpose. But recall the difference in time
Corinne and Sebastian had during the day to commit to the purpose. Sebastian spent 8-hours a
day at work, and Corinne spent 5-hours a day at work and incorporated a maximize time
approach to work and family life. Thus, Corinne and Sebastian emphasize a shared purpose and
commitment to legacy, and Sebastian can support Corinne’s part of the purpose, but the time
available to commit to the purpose and legacy is unequal. How then, do Corinne and Sebastian
reconcile time use inequality as to not compete with their marriage commitment to family first,
and him as the head of the household?
What helps Black women and men stay committed to the family is the type of work they
are in, as well as their corresponding social class position. Specifically, Black women and men
within the middle-class tend to be in a better position to commit to family first in ways typical of
Black American family culture than working-poor Black women and men. This position tends to
not be predicated on income earning alone, but more so, the time available to commit to the
family. And often the more time available is correlated with higher incomes and professional
careers. And while family involvement is an attractive aspect of Black American marriages, it is
not without the capability of reproducing other forms of social inequality. Specifically, family
involvement provides Black couples, particularly Black men an opportunity to realize respect,
leadership, and masculine positions in ways that work tends to not offer, but with that, Black

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women tend to experience gendered problems. Drawing a connection between this and Corinne
and Sebastian, both she and Sebastian are invested in the family first ethos, and their
commitment provides Sebastian male headship, but appears to leave Corinne challenged to find
ways to fix her personal problem—stress and personal wellbeing.
At the end of our time together, Corinne and Sebastian summarized the purpose of their
marital union. They described their marriage as bigger than the individual, implying that their
union and children are the beginning to something greater. The something greater, is
intergenerational wealth and preparing to leave a legacy for future generations. Corinne realizes
she cannot create this legacy alone and what helps is her marriage and her relationship with God:
I have the best husband in the world. I say that to mean, that everything I am, or I do is
because of God and my husband, and I have a role in that I have a part in it, but I have no
doubt that I wouldn’t be doing and couldn’t do half of what I’m doing now without them.
Like why am I hustling the way I am hustling just for myself? I can be good without all
these extra things. [I’m] trying to have some impact on the world or trying to shape what
they are and who they will be [children].
For Corinne, it would be challenging to realize a family legacy and impact on the world if she
were not married to Sebastian. Solidifying Corrine’s commitment to Sebastian and the family
first is her personal relationship with God and perspective regarding marriage as a Christian. She
says, “I think the key thing is the partnership piece of it. What it really means in every sense of
the word to be married. Like in Biblical sense, to be married, not in legal terms. What does that
mean? And what does that mean for stewardship of your household and your family and your
purpose and those kinds of things.”

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In research on minoritized groups and religion, scholarship finds that religion practices
often take on different meanings, sometimes serving as an avenue to combat larger systems of
inequality like racism and sexism (Allen 2019; Mahmood 2005). For example, Mahmood (2005)
shows how women in Cairo across socioeconomic status joined together to advocate for
women’s needs within Islam and to construct agency and self-actualization. Further, Allen
(2019) argues that Christianity served as an avenue for Black Americans to understand their lives
while existing within the U.S. nation state in which opportunities and access to resources are
often stratified by race. Accordingly, religious beliefs and practices can serve as a conduit for
minoritized groups to realize a self and opportunity within structures that are oppressive and
upholds white supremacy and Western modes of thoughts and ideas regarding marginalized
groups. As a Black Christian woman, Corinne’s marriage provides her an avenue to enact self-
actualization.
Following up on Corinne’s comment, Sebastian reiterates Corinne’s reference to being
married “in [a] Biblical sense,” by emphasizing the benefit of a marriage with God at the center:
I’ll just reiterate what my wife said. I think God has to be at the center of your marriage. I
learned more and more while I was married. I came into marriage knowing that, but I really
understood it, like God really showed me what it means in the marriage. I feel like the
relationship my wife and I have now is so much better than when we started, it’s been
growing. I think part of that is because God is at the center.
Having God at the center has improved their marriage. The incorporation of their
religious practices has also provided Corinne and Sebastian an opportunity to realize agency in
ways that most likely could not have happened outside of marriage. For example, Sebastian
commented that through a marriage with God at the center, he has shown Corinne his

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commitment to the family first. His commitment to the family led to trust and confidence in
Corinne being able to rely on Sebastian as she makes choices regarding her career. “My wife felt
confident enough, she left her job and kicked off her business. She knows, I’m going to support
her and be here for her because our union is strong.”
A Black Christian marriage centered on family involvement not only allows Corinne and
Sebastian to realize self-actualization, but it also provides them an intimate support network
where they can manage fear and anxiety. Again, referencing God, and the importance of having
God at the center of their marriage, Sebastian described his marriage as a purpose, and the one
area that helps them move through anxiety and stress as a couple:
The worry [and] the anxiety that comes with not having God at the center of that marriage.
What can happen to me if I’m living right? That comes from my marriage too. The worry
and anxiety are gone because of how we live our lives. If God is not at the center, you have
marriages where the spouses have no real reason to draw closer to each other.
In this way, the marriage becomes a symbol of purpose and higher calling than the stressors of
work and family life. And without the marriage, Black middle-class couples like Corinne and
Sebastian, would not be able to realize their purpose, especially purposes that also allow them to
navigate gendered racism within workplace culture.
When I asked Corinne and Sebastian about their commitments to family, and whether
work impacted their commitment to family, I learned that work’s impact becomes reframed as
good choices for the family. This was particularly the case for Corinne who often brought work
home and had work commitments that conflicted with family time. As the head of the family,
and keeper of family involvement, Sebastian particularly reframed how he views Corinne’s
work’s impact on family time:

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I think for my wife it just depends on what’s happening. So, a lot of her work is project-
based, so [there] might be times when she might have a deadline. Whether I know or not,
I can just tell by what she’s doing. So, she’s sometimes on her laptop or computer. She
might take her laptop with her downstairs [while] putting the girls to sleep, kind of like do
both. I’m not worried about, the day should be over now, [and] you’re working. I trust her
that she’s gonna make the best choice for the family. So, if she is trying to do something
that pulls her away from some things, or maybe it may seem from the outside looking in
that she is deprioritizing family. I’m kind of like, she’s making the best choice for all of
us.
To make meaning of Corinne’s time use, Sebastian reframes his perspective of work in
Corinne’s life outside of her 5-hour workday. Work tends to come home with Corinne, and
rightly so. However, as long as Corinne’s time use with work is in the spirit of family first, then
her work is not viewed as an impact.
Aware of how work comes home, Corinne views Sebastian as a model for family life.
Specifically, she followed-up to Sebastian’s comment regarding her work and time use at home,
by saying, “he does a good job” when it comes to family time. This is important to Corinne
because it reminds her of her father, who was also committed to family involvement:
My husband, he models things so well. He does a very good job of that quality family
[time]. I knew that was important for me. I had a very involved father. My dad was there
for everything. And so, when it is fun family time, he does that very well. By modeling it
and the expectation like, “oh, it’s time to get in pajamas and watch movies with the kids
and eat popcorn.” He is excellent at that, and it inspires me to be better in that way too.

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Reminded of her father, Corinne’s marriage provides her the security of knowing she has a
husband who is invested in family first. And Corinne is inspired by Sebastian to do better and
find ways to make sure her time use outside of work hours is for the family.
They Are Legacy Builders: Corinne’s Time and Health Problem
Although Corinne views Sebastian as the model for family first in their marriage, and by
extension their family life, Sebastian maintains that Corinne “always finds time to make for
family.” His confidence in Corinne’s commitment to the family was evident in how she
negotiated work deadlines as it related to family first:
I think for the most part, my wife always finds time even though she has deadlines. She
always finds time to make for family. If it is something she has due on Monday, she’s still
hanging out on Saturday with us like it’s not due on Monday. She figures out how to spend
time and have that downtime with us, while still maintaining the deadlines she knows are
coming up. She does a very good job of balancing those things for herself.
Corinne does “a very good job” balancing work and family life. However, earlier it was learned
that Corinne is stressed by unrealistic expectations and timing. Not having enough time during
the day because of the commitment to family first, and not having enough time in the evening
because of a commitment to family first leaves Corinne in a time depleted position. However,
her stress is not evident to the family because she is doing a good job of balancing.
But is Corinne doing a good job balancing work and family life? Earlier in their marriage,
Corinne expressed how she was overwhelmed by work and family life, but with time, and
growth in her personal relationship with God, her stress has become less apparent in the family.
Sebastian emphasized this in his response to Corinne’s stress:

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My wife will say it when she’s overwhelmed. I see how her behavior changes. Now, she’s
on her own walk with God, she has grown in how she deals with stress. She lets more
things go. Her feelings of stress have been less. I think prior to that, she would definitely
bring it up if she’s feeling a particular way. But now it’s far in-between. I feel like life
hasn’t changed per se, but how she deals with things on the outside has changed. Her
perspective has changed.
Over time, Corinne has become less vocal about her stress and how stress manifests in the
family. Known as “shifting,” this management style is defined as a way Black American women
navigate external pressures at the intersection of race and gender (Jones and Shorter-Gooden
2004). When Black American women shift, it is in relation to forces outside of their control. In
this case, Corinne shifts how stress shows up in family life, by becoming less vocal about stress,
or finding ways to manage stress separate from the marriage and home.
What helps Corinne shift are sources of support outside the home like Black women
family members and friends. She says, “I found through conversation with elders, and elder
women [in the] family, other friends of mine, even just stating that, even if nothing’s gonna
happen, it makes the difference because many of them talk about having those same kinds of
stressors and not saying it.” Having the support of older Black women helps Corinne manage
stress as well as keep stress from having an impact on the family. Other ways Corinne releases
stress and feelings of being overwhelmed is through prayer and her husband’s ability to help her
focus on the family.
Corinne’s relationship with God is important. She underscored this point in many parts of
her individual interview, as well as the couple’s interview. Her faith helps her overcome
overwhelming moments, as well as serve as a guide to understanding marriage and family life.

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Accordingly, when Corinne is feeling overwhelmed, and external sources of support are not
available, she prays and checks in with Sebastian. “I pray about it. That is what allows me to
release it [stress and feeling overwhelmed]. I’m like, “God, this feels overwhelming. It feels like
too much right now, can you take this from me?” When Sebastian and I talk and we’re checking
in, I’ll be like, “oh, I feel overwhelmed right now. There is too much going on, and I just don’t
see how it’s all gonna get done.””
Prayer provides an opportunity to release, and check-ins with Sebastian provides her an
opportunity to state she feels overwhelmed. Upon further reflection, check-ins with Sebastian
also allows Corinne to regain perspective on the hierarchy of importance. That is, when Corinne
feels overwhelmed, Sebastian reminds her of the family first.
When things might be very stressful at work, and I’m in tunnel vision, he’s very good at
stopping me and being like, “What’s important right now is to be there with the kids.” Or
“What kind of relationship do you want to have with them? What do you want them to
remember of you now?” Just the kind of thing that snatches me back regardless of what
might be going on.
As the keeper of family first, which Corinne admires about her husband, Sebastian helps her
reframe work and its corresponding stress through an articulation of family first. That is, what
matters most is the commitment to family, not the work taking Corinne away from the family.
And Corinne appreciates Sebastian pulling her back because she’s reminded that work is “not
more important than playing cards with my daughter. Or, going down to read a bedtime story to
them or just doing stuff around the house.”
Corinne’s timing problem creates unrealistic expectations she described in the individual
interview. The timing problem could be resolved if Corinne had more time to devote to work.

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However, her commitment to family first, which is a shared commonality with her husband takes
precedence over work. Underscoring their commitment to the family is their marriage,
particularly, their perspective of a Black Christian marriage which suggests they work together
as a unit and view the decisions they make regarding work as having a higher purpose. For them,
the higher purpose is building a legacy and intergenerational wealth. From this perspective, their
marriage provides multiple benefits, but one significant cost—Corinne’s encounter with stress,
especially as someone who is concerned about her health given her family’s health history and
personal pregnancy health challenges. Perhaps, if Corinne could fix her time problem, by
extension her health concerns may also change.
Conclusion
Black women and men like Barbara and Austin, and Corinne and Sebastian are often
committed to the Black American culture of family first, and this commitment is patterned in
racialized gendered ways. I compare racialized gendered patterns at the intersection of job
type—flexible vs. inflexible jobs. Barbara and Corinne practice emotional and mental
availability. Emotional and mental availability are important and creates a set rule of engagement
meeting needs and expectations stemming from work, children, partners, and community (Barnes
2016). In contrast, Black men are successful with the family first ethos when they can create
emotional and mental partitions between work and family life. For Black men within the middle-
class, it appears emotional and mental partitions are best implemented among men within the
flexible worker position. By virtue of their position at the top, this group even when experiencing
gendered racism in the workplace, can access more resources and networks outside of the home,
which help them navigate how gendered racism stemming from workplace culture impacts the
family. For others, like Austin, whose resources and networks are connected to their partner, the

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ability to limit gendered racism’s entry into the home is challenging. In most cases, this group
handles gendered racism by letting it go. Knowing these strategies are connected to race and
gender, how Black middle-class couples come to manage her and his time regarding work and
family is symptomatic of race and gender social inequality.
Scholarship on Black marriages in the U.S. underscore the fragility of Black marriages in
relation to the workforce. That is, historical and contemporary experiences of employment
uncertainty can and do make it challenging for Black marriages in the United States (McDonald
and Cross-Barnet 2018). But study findings also reveal that actual time use can also impact
Black marriages. For instance, couples like Barbara and Austin, and Corinne and Sebastian are
differently positioned in the market economy compared to working-poor Black American
couples, which means the structural constraint impacting their marriages might not be income
per se, but the time available to spend as a family and couple. As individuals committed to
family first, which appears to be the bedrock of Black marriages, this is important to underscore.
To fix these marital time constraints, Black women seem to take on the lion’s share of time
adjustments. Study findings show that this could largely be due to the ways in which gendered
racism from workplace culture creates gendered responses. Black women’s attempts to find
personal solutions means that they are disproportionately absorbing the strains of their navigation
strategies of workplace culture.
The navigation strategies constructed by Black women is in response to a larger culture
regarding womanhood and manhood in Black America. Specifically, a push against the
controlling stereotypes “Black lady” and “endangered species.” The “Black lady” controlling
image which is predicated on Black middle-class women upholding respectable images of Black
womanhood (Collins 2000; Cooper 2017; Higginbotham 1994). Further, the endangered species

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myth provided a pathway for Black men to access power in their interpersonal relationships
(Cole and Guy-Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978). If Black men are viewed as endangered, then what
becomes reified is an idea of Black men experiencing more oppression than Black women. The
deployment of this controlling narrative can and does have an impact on Black women, and the
strategies they construct in their interpersonal relationships with Black men (Cole and Guy-
Sheftall 2003; Wallace 1978). Accordingly, Black women like Barbara and Corinne are still
enduring Black cultural mandates of loving Black men, but in patriarchal ways that often means
Black women silently endure and find individual solutions to problems that require support from
the collective and institutional levels.

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Chapter 5
It’s All About Love: Challenging Gendered Racism with Revolutionary Love Politics

Three things will last forever—
Faith, hope, and love—
And the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:3 (New Living Translation)

Black women can never become fully empowered
In a context that harms Black men,
And Black men can never become fully empowered
In a society in which Black women cannot
Fully flourish as human beings.
Patricia Hill Collins- Black Sexual Politics

What does it mean to live fully empowered lives as Black, and woman, and man, and an
endless combination of social identities in the United States? The purpose of this dissertation was
to examine the ways in which heterosexual Black middle-class couples reconcile hers and his
time regarding work and family life. By exploring this topic, I uncovered how their management
of work and family life is informed by dynamic co-occurring processes. Under the new racism
which is defined as the covert and overt forms racism takes in a post-civil rights United States,
Black middle-class Americans are encountering gendered racism at work. As learned, gendered
racism is the experience of marginalization at the intersection of race and gender and informed
by controlling racialized and gendered stereotypes (Wingfield 2020). For Black professionals,
this means managing The Angry Black Man and The Mammy images, which shape work
experiences including access to networks, advancements, and emotional labor (Wingfield 2020;
2021). The experiences of gendered racism at work, I show spills over into homelife, and shapes
how Black middle-class couples participate and position themselves in family. The participation
constructed is informed by Black cultural beliefs and practices regarding womanhood and

178
manhood, as well as structural constraints like the type of racialized jobs individuals are
employed.
I coin the term family first ethos to understand what it is going on at home. I argue that
the family first ethos is a Black American cultural response to manage the tensions between
work and family life. When analyzed at the intersection of race and gender, I find that a
commitment to family first leaves Black middle-class women, committed to strategic mothering,
in a position to fix personal problems in ways that do not compete with motherhood and
marriage. In addition, I find that Black middle-class men commit to involved fatherhood and
emotional and psychosocial forms of care and support to understand their positions as men in
family life in an era of uncertainty informed by gendered racism in workplace culture. Like
Wingfield (2009) finds with male nurses, I argue that an incorporation of involved fatherhood
and care provides Black middle-class men a way to combat racial inequality and racism. By
analyzing couple interviews, I show how the commitment to family first is embedded in a Black
American cultural practice but reproduces gender inequality. That is, the choices Black couples
make like a shared commitment to family first provide Black men opportunities to combat racial
inequality and racism, it provides Black women the structure to replace self-reliance with
motherhood and marriage but leaves Black women in the position to reconcile time-related
personal problems. Accordingly, Black middle-class couples’ commitment to family first helps
them resist social inequality and self-actualize, but the extent to which couples self-actualize is
shaped by gender.
This study makes many important contributions to the fields of race, gender, class, work,
and family. By examining Black middle-class couples’ experiences with time use, work, and
family life, research in this area specifically, and Black families broadly can move away from

179
monolithic takeaways, that often reduces Black experiences in family life to a one-dimensional
space. That is, much of the literature on Black family life, focuses on poor and working poor
Black Americans. This means that sociology disproportionately has only one race, gender, and
class experience of Black American family life, which is often used to explain all aspects of
Black family life. My study complicates the narrative—showing how Black families within the
middle-class experience privileges and marginalization. For example, research shows that
marriage has become a class privilege (Cherlin 2010; Edin and Kefalas 2005). Middle-class
Americans are more likely to marry than poor and working-poor Americans. And while most
marriages are fragile now due to an era of uncertainty in employment which also impacts the
middle-class (Damaske 2021; Rao 2020), Black middle-class marriages are especially fragile.
Accordingly, this research shows how the commitment to family first is responding to structural
constraints, and shows how fragile Black marriages are, and the work couples do to try and hold
everything together. This is an important and much needed contribution to the field of family
sociology.
Second, my research shows how complex time use is when examined at the intersection
of race and gender. The ways Black women and men reconcile time use is not solely responding
to gender inequality within the social structure, but racial inequality as well. This outcome
underscores the importance of examining race and gender within social structures. An
examination of social structures impact on the meaning making experiences of work and family
should not solely focus on people of color. It must and should include White Americans. Simply,
White Americans are also a social group whose experiences are informed by a racialized
gendered social structure. Aliya Hamid Rao takes up this task in her important book Crunch
Time, as well as Sarah Damaske in her book The Tolls of Uncertainty.

180
Although my dissertation makes important contributions it is not without some
limitations. A limitation is that this study mostly relies on the experiences of parents with
children who are between 12 months and 12 years old. Only four couples parent children who
are between 13 years old and 17 years old. This limitation means that I cannot say that the
experiences documented here is the same for Black middle-class parents who are parenting
teenagers. The few couples included however, did appear to have some similarities with most of
the sample. For example, Lorraine and Marvin were parenting a son who was 17 years old at the
time of study participation. Even though Lorraine and Marvin were not having to manage their
son’s schedule in a similar way as parents like Gwen and Randall, whose children were under
age six, I still notice work and family challenges and gendered time constraints. It could be
because Marvin was experiencing underemployment and unemployment when I interviewed
him, which impacted how Lorraine could fix her personal problem to commit to motherhood and
marriage. Lorraine committed to motherhood, but the home was experiencing tension due to the
stress of unemployment, which made it hard for Lorraine to fix her marriage problem. Time was
there physically because their son was older and required less time, but mentally, Lorraine was in
a time deficit. That is, the stress of her husband’s unemployment combined with a depression
diagnosis left Lorraine feeling unmotivated to participate in the marriage aspect of strategic
mothering.
A second limitation is the regional variation. Although I did not ask questions in which
region needed to be accounted for, I still interviewed couples residing in different regions.
Accordingly, I cannot determine the impact region might have on the responses. The same with
urban and rural comparisons. The majority of respondents resided in major urban cities like Los
Angeles, New York, and the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virgin area. Only two couples

181
resided in small cities located in North Carolina and Utah. A third limitation is the role of
ethnicity within Black America. Only one study I am aware of on Black couples included
American born Black people and Black immigrants to examine how beliefs and practices with
marriage among Black Americans varied by ethnic group (McDonald and Cross-Barnet 2018). A
few of my couples were in interethnic marriages, with Black American and Black Caribbean
being the most common interethnic grouping, and one couple identified as Caribbean. However,
these numbers were small, and the significance of ethnicity was not mentioned in my interviews.
This is a limitation, and one that future research should examine closely, especially since Black
immigrants are a sizeable group comprising the Black middle-class (Clergé 2019).
Given these limitations, future research should examine how parents of older children
reconcile hers and his time in work and family life, pay close attention to region, and examine
how the reconciliation of hers and his time in work and family life is handled among the
different diaspora communities that constitute Black America, including Afro-Latin identified
groups. I think this will be a strong contribution and extension of this work because beliefs and
practices of womanhood and manhood are shaped by race, culture, and ethnicity, and Black and
Afro-Latin diasporic groups experiences with White racism underscore similarities and
differences, and that is worth examining. Lastly, future research should examine how
reconciliation practices impact health and wellbeing, particularly self-care practices. Although
rooted in Black feminist praxis, self-care has taken off in the past few decades as an important
dimension in health and wellness. Interviews presented show the mental and physical health
challenges couples are dealing with individually and collectively. Do couples take time to
practice self-care? How is self-care discussed among them? How is access to self-care gendered?

182
This study reveals multiple dynamic processes simultaneously occurring in heterosexual
Black middle-class families regarding work and family life. Family life can be challenging for
everyone, but the degrees of challenges are shaped by multiple intersections. To combat
gendered racisms impact on working families who are trying to keep it together in an era of
uncertainty, I encourage an incorporation of revolutionary love praxis. As bell hooks argues in
her timeless book All About Love, it is important to develop a love praxis invested in the
spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical growth of another person. It is hard to accomplish this
with time reconciliation practices stratified by gender. It is time for Black women and men to
incorporate womanhood’s and manhood’s that are invested in true egalitarianism. Let’s do the
work of love, and do it collectively, as individuals invested in everyone’s humanity.

183
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Appendix A: List of Women Respondents and Demographics
Table 1: LIST OF WOMEN RESPONDENTS AND DEMOGRAPHICS

Name Age Education Status Occupation Marital Status Geographic Location

Simone 40 BA Government Contractor Cohabiting (engaged) Mid-Atlantic
Naomi 35 PhD College Professor Married Southeast
Lisa 30 MS Engineer Cohabiting Mid-Atlantic
Gwen 36 JD Non-Profit Director Married Northeast
Barbara 35 MA Teacher Married Mid-Atlantic
Lorraine 55 BS IT Married Mid-Atlantic
Jada 41 PhD in progress Research Assistant Married Mid-Atlantic
Marion 42 PhD School Evaluator Married Mid-Atlantic
Candice 45 MBA Marketing Analyzer Married Mid-Atlantic
Robin 36 MA Insurance Agent Married Mid-Atlantic
Jamie 31 BS Nurse Married Mid-Atlantic
Karen 41 PhD Psychologist Married Mid-Atlantic
Monica 34 MA Policy Researcher Married Mid-Atlantic
Mia 47 BA Insurance Agent Married Mid-Atlantic
Diane 37 BA Non-Profit Married Mid-Atlantic
Veronica 45 MA Teacher Married Mid-Atlantic
April 40 MBA Health Systems Specialist Married Mid-Atlantic
Diamond 37 MA Program Manager Married West
Raven 30 PhD in progress Teaching Assistant Married West
Amber 32 BA Fundraiser Married West
Carmen 42 BA Nurse Married West
Gabrielle 48 BSN Nurse Married Mid-Atlantic
Kyra 40 MA School Administrator Married West
Evelyn 31 PhD in progress Teacher Cohabiting Mid-Atlantic
Corinne 37 PhD Research Evaluator Married Mid-Atlantic

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Appendix B: List of Men Respondents and Demographics
Table 2: LIST OF MEN RESPONDENTS AND DEMOGRAPHICS

Name Age Education Status Occupation Marital Status Geographic Location

Lionel 39 BA Government Contractor Cohabiting (engaged) Mid-Atlantic
Charles 40 MS Engineer Married Southeast
Joshua 32 AA Teacher’s Aid Cohabiting Mid-Atlantic
Randall 39 MBA Real Estate Agent Married Northeast
Austin 37 HS Diploma Security Manager Married Mid-Atlantic
Marvin 63 BS IT Married Mid-Atlantic
Samuel 35 BA Logistics Supervisor Married Mid-Atlantic
Nate 45 MA Policy Manager Married Mid-Atlantic
Harry 44 HS Diploma Security Manager Married Mid-Atlantic
(retired military)
Kyle 39 MA Teacher Married Mid-Atlantic
Thomas 32 BA Technician Married Mid-Atlantic
Robert 41 BA Public Affairs Married Mid-Atlantic
Devon 39 Some College Internet Security Married Mid-Atlantic
Nigel 48 BA Customs Specialist Married Mid-Atlantic
Jonah 38 BA Graphic Designer Married Mid-Atlantic
Langston 43 MA Teacher Married Mid-Atlantic
Raymond 42 BA IT Married Mid-Atlantic
George 37 HS Diploma Management Sales Married West
Duke 32 BA IT Married West
Ronald 32 Some College Mortgage Banker Married West
Noah 42 MA Production Married West
Marley 48 MA Finance Manager Married Mid-Atlantic
Donovan 42 BA Real Estate Married West
Jacob 29 MA Program Coordinator Cohabiting Mid-Atlantic
Sebastian 37 PhD Statistician Married Mid-Atlantic

196
Appendix C: List of Couples and Demographics
Table 3: LIST OF COUPLES AND DEMOGRAPHICS

Couple Education Marital Status Housing Status Geographic Location

Simone BA Cohabiting (engaged) Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Lionel BA

Naomi PhD Married Homeowners Southeast
Charles MS

Lisa MS Cohabiting Renting Mid-Atlantic
Joshua AA

Gwen JD Married Homeowners Northeast
Randall MBA

Barbara MA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Austin HS Diploma

Lorraine BA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Marvin BA

Jada PhD in progress Married Renting Mid-Atlantic
Samuel BA

Marion PhD Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Nate MA

Candice MBA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Harry HS Diploma

197

Robin MA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Kyle MA

Jamie BA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Thomas BA

Karen PhD Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Robert BA

Monica MA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Devon Some College

Mia BA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Nigel BA

Diane BA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Jonah BA

Veronica MA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Langston MA

April MBA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Raymond BA

Diamond MA Married Renting West
Malcolm HS Diploma

Raven PhD in progress Married Renting West
Duke BA

Amber BA Married Renting West

198
Ronald Some College

Carmen BA Married Homeowners West
Noah MA

Gabrielle BA Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Marley MA

Kyra MA Married Homeowners West
Donovan BA

Evelyn PhD in progress Cohabiting Renting Mid-Atlantic
Jacob MA

Corinne PhD Married Homeowners Mid-Atlantic
Sebastian PhD

199
Appendix D: Informed Consent Form

University of Southern California
Department of Sociology
851 Downey Way, HSH 314, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1059
INFORMED CONSENT FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH

Her Work, His Work: Time and Self-Care in Black Middle-Class Couples
IRB ID: UP-18-00479

You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by LaToya Council (principle
investigator) a PhD student, and Dr. Michael Messner (faculty advisor) at the University of
Southern California, because you are identified as being Black American and part of the
middle-class. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below, and ask
questions about anything you do not understand, before deciding whether to participate. Please
take as much time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss
participation with your family or friends. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to sign this
form. You will be given a copy of this form.

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to understand how Black middle-class couples balance work and
family obligations, while also finding time to personally care for themselves. This study seeks to
identify if Black middle-class couples find it difficult to manage their personal interests, and family
and work obligations. A goal of this study is to identify over all personal wellness such as self-
care of Black women and men with families and careers.

STUDY PROCEDURES
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be asked to participate in two interviews,
and if selected, participate in a home observation. Please read carefully what each aspect of the
study entails, and I will also answer any questions you may have while reading.

INTERVIEWS:
Interviews will be held in a location convenient to you as the participant. The interview will be
audio recorded for transcribing purposes. It is difficult to determine how long an interview will
last, but interviews are mostly between 60 to 90 minutes in length. This study will require you to
participate in two 60 to 90 minutes’ length interviews. The first interview will be with me, and
the second interview will be with your partner. The first interview will ask you to talk about
housework and childcare experiences, work experiences, individual experiences with self-care,
and overall feelings regarding wellness.

The second interview will be a joint interview consisting of you, your partner, and myself. I will
ask you and your partner questions about work and family experiences, balancing work and
family demands, time spent in housework, and experiences with self-care and overall feelings
regarding wellness. Both interviews will be audio recorded. To maintain confidentiality of

200
individual interviews, I will make sure not to disclose information provided when partner was
not present.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION:
The goal of this study is to understand time and self-care experiences in Black middle-class
couples. To do this, it is important for me to observe couples in their everyday life. A select
group of participants will be asked to participate in this portion of the study. If selected, you will
be asked to allow me to observe you and your family for two days. I will observe Thursday and
Saturday. Thursday observation will consist of me observing you and your partner involved in
household duties such as cooking, cleaning, and weekly childcare activities you and your partner
participate in. Saturday observation would be in the home and activities you all participate in as a
family such as sports practices and games, church services, and individual (personal) activities
you may be involved with. The purpose of these observations is to see what a weekday and
weekend day is like for a couple managing work and family demands. Observations on Thursday
will occur in the afternoons at a mutually agreed-on time. Saturday observations will begin mid-
morning at a mutually agreed-on time. Total time spent in each day of observation is 4 hours. I
will use a notepad for the observation.

Participation in interviews and observations is voluntary. You can stop participating at any point
during this study without any penalty toward you. As stated, audio recording will be used for
interviews, and notepad and pen will be used for observations. Audio recordings and written
observations will be kept in a safe and secure location that I will only have access to. Because
this study depends on the use of audio recordings and written observations, I cannot allow you to
participate if you do not consent to the use of audio recording when applicable, and written
observations when applicable.

A potential concern for you as a parent is how this study may impact your children. Although
this project does not focus on children, nor has any intention on asking your children questions
about their interaction with you, interviews do ask you to discuss the ways in which you spend
time with your family. Observations are focused on the activities you as the parent are
participating in during those 4 hours on Thursday and 4 hours on Saturday. Your children may
be present but interaction with them is minimal because I am focusing on you the parent. I will
only observe public (common) areas in your home such as offices, living rooms, kitchens, and
laundry areas. My observations do not require me to enter more private spaces such as bedrooms
and bathrooms. If I observe or hear any interaction within common areas that appear to endanger
your child(ren), I am required to report those interactions to Social Services. As a researcher
affiliated with the University of Southern California, I am a mandated reporter.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There are foreseeable risks, discomforts, and inconveniences associated with this study. Because
I am asking you to discuss housework and childcare experiences, work experiences, individual
experiences with self-care, and overall feelings regarding wellness; there may be moments where
you may feel discomfort in discussing these topics. If this occurs, you may ask for a break to
regroup, or you may ask to discontinue the interview. Both requests will be accommodated.

201
If selected to participate in the home observation, you may feel inconvenienced or discomfort with
me observing family experiences. If this occurs, please let me know, and I will accommodate
moments where you would like me to leave, or discontinue observations all together.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
There are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study. However, there are
anticipated benefits as this will be one of few studies that focuses on the Black middle-class, and
their management of work and family demands.
Anticipated benefits for society include gaining more information about Black middle-class
families we did not know, learning more about time demands on Black couples with children, and
learning more about health and wellness in the Black middle-class. These anticipated benefits are
contingent upon the study results.

COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
There is no direct compensation for you if you choose to participate in this study.

CONFIDENTIALITY
I will keep your records for this study confidential as far as permitted by law. However, if I am
required to do so by law, I will disclose confidential information about you. The University of
Southern California’s Human Subjects Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP
reviews and monitors research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.
The data will be stored in a lockbox that is password protected. Interview transcriptions will be
stored on a password protected laptop used for research purposes. I, the research will only have
access to the audio recordings and written observations. Personal identities will be maintained
using pseudonyms.

Data will be coded using NVivo 11 Pro for Windows. NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software
package designed for researchers who use interviews to analyze data. I will only have access to
the NVivo software. The software will be stored on a password protected laptop used for research
purposes.
Audio recordings and written observation notes will be erased three years after the completion of
the study. The Institutional Review Board at the University of Southern California requires a
minimum of three years of maintaining data after the completion of a study.

PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation is voluntary. Your refusal to participate will involve no penalty. You may
withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not
waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study.
If at any point during the interview or observation I observe unintended risks I perceive as causing
harm to you as a participant, I will terminate your participation without regard to your consent.

INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dr. Michael
Messner, Principal Investigator, and LaToya Council, Co-Principal Investigator.

202
Dr. Michael Messner, Principal Investigator and Faculty Sponsor
P: 213-740-8848
E: messner@usc.edu
A: 851 Downey Way, HSH 314, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1059

LaToya Council, Co-Principal Investigator
P: 719-776-0206
E: ldcounci@usc.edu
A: 851 Downey Way, HSH 314, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1059

RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu

SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT

I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.

Name of Participant

Signature of Participant Date

SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR

I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe
that he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to
participate.

LaToya D. Council

Name of Person Obtaining Consent

Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date

203
Appendix E: Interview Guide

Individual Interview Questions

Questions about work experiences
1. Can you describe the type of work you do?
2. Are there ever any tensions associated with your work experiences?
3. Could you describe how racial discrimination occurs at work, or do you experience forms
of racism at work? [Experiences of sexism at work]
a. If so, how do you cope with these experiences?
b. Do these experiences affect your family?

Questions about work-family balance
1. Could you describe your thoughts on balancing work obligations with family obligations?
2. Are there every any moments that you feel you are spending more time at work than with
your family?

Questions about housework and childcare
1. Can you describe the type of household activities you do around the house? About how
long do you spend time doing these tasks?
2. How are the household tasks you do decided between you and your partner?
3. Are there household tasks you complete, that you desire your partner to complete. If so,
which tasks and why?
4. How do you and your partner view using outside help such as cleaning, laundry, and food
services to help with household tasks?
a. Do you and your partner utilize these services?
5. Can you walk me through a day in your life as a parent?
6. How would you describe you and your partner’s division of your children’s school
schedule? Who is responsible for deciding this schedule?
7. Are there every any moments that you feel you are not spending enough time with your
children? How do you handle those moments?

Questions about individual time spent with self, bring in self-care here
1. How important is individual time with yourself to you?
2. Are there ever any strains and tensions associated with your ability to have time
by yourself, away from your work obligations and family obligations?
3. When you hear individual leisure time, what images come to mind?
4. When you hear self-care, what images come to mind?
5. How do you participate in leisure time and in self-care?
6. Are there any financial tensions associated with your ability to participate in
leisure time and self-care? Such as school loans, family finances. Paying down
personal debt?
Questions about impact on health and stress. Focus on stress here.
1. How would you describe your overall health?
2. Are there ever any strains with your ability to balance work and family
obligations, and health aspirations?

204
3. Can you describe how stress occurs in your everyday life? Are some situations
more stressful than others? If so, which ones? Why?

Couple Interview Questions

Questions about work and family experiences
1. Can you all describe how work obligations influence your relationship with each other?
2. Can you all describe how family obligations influence your relationship with each other?
3. What are ways that you two manage these obligations as a couple? How does this make
you all feel about your relationship with each other?

Questions about balancing work and family demands
1. How would you all describe your ability to balance work demands?
2. How would you all describe your ability to balance family demands?
3. How does your children’s schedule impact your ability to balance work and family
demands?

Questions about support networks and managing work and family demands
1. Are there times you all depend on family members outside of your home to help with
work and family demands?
2. How does this support impact how you all feel about each other?
3. How does this support impact how you all feel about your positions within your family?
4. Do commitments to family members outside of your home impact your work and family
demands?

Questions about time spent together
1. Can you all describe in what ways, and how often you all spend time with each other?
2. How do you all schedule time to spend with each other?
3. Are there desires to spend more time with each other?

Questions about experiences with self-care
1. Can you all describe how self-care works in your relationship with each other?
2. How do you all view each other’s ability to practice self-care?
3. Do you all feel as if one of you participate in self-care more than the other? If so, why?

Questions about health and overall wellness
1. How would you all describe your perception of your partner’s health in the relationship?
Clarify.
2. Is stress something you all discuss together?
3. How important is wellness in your relationship?
4. Can you all describe how stress occurs in your relationship? Are some situations more
stressful than others? If so, which ones? Why?

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The research conducted on time-use, work, and family life shows that within a 24/7 economy, families are having to navigate constraints on the division of time between work and family. As individuals encounter nonstandard work schedules, they experience constraints on their time, which tends to reproduce gender inequality and marital conflict at home. The research on time-use, work, and family has tended to focus on gender, showing that women experience higher rates of family/work conflict than men. However, we know far less about the ways in which the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, and class shape individuals’ and couples’ navigation of the 24/7 economy, particularly how they reconcile time-use, work, and family life. In this dissertation, I address this gap in the literature by asking, how do heterosexual Black middle-class couples reconcile work and family life? How does gendered racism workplaces contribute to the dynamic between heterosexual Black middle-class couples and their reconciliation practices of work and family life. Interviews with 25 Black middle-class couples with children reveal that both the women and the men expressed what I define as the family first ethos, but their commitment is patterned by gender. Specifically, Black middle-class women practice strategic mothering, which results in them trying to find ways to manage career, motherhood, and marriage in ways that prioritizes family first. To make sense of the multiple demands on their time, Black middle-class women redefine work-family balance as a personal problem, that they alone must try to figure out. Black middle-class men also commit to the family first ethos, but the type of work in which they are employed frames how they express this commitment. I find that gendered racism from workplace culture shapes the ways in which Black women and men contend with work and family demands in their marriages, and by extension their families. The choices couples make “for the good of the family” tend to provide Black men an opportunity to enact familial masculinities steeped in headship and respect, provide Black women access to supportive kin networks, while also leaving Black women with “personal problems” grounded in time constraints. These findings underscore the impact structural conditions can have on individuals, and the strategies incorporated to commit to family life.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Council, LaToya Deneece (author)

Core Title Her work, his work, their work: time and self-care in Black middle-class couples

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Sociology

Degree Conferral Date 2022-08

Publication Date 07/18/2022

Defense Date 05/02/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Black men,Black middle class,Black women,Family,gender,Marriage,OAI-PMH Harvest,Race,time-use,Work

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Messner, Michael (committee chair), Alfaro, Ange-Marie Hancock (committee member), Hook, Jennifer (committee member), Vallejo, Jody Agius (committee member)

Creator Email councillatoya997@gmail.com,ldcounci@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111372142

Unique identifier UC111372142

Legacy Identifier etd-CouncilLaT-10841

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Council, LaToya Deneece

Type texts

Source 20220718-usctheses-batch-954 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu