TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 1

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 1 69 Exposure to community and state violence exists as a particular type of race-based stress that strains the psyche of African Americans. Galovski et al. (2016) found that among community members in Ferguson, Missouri, following the killing of Michael Brown by a law enforcement officer, post-traumatic stress and depression were higher among African Americans than their White counterparts. Additionally, direct exposure to violence was not associated with distress, suggesting that media exposure or secondary exposure provided the sufficient context for mental health concerns to exist. Similarly, Bor, Venkataramani, Williams, and Tsai (2018) reported that African American residents in a state where police killings of unarmed African Americans occurred experience worse mental health following each incident. These effects were not evident for White residents in the same state, nor was there a similar effect for unarmed White residents or armed African American residents killed by police. According to Umberson (2017), exposure to violent death within the community is particularly difficult when the loss is that of a loved one. Such a loss within the African American community “launches a lifelong cascade of psychological, social, behavioral, and biological consequences that undermine other relationships, as well as health, over the life course” (Umberson, 2017, p. 407). The continued losses of young African American men to community and state violence present a collective threat and result in a sense of vulnerability within the African American community, as well as potentially contribute to an increase in health disparities among this population because of race-related stress. African American mothers experience parenting stress as well as race-based stress, yet the extent to which race-based parenting stress exists for them is unknown. Research on African American mothers has explored their levels of stress and the relationship that parental stress has with their parenting behaviors and children’s outcomes (e.g., Cain & Combs-Orme, 2005; Chang et al., 2004; Cross et al., 2018; Kennedy, Bybee, & Greeson, 2014). However, often the research focus is on “at-risk” African American mothers such as adolescent mothers, single mothers, mothers experiencing intimate partner violence, and mothers in low-income households. Additionally, despite the abundance of research with samples of African American mothers, the exploration of their lived experiences as mothers who may be exposed to race-based stress vis-à-vis state and community violence is absent from the literature. Violence resonates through relationships and can be conceptualized as a reproductive health and social justice issue for African American women (Premkumar, Nseyo, & Jackson, 2017). Hence, this study sought to illuminate the experiences of African American women raising sons, allowing them the platform to speak their lived experiences as mothers in the current social and racial context. Method The following research question was examined: What are the lived experiences of African American mothers who have been exposed to community and state violence while raising their sons? The research team chose a qualitative approach, specifically phenomenological methodology. As a constructivist approach, phenomenology acknowledges the existence of multiple realities and allows for an understanding of the lived experiences of participants through their own voices. This methodology is congruent with the profession of counseling (Hays & Wood, 2011), and the researchers felt using phenomenology was particularly important given the focus on African American women who experience multiple layers of marginalization at the intersection of race and gender (Crenshaw, 1989). Participants Prior to participant recruitment, the Institutional Review Board at the authors’ university approved the study. The participants were recruited via purposive, criterion sampling to gain a sample of African American mothers with at least one son age 25 or younger at the time of the study.