Parenting While Black: A Reciprocal, Anti-Racist University-Community Collaboration

Events of recent years have brought urgent national attention to the disproportionate educational and mental health burdens endured by Black youth, families, and communities. These burdens are compounded by disparate access to contextually tailored, high-quality education and mental health services that are specifically informed by the needs and interests of the communities they are often designed to serve. In response, the current study aimed to capture both the processes and outcomes associated with Parenting While Black (PWB), a strengths-based reciprocal community partnership serving Black parents and caretakers that is co-designed and facilitated by university researchers, community collaborators, and parents themselves. Specifically, PWB leverages best-practice research within the racial socialization framework as a background for the initiative in support of Black families, and partners with community agencies to tailor efforts to their communities’ needs, and to collaborate with parents in their communities to co-facilitate the program.

Methods: Mixed methods were used to assess both the outcomes and processes associated with program participation and co-facilitation. More than 40 program participants took pre- and post-surveys that captured their usage of racial socialization strategies, their degrees and types of parental educational involvement, and their beliefs around mental health treatment and support. Another 18 participants engaged in post-program interviews to describe their experiences with the program specifically. Four community co-facilitators also completed post-program surveys to assess the effectiveness of their training and their experience with program facilitation. Descriptive statistics multivariate regression and means difference testing were used to analyze survey results, while thematic analysis was used to analyze qualitative interview data.

Results: Preliminary pre- post-survey analyses suggest statistically significant increases in the use of multiple target parenting outcomes in the areas of both positive racial socialization (e.g. pride socialization, spiritual coping, racial resilience), and educational involvement (teacher engagement, academic socialization). Survey results also suggest the experience with the program was overwhelmingly helpful, with the vast majority of participants reporting increased capacity in multiple areas, including bolstering their children’s mental health (89%), helping their children cope with racism (92%), and helping them be more successful in school (100%). Community-co-facilitators also report similarly positive experiences with the program, and they were excited to utilize their training to expand the reach and sustainability of the program in their communities. Participant interviews triangulated the overwhelmingly positive program experiences, with respondents reporting the experience to be insightful, meaningful, and even “life-changing.” PWB enhanced parental capacity and provided an affirming support network for their efforts to racially socialize their children.

Implications: Findings here are limited by the small sample and regional specificity of the pilot participants. Still, results demonstrate both corroborate the potential impact of strengths-based, community collaborative approaches to anti-racist supports for Black parents, and also provide insights into the processes within the programming that was most helpful to parents and community collaborators. Further, the community collaboration here also serves as a model for reciprocal university-community partnerships aiming to co-construct knowledge alongside stakeholders, while simultaneously bringing immediate benefit to partnering communities.