African American Children is a comprehensive exploration of historical and contemporary patterns of parenting in black families. Historically, it focuses on how slavery, race, the racial caste system and Black culture influenced the ways in which Blacks parented their children. This series of social forces seriously circumscribed the ability of African Americans to conform to the ideologies about the nature of children and the roles of parents that began to evolve in the early twentieth century.

In the context of growing diversity, ShirleyA Hill examines the work parents do in raising their children. Based on interviews and survey data, African American Children includes Blacks of various social classes as well as a comparative sample of whites. It covers major areas of child socialization - for example: teaching values, discipline strategies, gender socialization, racial socialization, extended families - showing how both race and class make a difference, and emphasizing patterns that challenge exisiting research that views Black families as a monolithic group.

Childhood in Transition
Caste, Class and Culture
Parenting Work
Racial Socialization
Gender Socialization
Beyond the Nuclear Family
Continuity and Change

Shirley A. Hill is a professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, where she studies family diver­sity, social inequality, and health care. She is the author of Race, Work, and Family: New Century Values Among African American Men and Women (co-edited with Marlese Durr; Rowman & Littlefield, ©2006); Black Intimacies: A Gender Perspective on Families and Relationships (AltaMira, (c)2005); African American Children: Their Socialization and Development in Families (SAGE, (c)1999); and other books and articles. Her current research focuses on racial disparities in educational attainment.