The previous chapter analysed the advice books with a focus on gender. Doing so makes it possible to analyse the ways the books reiterate and support cultural ideas about masculinity and femininity, about what it means to be a man or a woman, and what is expected of the growing boy. However, a focus solely on gender gives the impression that the books are homogenous, that they all represent mothers, fathers and sons in the same way. But, as Sharon Hays has pointed out, a mother’s approach to mothering is influenced by many different factors, such as ‘her class position, race, ethnic heritage, religious background, political beliefs, sexual preferences, physical abilities or disabilities, citizenship status, participation in various subcultures, place of residence, workplace environment, formal education’ (1996, 76). This is also evident in the advice books analysed here. The authors, in addition to their gender, come from different racial, class and educational backgrounds, and their intended readership is addressed, implicitly or explicitly, along race and class lines.

This chapter will thus take an intersectional approach, expanding the analysis to include race and class. This will allow for more complex readings, in order to highlight and explore the diversity amongst the books. At a first glance, they all seem to be the same: advice books aimed at single mothers raising sons. But when analysed from the point of view of race and class, their other concerns, strategies, assumptions, expectations and prejudices come to the surface. The single mother is constructed in different ways, depending on whether she is Black or White, working or middle class, and the aims and goals for the growing boys turn out to be different – individual happiness, fulfilling an expected destiny of success or becoming a valued, productive member of a community. When focusing on the added perspectives, the differences between the ways the books shape the reading subject are highlighted.

Intersectionality

In their book Intersectionality, Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge (2020) demonstrate how intersectionality as an analytic tool allows the scholar to study ‘a range of social problems’ moving beyond seeing people ‘as a homogenous, undifferentiated mass of individuals’ (2020, 4, 19).