Abstract
To understand the culture of rural African-American women who use cocaine, ethnographic research was conducted in a rural county by means of in-depth interviews and participant observation with 30 respondents. Twenty-four respondents were mothers, 21 of whom had minor children. Respondents were recruited by ethnographic mapping, participant observation, use of key informants, and snowball sampling. Fourteen major themes emerged from the data; however, parenting and related subthemes are the focus of this paper. Within the parenting theme, 14 subthemes about good parenting and 6 subthemes about bad parenting emerged as a cohesive pattern of the mothers' perceptions. Overall, respondents bought into the mainstream ideology of motherhood and experienced some stress resulting from their attempts to fulfill their multifaceted mothering role. Most perceived that they were good mothers despite their use of cocaine. Research, service, and social policy recommendations are made.