Abstract

Recent research avows African American daughters learn to love and exercise resilience through direct and vicarious interactions with their mother. While little research thoroughly elucidates the African American mother-daughter relationship, even fewer studies explore the African American single mother's influence on her daughter's perception of men and romantic heterosexual relationships. For the purpose of this qualitative pilot study, Social Learning Theory and Black Feminist Thought were selected as theoretical paradigms, and Narrative Analysis as an applicable method for analyzing the data. Findings revealed, consistent with previous research, African American daughters revere their mother. Moreover, these daughters unconsciously replicate their mother’s romantic relationships, comply with their mother’s lessons on men and relationships, imitate their mother’s demeanor, and select mates whose affect and behavior parallel their father’s. Preliminary conclusions indicate the mother-daughter relationship is essentially the barometer by which the daughters gauged their own romantic relationships.