Mothering in the Margins: Othermothering, Mental Health, and Institutional Extraction Among Black Women Faculty

This article examines how Black women faculty navigated othermothering, institutional extraction, and mental health in US higher education during the intersecting crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and intensified racial reckoning. This qualitative study included in-depth interviews with 22 Black women with work experience in various academic jobs and settings. The research team applied the concepts of intersectionality and womanism, along with the superwoman schema, to examine how their care-intensive work, emotional work, and diversity-oriented efforts have been both expected and undervalued. Our findings reveal three interrelated themes: (1) “I’m not your mother, but I mother anyway,” which captures dual care-intensive work across home and academy and the womanist ethics of othermothering that sustain students and institutions; (2) institutional extraction, characterized by high output and low institutional support, in which Black women’s emotional, mentoring, and diversity, equity, and inclusion labor function as unrecognized institutional resources; and (3) mental health strain, marked by chronic stress, boundary erosion, uneven access to care, and coping practices that operate as survival and resistance. Participants’ narratives demonstrate that distress stems not from individual fragility but from structurally unequal academic labor systems that rely on racialized and gendered expectations of endurance. The findings call for reframing care as institutional infrastructure instead of invisible labor and for structural reforms in workload, evaluation, and mental health support in order to advance equity and sustainability in higher education in the United States.