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At first, she thought her research would be a comparative study, looking at how Black women are experiencing ACES at higher rates and having poorer birth outcomes compared to their white counterparts.
But her thesis advisor, Courtney Boen, asked why Boadi wanted to include the experiences of white mothers when she was trying to show what Black mothers were experiencing. “She blew my mind because in a lot of social science research, white women and white people in general are the standard,” Boadi says. “I thought it would be really powerful to center and uplift those voices, those stories, those experiences of Black women without the comparison because I do think the comparison creates noise and detracts from the focus.”
For her thesis, “The Shadow of Trauma: Examining the Relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences, Birth Outcomes, and Resilience in Black Women,” she received funding from the Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration to complete some of her research.
Boadi interviewed 10 mothers, many of whom came from the day care her mother owns in New York, but also mothers she met in her work at the public library and elsewhere in West Philadelphia. She found that Black women have a higher prevalence of ACEs, but many of them are not captured in standard surveys, and more research in this field must be conducted. Boadi says that increased data collection on women’s childhood experiences is essential to understanding the true impact that ACEs can have on women during pregnancy and childbirth.
“I think I had the success I had in getting women to talk to me because I, too, am a Black woman. I think it gave them a sense of comfort knowing that they were talking to someone like them who might have experienced the same things. It made me realize how important it is to have people like me in these research and health care spaces.”
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