Hope springs maternal: homeless mothers talk about making sense of adversity

Abstract

This revised and updated edition of Hope Springs Maternal incorporates the latest data on homeless mothers, changes to laws and policies regarding the homeless nationally and in New York, and an expanded discussion of their implications for social workers, planners, politicians, and shelter administrators concerned with helping homeless mothers establish independent lives for themselves and their children. Through extensive interviews with twenty-four young women of color living in temporary shelters in New York City who were either pregnant or had very young children, Dr. Jill Gerson analyzes the shelter users' backgrounds, current living experiences, and views of home, family, and parenting. Employing a life-history approach, she focuses on the ways the mothers' lives were shaped by both socioeconomic context and interpersonal experiences. Gerson finds that most of the mothers had experienced various disruptive experiences in childhood and adolescence and that their shelter use was closely related to the adverse economic realities faced by many poor women of color. These shelter experiences were actually part of the mothers' search for a safe haven that could help them become self-sufficient adults and competent parents. The narratives reflect each individual's capacity to use limited social resources for personal development. Such transitional shelter use often coincided with efforts to achieve economic stability, obtain appropriate housing, and develop caring personal relationships.