Pregnant with Possibility: The Paradoxes of “Help” as Anti-Oppression and Discipline with a Young Single Mother

Abstract

This single case study of an outreach worker's service to a young, single, African-Canadian mother illustrates the paradoxes of help as both accommodation and resistance. Through a feminist, post-structural, qualitative analysis, the author explores issues of gender, race, and class to examine discourses and technologies utilized by the worker. Alternate perceptions of normalcy, nurturance as power, and activism through solidarity, as examples, were used by the worker to edge towards more liberatory practice, even while she accepted her positioning as judge of the client's mothering ability and of the allocation of resources. This article demonstrates that, even for workers committed to anti-oppressive practice, help is an unavoidable mix of disciplinary and emancipatory activities.