“Sometimes I feel like I’m counting crackers”: The household foodwork of low-income mothers, and how community food initiatives can support them

Mary Anne Martin

doi:10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i1.188

Abstract

For women parenting on low incomes, there is a significant disparity between household foodwork standards and the resources with which to meet them. This study centres on the everyday foodwork experiences of low-income mothers and their engagement with community supports such as community food initiatives (CFIs). It helps address a research gap concerning the relationship between CFI participation and maternal household foodwork. The study employs multiple methods including semi-structured interviews, graphic elicitation and tours of local community food programs. By identifying a range of factors, strategies, and challenges in mothers’ foodwork, the study elucidates some of the contradictory pressures that low-income mothers experience around foodwork. Some of these pressures are associated with meeting individualizing standards around being "good" mothers, "good" consumers and "good" food program participants. Efforts to meet these standards were seen through mothers’ attempts to feed their children healthy and preferred food, exercise agency through market choices, and moderate their demands of community food programs. While more research is required regarding both mothers’ actual participation in CFIs and CFI strategies to support them, the findings suggest that CFIs should incorporate low-income mothers’ subjectivities into food programming.

Highlights

In recent decades, a combination of discursive and material influences have positioned household foodwork standards in Canada further out of reach for some people, most notably low-income mothers of dependent children
Reasons given by multiple women for not participating in a community food initiatives (CFIs) included a lack of knowledge about the programs and difficulty getting to them
A few expressed discomfort with some aspect of a program while others had tried to access a CFI and were waiting to hear back. It was both the women’s descriptions of their daily foodwork and their thoughts on programs that provided insights about their foodwork needs. The descriptions of both their foodwork and community supports around food revealed much love, cognitive labour, resourcefulness, and struggle

Summary

Introduction

A combination of discursive and material influences have positioned household foodwork standards in Canada further out of reach for some people, most notably low-income mothers of dependent children. Foodwork encompasses all the labour performed by household members to ensure their families are adequately fed. It is made possible through various resources, especially material ones such as money and food access. The inaccessibility of foodwork standards suggests a need for greater supports for mothers, especially those living on low-incomes. Some of the most recognizable sources of social support reveal significant limitations. State-sponsored social assistance programs may be stigmatizing and provide insufficient resources (Power, 2005; Raphael, 2011), similar to the critiques about charitable food programs such as food banks (McIntyre, Tougas, Rondeau, & Mah, 2016). The downloading of public social supports onto the shoulders of families (Armstrong, 2010; Luxton, 2010; Cossman & Fudge, 2002) might strain the ability of family to provide support

Methods

Results

Conclusion