Mother Blame Research Articles

Mother blame and emotion work: a sociological study on Swedish mothers of children with long-term school absenteeism

Building on interviews with 31 Swedish mothers and drawing on the concepts of emotion work, feeling rules, and cultural, economic and social capital, the article examines the emotion management mothers of neurodivergent and school-absent children carry out as they navigate school and care systems to improve their children’s situation. Three main findings are presented: (1) the mothers were left with a burdensome individual responsibility to obtain support for their children in the education and care sectors, and while doing so, they were expected to follow feeling rules emphasising reason, calmness and a constructive attitude; (2) the emotion work the mothers carried out in relation to the feeling rules was underscored by mother blame; and (3) the mothers’ emotion work was marked by their cultural, economic and social capital, though not always in a straightforward way. The article contributes to research on mother blame by illuminating the underexplored issue of emotion work among mothers experiencing mother blame. The results also add to previous research on mother blame and social class by demonstrating when and how mothers’ cultural, economic and social capital helps them fend off mother blame and when such resources play a more ambiguous role.

‘If you’re serious about losing weight, why are you drinking all those Cokes?’: a critical discourse analysis of interviews on sugar-sweetened beverages amongst residents of a middle to upper class neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba

ABSTRACT Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) have been identified as a health policy target, due to their associations with weight gain. However, fatness or ‘obesity’ is associated with stigma, and for ‘obese’ children, mother blame; thus, SSB policies must be evaluated for their potential to reinforce existing forms of stigma. The purpose of this study was to explore discourses mobilized in discussion of SSB consumption and purchasing amongst residents of a middle-upper class neighborhood in Winnipeg, Canada. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of qualitative interviews from 2019, with English-speaking, adult participants using purposive sampling. Eighteen participants were recruited; fifteen were women, all self-identified as white and spoke about (grand)parenting. Considerations of weight stigmatization informed analysis. Participants utilized a personal responsibility discourse to determine the acceptability of SSB purchasing and consumption. Negative emotions, or judgements, shaped discussion of regular SSB consumption, consumption by higher-weight individuals, or consumption in specific contexts, which were unacceptable. Parental responsibility was a discourse applied to children’s SSB intake and elicited judgmental language, particularly among mothers. The discourses utilized by dominant social groups are stigmatizing, particularly when directed towards higher-weight individuals, leading to maternal blame. Therefore, the impact of SSB policies on stigma, including weight-based stigma, should be carefully considered prior to implementation.

Unintended Consequences of "Breast Is Best" Messaging on Mothers: An Autoethnography.

Purpose: To describe the breastfeeding experiences of a dietitian and mother so as to expose dominant discourses reinforcing expert-driven imperatives to breastfeed.Methods: Professional experiences and personal challenges related to breastfeeding promotion are described, analyzed, and interpreted using autoethnography. The social ecological model (SEM) is used as a sensitizing concept to guide the organization, presentation, and analysis of experiences.Results: Data were organized into two discussion themes: breastfeeding promotion practices and "failure" to breastfeed. Dominant discourses reinforcing expert-driven imperatives to breastfeed are revealed, including health as a duty, intensive motherhood, and mother blame. Discourses promoting or reinforcing breastfeeding simultaneously judge and denormalize formula-feeding.Conclusions: Contemporary breastfeeding promotion messages and strategies are quiet coercions used to influence infant-feeding decisions and do not support the principles of evidence-based practice, person-centred care, and informed choice.

Mother blaming and anorexia: How ideological state apparatuses have informed my perception of my mother's role in the formation of my eating disorder

Autoethnographic research has described the tendency to ascribe blame to mothers for their daughters’ disordered eating patterns, but the mechanisms by which these attitudes develop have been insufficiently investigated. The literature on mother-blaming and mothers’ roles in the development of women's eating disorders has provided macro-level theoretical explanations for this attribution of blame but lacks depictions of women who subscribe to these macro narratives and yet subsequently attribute blame to their own mothers on the micro level. In this paper, I address these two gaps by conducting a feminist autoethnographic inquiry into my own history of blaming my mother for my anorexia and other disordered eating patterns. I use classical structuralist and post-structuralist theoretical concepts, as well as Althusser's proposed neo-Marxist idea of ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). Results indicate that my mother-blaming behavior was mainly influenced by apparatuses of medicine, church, education, family, and culture. Legal, political, civic, and media apparatuses were less involved in the construction of my perception in this area. All in all, my findings provide richer insight into mother-blaming internalization on the micro level and enlarge the “palette” of feminist approaches to eating disorder analysis.

Developing a Theoretical Framework to Discuss Mothers Experiencing Domestic Violence and Being Subject to Interventions: A Cross-National Perspective

The discourse about domestic violence has developed in patriarchal societies, and so we position our understanding of ‘mother’ within a patriarchal framework. We explore the ways in which ‘mothering’ and ‘mother blame’ have been constructed within that framework and how this becomes relevant in the context of domestic violence and child welfare social work. We review literature from Australia, Canada, England and Wales, and the United States of America that has focused on child welfare responses to mothers experiencing domestic violence and abuse. On the basis of that review, we argue that mothers are responsibilised for violence and abuse they do not perpetrate. We show that the way legislation operates in some jurisdictions facilitates hegemonic, patriarchal constructions. We call for a review of current child welfare social work policy and practice in which domestic violence is present.

‘Treatable and Changeable’: The Effect of Treatment and Malleability Information on Stigma Towards Children with Behavioural Problems and Their Parents

AbstractImproving knowledge about childhood mental health issues, reducing stigma, and encouraging appropriate treatment-seeking are important goals for public health. This study examined the effect of treatment and malleability information on stigmatisation towards children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and their parents, and on endorsements of causal beliefs. In an experimental study, university students (N = 234) were randomly allocated to receive/not receive treatment information (information on the existence and effectiveness of treatment for ODD) and to receive/not receive malleability information (information emphasising brain malleability and the potential to change). Participants then rated four measures of stigma towards a fictitious child with ODD and mother (blame, incompetence, dangerousness, and social distance), and rated their endorsements of causal explanations for ODD. Neither treatment nor malleability information had significant effects on stigmatisation towards either the child or mother. However, this information did impact upon causal beliefs about ODD as stemming from biological or mixed biological/environmental causes. Implications for the future development of public health initiatives and stigma research on childhood mental health are discussed.

The Removal of Children in Domestic Violence: Widening Service Provider Perspectives

A range of service providers support mothers and children who are experiencing domestic violence (DV). However, research tends to focus on the role of service providers in child protection services and DV services. This potentially excludes valuable insights from a wider range of nongovernment service providers on the systemic issues that mothers experiencing DV and child separation may experience. This research explored the perspectives of 16 different nongovernment service providers about working with women who have had their children removed while experiencing DV. The study used an intersectional feminist approach that highlighted intersecting gendered and racialized power relations in service responses functioning to reinforce multiple dimensions of disadvantage. The study found that mother blame was a pervasive issue both within and outside of child protection services. Service providers described the challenges of navigating a system that revictimizes women, with particular impacts for Aboriginal and culturally diverse mothers. The findings reinforced the importance of preventing mother blame, holding perpetrators of DV more accountable, and improving collaboration across services and for more flexible responses to women living with violence.

Between blame and care: women's ‘needs talk’ about obesity interventions in prenatal care

Pregnant women's weight is no longer a private life situation, but a public health issue. In western prenatal care policies, pregnant women with a high body mass index (BMI) are targeted as a high-risk group in need of extra prenatal care to prevent pregnancy complications and childhood obesity. Recent studies argue that such targeting leads to a number of unintended negative consequences for women such as stigmatisation and mother blame. While targeting based on BMI increases the surveillance of women's weight and behaviour in pregnancy, it might also provide extra care and services for women. This article draws on Nancy Fraser's concept of 'needs talk' to investigate how women interpret Danish prenatal care services provided to meet the 'obese' pregnant women's needs. The analysis shows that women engage ambivalently with claims about their needs and who they 'are' as these are formulated by health authorities. Some claims and assumptions about the 'obese' pregnant woman are accepted. Others are rejected or redefined. The article concludes by discussing maternal ambivalence about the obesity discourse in relation to the 'obese' pregnant woman as a category that positions women between being blamed and receiving extra prenatal care.

Transnational Mother Blame: Protecting and Caring in a Globalized Context

ABSTRACTMexican women in both the United States and Mexico face uneven landscapes of benefits and discourses as they negotiate family members’ health. Building on two decades of ethnographic research, I explore how Mexican mothers navigate social and medical services, food provision, food preparation and health, and describe some of the ways that governments in each country abdicate responsibility for shaping structural constraints on citizens’ health. Transnational “mother blame” is a pattern that builds on tropes about the simultaneous responsibility and incapacity of women to ensure their family’s health, while offering new articulations of responsibility in neoliberal, globalized, transnational contexts in which flexible care arrangements are both necessary and denigrated.

Gouvernementalité et alimentation

La biopolitique qui delegue la responsabilite de la sante de l’enfant a la famille, et en particulier a la mere, surveille le corps « innocent et risque » de l’enfant a travers une serie de dispositifs disciplinaires. Les meres qui ne suivent pas les habitudes alimentaires considerees comme socialement appropriees, qui echappent au controle du savoir expert et des injonctions sanitaires sont des meres qui deviennent l’objet de culpabilite sociale, ou de mother blame. Dans cet article, nous definissons les meres veg* (vegetaliennes ou vegetariennes) comme dissidentes, car elles resistent au pouvoir du savoir expert, surtout medical, par le biais de pratiques alimentaires individualisees. Les cercles et les communautes de pratiques veg* deviennent des lieux ou elles peuvent echanger des informations et renforcer les processus d’identification et d’individualisation. L’appel a la nature et a l’instinct maternel en tant que guide dans les choix alimentaires est une pratique de la subjectivation agissant sur un territoire, celle du foodwork, dans laquelle les meres veg* ne sentent pas qu’elles ont le controle mais seulement la pleine responsabilite.

The Ethics of Perinatal Care for Black Women: Dismantling the Structural Racism in "Mother Blame" Narratives.

Perinatal and neonatal nurses have a critical role to play in effectively addressing the disproportionate prevalence of adverse pregnancy outcomes experienced by black childbearing families. Upstream inequities in maternal health must be better understood and addressed to achieve this goal. The importance of maternal health before, during, and after pregnancy is illustrated with the growing and inequitable prevalence of 2 common illnesses, pregestational diabetes and chronic hypertension, and 2 common conditions during and after pregnancy, gestational diabetes and preterm birth. New care models are needed and must be structured on appropriate ethical principles for serving black families in partnership with nurses. The overarching purpose of this article is to describe the ethics of perinatal care for black women; to discuss how social determinants of health, health disparities, and health inequities affecting women contribute to poor outcomes among their children; and to provide tools to dismantle structural racism specific to "mother blame" narratives." Finally, strategies are presented to enhance the provision of ethical perinatal care for black women by nurses.

Representations of fatness in Parents magazine: A critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACTThe authors investigate bodily pressures targeted at mothers through parenting magazines in a neoliberal cultural context. Theoretically rooted Foucault’s framework of biopower, the authors applied Foucauldian critical discourse analysis to examine messaging related to food and weight in Parents magazine. Findings highlight three key problematic discourses: (a) food practices are moral, physical, and emotional decisions made by mothers; (b) women—including mothers—have a moral obligation to seek a thin, fit body and to model weight/body maintenance activities for their children; and (c) fat children are inherently unhealthy and at risk of becoming fat adults. These discourses are critically assessed within the context of present literature related to mother blame, with layered analyses of race and gender.

Do parenting advice books help or harm? Critiquing ‘common-sense’ advice for mothers raising boys

ABSTRACTEducationalists lament the resilience of the so-called ‘boy crisis’, despite research that demonstrates only some boys are in crisis, as well as some girls. The boy crisis in New Zealand shows no sign of abating, partly due to popular rhetorical literature in the form of parenting advice books. In particular, authors Celia Lashlie and Nigel Latta have garnered a strong following among parents and educators. In this article we argue their texts not only continue to inflame the boy crisis, they are harmful in the ways they inform narrow ‘de facto’ education policies and practices focused on boys. Our analysis of He’ll be ok and Mothers raising sons found each author privileged particular combinations of classic rhetorical strategies with discourses of essentialist masculinity and mother blame to position their parenting advice as common sense. Our critique highlights the vital importance of examining intersections between parenting advice books and education.

Mothers' experiences of masculinity in the context of child obesity in Mexico

This paper explores mothers' experiences of masculinity in the context of child obesity in Mexico. The paper draws on face to face interviews with 10 medical staff working at the child obesity clinic at Federico Gómez Children's Hospital in Mexico City and on interviews with 16 mothers and 1 grandmother of children diagnosed with obesity and morbid obesity. Through an analysis of medical discourses and practices the paper identifies a tendency to underestimate the extent to which fathers are involved in shaping the family diet and other health related practices. The paper argues that mothers' experiences of masculinity reflect ways of resisting the increased blame placed on them. Through their voices, mothers expose silenced family dynamics of food and other health-related habits and patterns. The invisibility of fathers in medical and academic discourse works to feed mother blaming and misleads medical practices and policies designed to address child obesity in Mexico.

What Impact does an Adult Substance User Have on Mothers, and How Do They Make Sense of Their Experience?

Previous research has focused on the impact of substance use on the whole family system, and whether certain family dynamics are common in families with substance use in them. This research, conducted in the UK, explores the specific experience of being a mother of a substance user and their phenomenological experience from the perspective of mothering metanarratives in western cultures today. The findings were complex due to the amount of data, but the theme of loss ran through all of the impacts, as well as being a major part of how the participants made sense of their experience. Loss was therefore the focus for studying the impact on the participants. The findings showed the complexity of mothering for this group of women and how their experience is largely misunderstood and unsupported in our society, where mother blaming is culturally acceptable.

The Failure of All Mothers or the Mother of All Failures? Juror Perceptions of Failure to Protect Laws.

Failure to protect laws have been an area of interest among legal scholars, child and domestic violence advocates, and the social work and psychology fields with varying focuses on the societal underpinnings of the laws and their application. Despite the pervasive legal literature on "mother blaming" and the revictimization of battered women that these laws engender, few studies have empirically examined if "mother blaming" occurs in these cases, or if battered women are treated more harshly. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of defendant sex and presence of domestic violence on mock juror decision making in a failure to protect case. The influences of juror sex on decision making were also examined. Jury eligible community members read a summary of a case in which the defendant was charged with failing to protect their child from a third-party abuser. The sex of the defendant and the presence of domestic violence were manipulated. Participants then rendered a verdict, provided sentencing recommendations, and responded to attitudinal questions about the defendant and perpetrator. Mock jurors were more likely to find the defendant guilty and view the defendant more negatively when the defendant had been the victim of domestic violence. Defendant sex did not affect outcome measures; however, female jurors were more punitive than male jurors. Results are discussed in terms of "victim blaming" and labeling theory of intimate partner violence.

Qualitatively Understanding Mother Fault After Childhood Sexual Abuse.

Socially constructed images of motherhood suggest that a "good" mother is caring, nurturing, and selfless-the perfect maternal figure. When these standards are not met, mother blaming (i.e., assigning fault to mothers) occurs even in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases. We collected 312 open-ended responses in total from 108 community-based participants to understand contextual factors that increase and decrease in mother fault in a CSA-related vignette depicting the mother's partner as the perpetrator. Thematic analysis revealed five main themes. Three themes were associated with decreased blame: Lack of Overt Knowledge (i.e., the mother had no direct knowledge of the CSA and thus cannot be blamed), Physical Act (i.e., the mother was not the actual perpetrator; only the perpetrator is responsible for the CSA), and Trust (i.e., the mother should be able to trust her partner). Two themes were associated with increased blame: Covert Knowledge (i.e., the mother was expected to have covert, intuitive knowledge of the CSA) and Mistrust (i.e., the mother should have known better than to trust her partner). Faulting mothers for the CSA of their child may reduce reporting of, and help seeking for, CSA, due to fear of being blamed.

“From cause to cure”: A qualitative study on contemporary forms of mother blaming experienced by mothers of young children with autism spectrum disorder

ABSTRACTIn the past, the behaviours and personalities of mothers have been identified as potential causes of autism. More recently, other etiological hypotheses have been used to explain autism spectrum disorder, suggesting that this specific type of mother-blaming is now uncommon. However, some authors have pointed out that mothers are still being held responsible for their children’s condition and behaviours, as they are now expected to extensively promote their children’s development. The present article explores contemporary forms of mother-blaming experienced by thirteen mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder. The results are discussed in relation to the consequences of mother-blaming, such as social isolation and health related problems. It is hoped that this article will encourage social workers and professionals to understand the mothers’ perspectives and to recognize the importance of supporting them without generating or increasing mother-blaming.

Mother Blame and the Just World Theory in Child Sexual Abuse Cases.

Mothers are blamed for a variety of negative experiences and outcomes of their children, including child sexual abuse (CSA). According to just world hypothesis (JWH), people have a need to view the world as one where there is no such thing as an innocent victim; that is, the world is fair and just. These beliefs predict victim blaming in situations such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, and robbery. However, JWH has not been applied to the examination of mother blame, a situation in which the blame target did not directly experience the traumatic event. We examined this application in two studies: (a) a thematic analysis of focus group discussions and (b) a correlational study. Across both studies, participants identified personal characteristics of the mother that either increased or decreased blame, consistent with JWH. However, when directly asked, most participants denied holding just world beliefs, particularly as related to child sexual abuse. Our results indicate that methodological choices might affect results, and that socially constructed views of "ideal mothers" influence mother blame. We discuss implications for validity of just world theory (JWT), methodological choices, and reduction of mother blame.

Feeding problems in infancy and early childhood: evolutionary concept analysis.

The aim of this study was to report an analysis of the concept of pediatric feeding problems. Reviews of the literature on pediatric feeding problems and disorders repeatedly reference the lack of a shared conceptualization of feeding problems. It is difficult to track aetiology, prevalence and incidence of a phenomenon when available definitions and diagnoses lack practical utility. An evolutionary concept analysis. A search was conducted in October 2014 of Google Scholar, CINAHL, PubMed and Web of Science databases, with MeSH terms and key words including: failure to thrive, feeding disorder/difficulty/problems, infantile anorexia, oral aversion, mealtime behaviour and dysphagia. Inclusion criteria were: subject of feeding problems, index children 0-10years of age, English language and full text. The articles (n=266) were sorted into disciplines of authorship, including Psychology, Medicine, Nursing, Nutrition, Occupational Therapy, Speech Language Pathology or Other. The sample was divided into a historical sample (n=42) for pre-2000 articles and current for those published post-2000. The current sample was later reduced to 100 and coded for surrogate terms, related concepts, attributes, antecedents and consequences. The historical view of pediatric feeding problems shows a tradition of mother blame or parental culpability, both direct and indirect. Currently, there exist many different definitions and typologies, but none have sound validity or generalizability. Areas of attribute consensus across disciplines are problematic feeding behaviours and selective or restrictive intake. A spectrum conceptualization of feeding problems is suggested for further development, with attributes that would be critical to have a feeding problem.