Working-class Mothers Research Articles

Making the familiar strange: can visual research methods render the familiar setting more perceptible?

The centrality of the researcher and their position in relation to the research setting has been subject to controversy and long standing debates threaded with the narratives of insider and outsider myths. Insiders are often charged with the tendency to present their group in an unrealistically favourable light, and their work is often considered to be overshadowed by the enclosed, self-contained world of common understanding. This article draws upon data generated by six participants from a research project, which aimed to explore and represent the everyday experiences of working-class mothers and daughters residing on a peripheral social housing estate. The article describes how I, as an indigenous researcher, employed visual methods of data production in order to suspend my preconceptions of familiar territory, and facilitate an understanding of the unique viewpoints of mothers and daughters on the margins of contemporary Britain. The article focuses the usefulness of the approach for making the familiar strange when the researchers own experience mirrors that of their participants.

Do (Not) Follow in My Footsteps: How Mothers Influence Working-Class Girls’ Aspirations

This article examines how working-class mothers influence their daughters' aspirations. Data was gathered from focus groups and interviews with twenty-one white and African American working-class girls and fifteen of their mothers from Southwestern Pennsylvania, United States. Research revealed that the mothers' advice is gendered, class-based, and racialized, and that it emphasizes the importance of caregiving, living near family, and financial independence and security. Qualitatively examining the messages related to work and family that working-class mothers relay to their daughters and how daughters take in these messages shows the contradictions that emerge when working-class mothers support aspiration formation.

Other Mothers: Beyond the Maternal Ideal (review)

Reviewed by: Other Mothers: Beyond the Maternal Ideal Sarah McNeely (bio) Ellen Bayuk Rosenman and Claudia C. Klaver, eds., Other Mothers: Beyond the Maternal Ideal (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008), pp. 334, $55.95 cloth, $9.95 CD. "As the sanctification of motherhood gained its full ideological force in the nineteenth century, the successful or failed performance of maternity became the ubiquitous subject of social debate and textual representation" (1). Thus write Ellen Bayuk Rosenman and Claudia Klaver in their introduction to Other Mothers, a collection of essays that explores Victorian maternal experience "beyond the maternal ideal." So too has the maternal ideal become ubiquitous in modern critical scholarship, which tends to use as its point of reference that most visible, idealized version of motherhood (which, as the authors of this volume point out, has very little to do with the reality of Victorian maternal experience). Rosenman and Klaver introduce Other Mothers by assessing the field in its current state and proposing that Victorian maternity should not only be discussed within the cultural and ideological structures (such as gender, class, race, nation, femininity, and domesticity) that often subsume it, but also as a "distinct conception or experience" (2). Their aim, quite simply, is to open a conversation about Victorian motherhood, the result of which proves the Victorian maternal ideal to be "at once more complex, less stable, less coherent, and less universal than the simplicity it connoted" (12). This editorial statement is [End Page 420] overly modest; what the collection really does is reconceptualize the critical categories of motherhood and maternity, showing that, in relation to the Victorian maternal ideal, all mothers are "other mothers." While the collection does not foreground its study of Victorian maternity in periodicals research, it suggests exciting avenues for further research into maternity and its representations in the periodical press. VPR readers will find that many essays engage meaningfully with periodicals in some way. Notable among these is Laura Green's "Long, Long Disappointment: Maternal Failure and Masculine Exhaustion in Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography," a compelling discussion of Oliphant's conflicting maternal and professional writing responsibilities. In "Violence and Unwed Mothers in Victorian England," Ginger Frost turns from the oft-discussed issue of infanticide, instead focusing her analysis on news reports of working-class mothers who neglected or harmed older children and on the effect of the maternal ideal on the outcome of their legal trials. Lucy Sussex mines periodical reports in the Age, Argus, Weekly Times, Bulletin, and Australian Law Times in "A Murdering Mother: Frances Knorr," using Knorr as a case study to illuminate the classed practice of baby farming and to assess public perceptions of poor women who perpetrated the crime of infanticide. Each of the collection's fifteen essays (grouped thematically) makes a fresh, valuable contribution to the existing body of scholarship on maternity, drawing on a wide-ranging assortment of familiar and unfamiliar texts. Essays by Deirdre D'Albertis, Laura Green, Heather Milton, and Teresa Mangum show, through well-known works such as Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Oliphant's Autobiography, Eliot's Felix Holt, and Dickens's Dombey and Son, that the maternal ideal was not only unattainable, but also potentially destructive. Of these, Teresa Mangum's and Heather Milton's essays are especially interesting when read in conversation: Mangum adeptly demonstrates the implications of maternal failure in her study of middle-aged daughters and elderly mothers, while Milton discusses the ideal mother's potential for destruction. Deborah Denenholz Morse, Dara Rossman Regaignon, Ginger Frost, and Lucy Sussex take on "bad" mothers, identifying and discussing the class implications of maternal violence and failure in Victorian England through analysis of didactic literature, news reports, and court cases. These essays provide an especially nuanced discussion of class and maternity as it relates to spectacular departures from the maternal ideal. Deirdre McMahon, Deirdre Osborne, Mary Jean Corbett, and Cara Murray discuss motherhood within the context of race and nation, including absent and adoptive mothers, mothering from afar through letters, and the discursive construction of symbolic maternity through autobiography. Each of these contributions is essential reading in understanding "other mothers" within the Victorian imperial and colonial [End Page 421] contexts. Essays by Brenda...

Authentic representation? Using video as counter-hegemony in participatory research with poor working-class women

This paper examines the processes and outcomes of employing video in a feminist participatory research project at a Sure Start programme in the United Kingdom. Sure Start is a government initiative targeting young children and their families in order to ameliorate health, social and educational disadvantages. The project worked with a group of poor working-class mothers who went on to produce their own visual accounts of their experiences of raising children in poverty. The paper looks at the hegemonic representations of poor working-class women in the popular media and discusses how the use of participatory video can challenge these taken-for-granted images, thus providing an 'authentic' alternative to commonly held assumptions.

The Bridgwater Infant Welfare Centre, 1922–1939: from An Authoritarian Concern With 'welfare Mothers' to a More Inclusive Community Health Project?

The infant welfare movement in Britain has received considerable scholarly attention but continues to generate controversy and debate. Many of the services began with nineteenth-century voluntary initiative but were later developed by local authorities. Critics have drawn attention to the limitations of such provision; arguing that it was predicated on unattractive assumptions about class and gender roles. Under this interpretation working-class mothers were viewed with suspicion and targeted for advice aimed at inculcating middle-class standards of childcare and housekeeping. This paper accepts that there was an authoritarian character to much of the early welfare work but suggests that over time this gave way to more inclusive approaches that sought to provide clients with the services that met their real rather than assumed needs. This paper reviews the recent historiography, develops an overview of national trends, and then takes a detailed look at the Bridgwater Infant Welfare Centre. The case study benefi ts from unusually comprehensive records and, by drawing on evidence from a small Somerset town, adds to our understanding of infant welfare work that has previously been developed from research on major urban centres.

‘I’m so much more myself now, coming back to work’ – working class mothers, paid work and childcare

This paper explores the ways in which working class mothers negotiate mothering and paid work. Drawing on interviews with 70 families with pre‐school children, we examine how caring and working responsibilities are conceptualised and presented in mothers’ narratives. Mothers showed a high degree of commitment to paid work and, in contrast to findings from an earlier study with middle class and professional mothers, did not feel that keeping their children at home with them was always the best option for the children. We suggest that working class mothers in the labour market remain at risk of being defined as inadequate mothers because of a middle class emphasis on intense maternal engagement with the child as a key aspect of ‘good’ mothering.

“Chav Mum Chav Scum”

In the last three years a new vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav,” alongside its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor. This article explores the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media focusing on the role played by disgust reactions in the generation and circulation of the chav figure through popular media. Concentrating on the figure of the female chav, and the vilification of young white working-class mothers, this article argues that the “chav mum” is produced through disgust reactions as an intensely affective figure that embodies historically familiar and contemporary anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and “racial mixing.” The reason Vicky Pollard caught the public imagination is that she embodies with such fearful accuracy of several of the great scourges of contemporary Britain: aggressive all-female gangs of embittered, hormonal, drunken teenagers; gym slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who'll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye … these people do exist and are every bit as ripe and just a target for social satire as were, say, the raddled working-class drunks sent up by Hogarth in Gin Lane. (James Delingpole 2006, p. 25) Disgust and contempt motivate and sustain the low ranking of things, people, and actions deemed disgusting and contemptible. (William Miller 1997, p. xiv)

Socialization goals among first- and second-generation migrant Turkish and German mothers

The current study examines generational differences in Turkish mothers' socialization goals following migration to Germany. A total of 78 working-class mothers from three different groups (Turkish first- and second-generation, and German non-migrant) participated. Each mother had a child between 18 and 36 months of age. Mothers were interviewed using the Socialization Goals Interview. The results indicate that compared to both groups of Turkish mothers, German mothers placed more emphasis on self-control as a socialization goal, and compared with the first-generation mothers only, were more concerned that their child develop characteristics associated with psychological independence and self-confidence. Among the Turkish mothers, more highly educated mothers placed less emphasis on the importance of respect towards others than did less educated mothers.

El conocimiento nutricional apenas altera las prácticas de alimentación: el caso de las madres de clases populares en Andalucía

Many prevention-oriented public health policies consist of informative campaigns. These campaigns are based on the idea that information is the key to changing the practices on the part of the population thinking that, once provided with the necessary information, the subjects would change their living habits to more healthy ones. However, many studies have refuted this belief: There is a major gap between what is known about nutrition and actual everyday eating habits. An analysis is provided of this overall dynamic in the case of working-class mothers based on the results of qualitative research done in Andalusia on eating habits and discourses. Here also, we find a major gap between what is known about nutrition and actual everyday eating habits. In this article, an analysis is made of the reasons for this discrepancy as well as of the dynamics leading to continual distortions and reinterpretations of the messages given out by the health authorities. Based on these analyses, recommendations are proposed with a view to public health policy: Instead of general informative campaigns, more localized actions or actions which would have a bearing on the material living conditions would be more effective.

The Need for International Family Policy

SUMMARY This article reviews the policies of the United Nations with regard to families where mothers are working in developing countries. The focus is child care, which is being passed over in United Nations' efforts on gender mainstreaming and empowering women as well as ignored in United Nations' statements on poor children. This is especially problematic because globalization is now drawing poor and working class mothers into the formal labor force where combining child care with productive activity is no longer possible. The history of Care, Health and Education for Children in Poverty, an organization located in South Asia, provides a grassroots example. Popular goals of privatization, sustainability and local control are putting poor children at risk in the developing world.

Working class mothers and school life: exploring the role of emotional capital

This paper explores the emotional resources generated by working class mothers to support their children at school. Analysis of material from qualitative interview research with a range working class mothers will focus on specific accounts of children’s school lives to reveal how situated meanings can clash with institutional expectations. By drawing on the concept of emotional capital I show how sanctioned models of parental involvement in education demand an emotional investment that makes considerably more sense to middle class mothers, reaping academic success and a positive experience of intimacy. In contrast working class parents and their children commonly experience school in terms of conflict and stress, requiring a different kind of emotional capital. For these mothers, emotional investments are focused on keeping their children safe, soothing feelings of failure and low self‐worth, and challenging injustice. The paper argues that material and social contexts shape and contain mothers’ emotional commitments to their children and calls for a greater recognition of the contributions made by working class mothers in enabling their children to survive school.

Becoming Responsible

Through considering the influence that class and culture have on the experiences of young mothers, this paper will argue that human services aimed at supporting pregnant teenagers and young mothers must take into account three distinct but related issues. These include: how political, social and local discourses that surround teenage pregnancy, young motherhood and responsibility influence decisions regarding young motherhood and abortion; the ways in which working-class and poor young mothers demonstrate agency through the decision-making process; and finally, the importance of developing sexual and maternal health services that reflect the social location of working-class and poor young women.

The Bronx on the Move: Participatory Consultation With Mothers and Youth

We introduce participatory action research as a strategy for "consultation with." We elaborate the possibilities and limits of participatory consultation as a strategy that enables sustained relations with communities of material poverty and resilience wealth. Consulting with an activist organization, and dedicated to producing a Web-based oral history, we engaged youth researchers to (a) conduct individual oral histories, archival analyses, and participant observation; (b) participate in focus groups; and (c) compile their reflections on this work. The project sought to produce documentation of the history and contemporary conditions under which poor and working class mothers, a few fathers, and youth struggle for justice and social mobility, against inequity with a strong sense of responsibility as parents, as students, and as activists in low resource schools.

Resilient Young Mothering: Social Inequalities, Late Modernity and the ‘Problem’ of ‘Teenage’ Motherhood

This paper draws on a systematic review of qualitative research to explore the resilient mothering practices that young, British, working-class mothers employ to care for their children. The synthesis of studies of UK mothers under the age of 20 demonstrates how young working-class women must mother in impoverished circumstances, at the same time as being discursively positioned outside the boundaries of ‘normal’ motherhood. Consequently, they utilize the only two resources to which they may have access: their families and their own personal capacities. Engaging with debates regarding the extent of the transformations of the social in late modernity, the paper discusses the most prominent of the young mothers’ practices: investment in the ‘good’ mother identity, maintaining kin relations, and prioritization of the mother/child dyad. The paper argues that, while the young mothers’ practices display reflexivity and individualism, they are also deeply embedded in, and structured by, social inequalities.

Class, Care, and Welfare Reform: Reading Meanings, Talking Feelings

This paper presents a way of looking at welfare as a realm of affective well-being, which challenges dominant liberal and rationalist views of welfare as unemployment compensation or support on the route back to ‘work’. With reference to welfare-to-work reform in Britain and, the United States, I examine liberal feminist and neoliberal policy discourses on women, work, and welfare. The rationale underlying these discourses is argued to effect an erasure of meaning and feeling from conceptions of care, with serious consequences for the caring choices of poor working-class mothers. The potential of a nonreductive feminist ethics of care, to oppose the work-centric notion of welfare promoted in prevailing approaches to reform, is considered. Ethical thinking is shown to promote an expanded concept of welfare based on caring interrelations and interdependencies, and a way of seeing the emotional geographies of welfare reform. I conclude by arguing the need for labour politics to engage with the emotional geographies of welfare reform.

The Complex Gendering of Invisible Pedagogies: Social reproduction or empowerment?

This article explores the contribution to gender studies of Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse and, in particular, his analysis of the social logic and social consequences of invisible pedagogies. His understanding of the introduction of invisible competence-based pedagogies in the l960s and l970s in the UK uniquely demonstrated the interconnections of gender and class reproduction and the ways in which empowerment and notions of democracy masked the continuation of such reproductive processes. Bernstein's language of description is shown to unite the experiences of mothers, daughters, female teachers and the differential positioning of women of different social classes. Bernstein's theory of pedagogy offers a wealth of research agendas around the ways in which gender relations shape the recontextualisation of pedagogic discourses, the restructuring of women's domestic pedagogic work, the infant teachers' status, the experiences of working-class mothers vis-a -vis schooling of their children, and middle-class daughters' responses to individuation.

Maternal Teaching Talk within Families of Mexican Descent: Influences of Task and Socioeconomic Status

This study examined the influences of socioeconomic status (SES) and task on teaching interactions between mothers and children of Mexican descent. Twenty middle-class and 20 working-class mothers and their 4-year-old children were audiotaped during interaction in a school-type construction task (block building) and a homelike construction task (baking biscuits). There were significant effects of task and SES for both mothers’ and children’s behavior. Mothers asked more questions during block building but discussed more complex concepts during baking. Children asked more questions and discussed more complex concepts in baking than in block building. Middle-class mothers discussed more complex concepts than did working-class mothers, but working-class children were more directive and asked more questions than did middle-class children. The results suggest that future studies of parent-child conversation within families of Mexican descent should consider children’s contributions to the learning environment and should examine interaction in a greater variety of tasks.

Cultural Variations in the Construction of Personal Narratives: Central American and European American Mothers' Elicitation Styles

This study examined cultural variations in narrative elicitation styles among 2 groups of mothers: Spanish-speaking Central Americans and English-speaking European Americans. Thirty-one working-class mothers and their preschool children were visited in their homes and were asked to talk about 4 past events the children had experienced. Results showed that Central and European American mothers' elicitation styles differed by emphasizing different aspects of the narrative interaction. Central American mothers' elicitation style placed greater emphasis on conversational narrative aspects, whereas European American mothers' style focused to a greater extent on the organizational narrative aspects of the interaction. Results are discussed in relation to cultural patterns of socialization and communication.

Rickets and deprivation: a Nigerian study.

Under-fives in 461 households were assessed clinically to determine the prevalence of rickets in sub-urban and rural communities in the Sahel savanna. Overt rickets was found in 11 (2.4%) of households and abnormalities suggestive of rickets in 69 (14.9%). There were significant variations (p < 0.05) in the prevalence of rickets in association with ethnic grouping (higher in southerners and non-Kanuri, non-Hausa-Fulani northerners), religion (more prevalent among Christians), and mother's occupation and educational status (higher with working class mothers and mothers with at least a primary education). A significantly higher prevalence was also associated with late introduction (at more than seven months of age) of cereals to the infant's diet, more than one under-five in a household and presence of under-fives aged 13-43 months. In contrast, no significant variations in prevalence were observed in association with duration of breast feeding, use of multivitamins or cod liver oil, history of convulsions in under-fives, sex, nutritional status, or history of diarrhoea within a recall period of six months. Thus, rickets is common in under-fives in rural and sub-urban communities in the Sahel savanna and may be related more to environmental and dietary factors than to culture and religion. Further studies are required to determine the relative roles of vitamin D or calcium deficiency to facilitate the planning and execution of a community-based intervention programme in the area.

Rationalizing Family work: Municipal Family Welfare and Urban Working Class Mothers in Germany

Considering the importance of maternity, infant, and child welfare within the family policy and welfare system, and the long-term and extensive effect of this area of welfare policy on the “ rationlization” of everyday life, it is astonishing how little attention has been paid to this topic by German historians compared to their colleagues in other countries, particularly the United States. The article will thus take a closer look at the development of public health programs for mother and childern using a regional example. In doing so, the author hopes to bring out not only the ambivalent gender-specific consequence of this modern form of welfare, but also the lines of continuity and the breaks between Imperial Germancy, the Weimar Republic, and Notional Socialism. The focus will be on welfare programs for married pregnant women and legitimate infants and small childern as central areas within “preventative public health”.