Abstract
Criminalized Mothers, Criminalizing mothering has a far broader focus/reach than the title perhaps implies; exploring the connections between criminalization, social exclusion and marginalization. Employing a distinctly intersectional approach, the overarching theme of the collection is the regulatory effect of maternal ideology both legally and culturally. The text explores the relationship between the criminal justice system and child welfare services, contending that the threat of increased surveillance via child welfare services disciplines mothers in the same way as the threat of criminalization. Using examples which draw on a variety of contexts, this text makes a compelling argument that both systems are based on problematic assumptions regarding the ‘good’ mother which leads to the stigmatization of women because of their race, class, age, HIV-positive status or criminality (and/or incarceration).
The editors’ introduction situates the book within existing literature around this topic. The collection comprises 16 substantive chapters divided into two sections. Part one focuses on how notions of the ‘ideal’ mother, compounded by disparities in wealth power and assumptions of western superiority, deem some mothers unfit and deserving of punishment/correction. Part two engages with women’s experiences, emphasizing narratives of resilience and resistance which illustrate how women negotiate multiple forms of marginalization and constantly redefine/renegotiate their status as ‘mother’. The diverse background of the contributors means that many different methodologies are used, including ethnographic work, narrative interviews and discourse analysis. While the focus is on mothers who have fallen foul of the law/child welfare policies due to a perceived ‘violation’ of sociocultural values, the editors emphasize how the dominance of ideology affects all mothers due to the ‘scrutiny, surveillance and social sanction’ that this both encourages and perpetuates (p. 20).
The text is bookended by contributions from Bigstone, a mother, poet and musician. She opens with a poem which is a raw artistic representation of her experiences of marginalization – the sources of which are explored throughout the collection as a whole. This is picked up again at the very end of the book where Bigstone shares her chaotic and, in her own words, ‘dysfunctional’ early life experiences of domestic violence and addiction. She describes how support was crucial to giving her the resilience to turn her life around, poignantly reiterating one of the key themes of this text; the importance of accessible support and the difference this makes to women and their children.
The convergence of race and gender is predominant, particularly in part one of the text, which is largely centred on legal and cultural responses to ‘deviant’ mothers. It begins with Kaler’s chapter, which reflects on the social value attached to pregnancy and the babies born in the Beulah home for unmarried mothers in Alberta, Canada. Analysing archived records from 1909 to 1964, the author notes that unlike many comparable institutions the Beulah home emphasized forgiveness, but that this restoration of moral virtue was dependant on women adhering to other gender roles and being complicit in the home’s narrative of the corruption (and restoration) of female innocence. This chapter really resonated with Brown’s findings that young people are only identified as vulnerable and treated empathetically if they comply with gender roles and with any support/intervention offered (Brown, 2015). In contrast, Landertinger’s chapter challenges how racism and sexism converge, resulting in policies which persecute indigenous mothers. Undertaking discourse analysis of 198 articles published in 2010 across four popular newspapers, she explores how the media construes indigenous mothers as unfit to mother, construing them as pathologically irresponsible, promiscuous and susceptible to substance abuse/addiction. Such discourse perpetuates and legitimizes the regulatory practices of both the child welfare system and prison system. One of the most succinct yet disturbing acknowledgements, not only in this chapter but throughout the entire collection, is Landertinger’s contention that ‘this is not a story of a system “gone wrong”, but a system, “gone right”, i.e. that together these state institutions are achieving their aim; to “save” indigenous children from their unfit mothers’ (p. 74). These themes are then illustrated in the subsequent chapter by Savarese who analyses a child protection case involving an indigenous mother. This section highlights the tension between western privilege and indigenous disadvantage as documented in the way in which state responses not only normalize violence against indigenous women but also blame them for the harm that they suffer.
In ‘Mothering Outside-In: Confined Children and Mothering under State Paternalism’, Miller examines the surveillance of mothers whose children are in juvenile detention in the United States. She discovers a culture of mother blame without proof of any neglect or abuse, particularly targeting working-class mothers who are presumed to be inadequate. Miller grapples with an apparent disconnect between ideology and practice; the mother–child relationship is seen as fundamental in shaping children, so much so that any shortcoming can lead to juvenile delinquency. However, in practice, organizational policies actually obstruct the mother–child relationship rather than facilitating it. She concludes that this paradox is a consequence of mother blaming; it is assumed that the child is delinquent due to the shortcomings of the mothers and, as a result, the mother–child relationship is perceived as no longer important, due to the mother’s failure.
Elsewhere, Bromwich explores how The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction criminalizes women who are fleeing abusive relationships. This chapter illustrates how well-intentioned laws, intended to protect children, frequently criminalize women who may otherwise remain in a relationship which is dangerous not only for them but also for their children.
Park analyses media representations of deviant mothers and how these constructed ‘truths’ legitimize and perpetuate gendered and racialized narratives in legal discourse. Focusing on a particular case of a mother criminalized for killing her children due to neglect, she also explores the role of citizenship and White settler nationalism in shaping sociolegal responses to criminal mothers.
Hager similarly uses one specific case to explore responses to mothers who killed their children in Victorian England. She notes how, in an attempt to preserve the newly constructed idea of motherhood, professionals went to great lengths to save those suspected of murdering their children from capital punishment by constructing narratives of ‘innocence’ which fitted their gendered preconceptions. For example, medical and legal narratives pathologized women to such an extent that the legacy of this can still be seen in the association between childbirth, lactation and insanity enshrined in the Infanticide Act 1938 (Hausman, 2003).
To conclude part one, O’Neal and Watson look specifically at the psychological and social issues surrounding pregnant incarcerated juveniles, a group that is overlooked and understudied by virtue of their age and criminal status. Reviewing literature in this area, this chapter highlights how mothers who are outside of dominant maternal ideology are often overlooked in terms of policymaking and attract paternalistic responses rather than support.
The second section of the book begins with ‘(M)othering with HIV: Resisting and Reconstructing Experiences of Health and Social Surveillance’ in which the authors undertook narrative interviews and consequently highlight the need to engage with mothers with HIV in order to provide better training across a broad range of sectors which would then lead to better treatment by health professionals of the future. Moore continues to put women’s narratives at the forefront of her research based on an ethnographic study in a prison in Brazil. From her experiences and observations, she suggests that the incarcerated women she met interpreted their relationships with their children very differently to the middle-class professionals working in the criminal justice system.
Esnard and Okpala similarly draw on international discourses of motherhood, this time looking at the experiences of incarcerated mothers in Trinidad and Tobago. The authors document how women were subject to multiple forms of stigmatization as a result of structural, socio-economic inequality and yet were still subjected to normative expectations of maternal behaviour.
Elsewhere, ‘Mothering in the Context of Domestic Abuse and Encounters with Child Protection Services: From Victimized to “Criminalized”’ is based on interviews with 29 women who were victims of domestic violence. These interviews again emphasized the importance of ‘compliance’ with any intervention/support offered – demonstrating the mirroring between regulatory practice of law and child protection services.
The penultimate chapter centres on narratives of 16 previously incarcerated women in the United States, documenting their hope and resilience despite the barriers to support and ultimately the establishment of the other child relationship upon their release. The women in this study are disproportionately African American/Latina, again emphasizing the gendered, racialized nature of the criminal justice system.
Finally, the editors Hogeveen and Minaker engage with the experiences of young criminalized mothers. Their findings lead them to suggest that, rather than being a burden, pregnancy and motherhood can prompt women to make positive changes. However, the marginalization which results from being outside of dominant maternal norms makes it difficult to engage with existing support mechanisms, thus highlighting a gap in existing social support strategies.
This edited collection is truly interdisciplinary by virtue of the number of contributors with very diverse backgrounds, who all bring something different to the text. The breadth of knowledge base means that this text will appeal to a very wide audience, namely, those with interest in criminal justice, sociology, health, women and gender studies, feminist legal studies and/or social justice. While the structure is fully explained in the introduction, which helps the reader to orientate themselves, I felt that occasionally some chapters would have benefitted from being grouped closer together. For example, McDonald-Harker’s chapter regarding failure to protect provisions really resonated with the earlier chapter on The Hague Convention on International Child Abduction in that both critique legislation which is intended to ameliorate the vulnerability of children but in doing so exacerbates the vulnerability of mothers. All chapters are very compassionately written and emphasize the multiple sources of marginalization/oppression that affect mothers and how they converge to create and reproduce inequality and disadvantage. The collection adds urgency to arguments for social justice and emphasizes the need for the voices of women to be at the heart of transforming social, cultural and legal attitudes towards mothers.