Conceptualizing motherhood in a context of inequality and vulnerability: Experiences of being a mother after a troubled upbringing

Introduction

The aim of this article is to explore how 15 Norwegian women, in a context of inequality and vulnerability, negotiate the multifaceted position of motherhood, all having had a troubled upbringing themselves. According to Alizade (2018), motherhood is transmitted from generation to generation, and thus consists of unconscious childhood wishes, expectations and hopes of what mothers should be like, and how mothers should behave towards their children. Mothering is furthermore an activity and an identity, and is also understood and evaluated in relation to shifting, politicized notions of childhood and ‘children’s needs’ (Gillies, 2006; Lawler, 2002; Phoenix and Woollett, 1991). Mothers from different sociocultural backgrounds may experience motherhood differently, having dissimilar understandings of what motherhood means. At the same time, certain commonalities within the diverse experiences of motherhood exist when mothers live in the moreover same society, contemporaneously, as motherhood is socially constructed through contemporary discourses (Elvin-Nowak and Thomsson, 2001; Glenn, 2016). Nonetheless, mothers relate in different ways to the societal expectations around what constitutes ‘good’ mothering, due to their individual childhood histories that shape their understandings of motherhood (Thomson et al., 2012; Woodward, 2016). This article draws on qualitative in-depth interviews with 15 women, following a 30-year longitudinal study of individuals growing up in vulnerable families in Norway (Helgeland, 2005, 2010; Herland, 2017, 2018; Herland et al., 2015; Herland and Helgeland, 2017).

Current Western conceptualizations about ‘good’ mothering encourages mothers to mother their children intensively and selflessly, responding to their children’s wants and needs (Alizade, 2018; Bemiller, 2010). Hays (1996) conceptualized the normative understanding of good motherhood as ‘intensive mothering’, i.e. an expert-guided and child-centred approach to motherhood. This understanding of motherhood was created through a White, middle-class, heterosexual lens, limiting society’s ability to see the diversity of women’s lives (Arendell, 2000; Bemiller, 2010). According to Pedersen (2012), mothers are expected not only to put their children’s needs above their own, but also to provide a level of nurturing and a series of developmentally supportive activities, which often becomes all-consuming. Several researchers have emphasized the difficulty of living up to high expectations regarding motherhood (Arendell, 2000; Gillies, 2006; Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, 1998; Stern, 2018). Others have argued that mothers who do not live up to the intensive mothering ideal are often labelled as ‘bad’ or ‘not very good’ mothers (Bemiller, 2010; Gillies, 2006; Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, 1998; Stern, 2018).

Some studies have focused on the experiences of mothers involved with the child welfare system (Hughes et al., 2016; Sykes, 2011; Wells and Marcenko, 2011); studying these ‘child welfare mothers’ provides much-needed insight into the lived experiences of mothers who are frequently the focus of public concern and intervention, yet whose voices and experiences are often overlooked. Mothers’ experiences of their interactions with social services, and their perspectives on mothering and of themselves as mothers, represent important topics, but there is a dearth of research focusing on these elements. This article thus seeks to bring critical attention to social work practice with mothers who engage with social services: in particular, to the inclusion of marginalized voices and experiences in social work research.

According to Gillies (2006), parenting is not accepted as simply an interpersonal bond characterized by love and care. Instead, it has been re-framed in this century as a job requiring specific skills and expertise. Moreover, contemporary Western society’ concept of motherhood is increasingly being understood as inaccessible solely though language, as it also consists of embodied feelings from the mother’s own childhood which may instinctively shape their activities as well as their identities as mothers (Moen et al., 1997; Smith and Self, 1980). Such an understanding of motherhood is particularly important for social workers, who need to consider, in-depth, the complexities of motherhood, especially with regards to mothers who themselves had a difficult childhood. As a social worker’s professional, normative view of motherhood might create prejudice or bias and thus impact their practice, a reflective practice is essential – one that entails an analytical awareness around normativity with regards to class, gender and culture.

Following Gillies’ (2006) work on marginalized motherhood, this article sheds light on how mothers from troubled backgrounds make sense of their lives as mothers: how they position themselves within different discourses and in a context of inequality and vulnerability, and how they resist and survive social marginalization through their self-representations. As children, each of these women had experiences with child welfare services; as mothers, several have had encounters with the child welfare services once more. As such, this article is a contribution to the field of social work and child welfare, as it captures the voices of the mothers themselves, highlighting the contextual variations around ‘good’ motherhood. To achieve this aim, this article explores how 15 mothers, each having grown up within a context of vulnerability, negotiate the complexities of motherhood.

Theorizing motherhood: A psychosocial approach

This empirical article relies on psychosocial theories to help explain the findings. Psychosocial theories are well-suited to the analysis of data from longitudinal projects, since they involve looking closely at these mothers’ biographical projects within in a wider social process (Thomson et al., 2010, 2012; Woodward, 2016). As psychosocial theories cut across sociology, psychology and social psychology, they enable interdisciplinary theorizing about the interrelationships between the emotional and the social within sociocultural, discursive and psychological contexts (Hollway and Jefferson, 2012).

A psychosocial approach represents a pragmatic way of thinking about affect as a basis for social research that unites the individual with the social (Thomson et al., 2012). This approach might be used, for example, to explore how mothers relate to the phenomenon of motherhood through their individual, inner psychological processes, in combination with societal expectations regarding motherhood – such as discursive expectations around what mothers should (or should not) do in a certain cultural context. A psychosocial approach thus enables the researcher to capture the complexities of motherhood, with its many layers: for instance, opening a window into the inner emotional battles that are part of the experienced life of contemporary motherhood (Roseneil, 2006). Psychosocial research is thus concerned with both participants and cultural understandings (Hollway and Jefferson, 2005, 2012; Thomson et al., 2012).

Psychosocial research that focuses on the ‘emotional undertones’ in qualitative interviews can capture significant information that can generate insight into the phenomena being studied (Thomson et al., 2012; Woodward, 2016). However, this theoretical angle requires an analytical awareness that entails attending both to the participants and oneself as a researcher, concerning the epistemological challenges around the researcher’s ability to come ‘near enough’ to other people’s stories (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000, 2012). This is a delicate analytical task, in which one must read between the lines to capture the ‘emotional displays’ in addition to the spoken words. The methodological considerations will be elaborated further in the next section.

Theorizing motherhood from a psychosocial angle involves recognizing the complex interpersonal and emotional experiences inextricably linked with the meaning‐making around available discursive representations of ‘good’ motherhood (Hollway, 2007). The psychosocial approach supports the idea that personal subjectivity exists but is ‘inscribed’ within a social‐cultural domain (Frosh et al., 2003).

Methodology

Findings

The theoretical and analytical focus of the study was centred on how the participants experienced and perceived themselves as mothers. By using psychological/psychoanalytic and discursive perspectives in the analysis of the interview data, I aimed to bring together the abovementioned perspectives, with an additional focus on ‘affect’: in their interviews, the mothers’ feelings and affect were particularly evident, and were communicated both explicitly and ‘between the lines’.

The three analytical themes discussed below explain how the participants present themselves within the multifaceted position of motherhood. The themes represent three analytical layers: (1) the importance of current and past expectations, reflecting how the participants drew on current and past expectations regarding motherhood – e.g. the current discursive notion of what motherhood should entail, and their embodied experiences growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in vulnerable families; (2) having someone to lean on, reflecting how the women’s experiences as mothers depended on their positions – e.g. having someone to lean on versus bearing the responsibility for their children alone; and (3) the encounter with child welfare services, reflecting how experiences with child welfare services seemed to affect many of the mothers’ views of themselves as mothers. These themes thus emphasize the mother’s expectations, their views about support with regards to motherhood, and their understandings of child welfare services involvement.

Concluding discussion

The findings in this article illustrate how women with troubled upbringings talk about and reflect on being mothers and position themselves within – and sometimes outside – the current cultural discourses around what constitutes ‘good’ motherhood. The ways in which these discourses were enacted by the mothers in the study also appear to be affected by aspects of and relationships from their upbringing. The three analytical themes presented in the paper are linked, providing insight into how the mothers reflect on past and present cultural expectations around what constitutes ‘good’ mothering’, how they view having support and how they understand the involvement of child welfare services.

In the current cultural discourse on parenting, the mother is understood as bearing the primary responsibility for a child’s care, and is accountable for all aspects of a child’s development (Alizade, 2018; Hays, 1996; Phoenix and Woollett, 1991); indeed, it is primarily the mother whom for example the kindergarten, child welfare services or health institutions contact regarding a child (Saraceno, 1994). The mothers in this study appeared to draw on these discourses in their interviews – indeed, while the father’s role has in recent years become increasingly included in the Western parenting ‘ideal’ (Craig, 2006; Herland et al., 2015; Stevens, 2015), many of the mothers in this study experienced limited or no support from their children’s fathers. Feminist researchers have critiqued the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ mothering, arguing that being a mother is only one part of a woman’s life, yet these expectations are relatively all-consuming and thus most mothers struggle from time to time (Arendell, 2000; Hollway, 2007). This relates to the second analytical theme, which reflects how the presence or lack of support impacted the women in this study – regarding both their mothering experiences and their reflections on being mothers.

According to the discursive ideal, a mother should be concerned with her children’s needs, put her own needs aside and try to understand their behaviour (Elvin-Nowak and Thomsson, 2001). For most women, it can be difficult to meet this ideal because of the different demands in their lives, such as work, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices. One’s culture, class and familial background – i.e. one’s experiences with one’s family while growing up – represent additional challenges with regards to the discursive ideal (Gillies, 2006). Moreover, underlying feelings from their pasts might affect mothers’ reflections around mothering and motherhood (Hollway and Featherstone, 1997; Woodward, 2016). Thus, while many women might wish to practise motherhood in accordance with the discursive ideal, it can be challenging to do so. Indeed, findings revealed that the women in this study struggled to balance the discursive ideal with their specific mothering realities in their own self-representations of motherhood.

Findings further indicate that mothers who were not cared for in accordance with the discursive ideal when they were children can experience emotional triggers like pain, bitterness, sadness and anger in their adulthood. These emotions were prominent in the women’s interviews, and in their reflections on their own motherhood their childhoods sometimes challenged their confidence as caregivers. Being a mother within a context of inequality and vulnerability whilst comparing oneself to the discursive mothering ideal sometimes activated additional self-judgements. At times, the mothers in this study did not appear to recognize that their emotions were triggered when they reflected on their motherhood; at other times, however, they reflected upon current and past experiences and expectations and the feelings related to these experiences. These feelings often seemed to collide with the discursive mothering ideal, further reflecting the complexity of the lived experience of motherhood and mothering.

This article explores the ways in which mothers coming from a troubled background view their lives with their children, how they position themselves within the contemporary discourse on ‘good’ mothers, and how they experienced encounters with child welfare services within this context. As mentioned earlier, the conceptualization of ‘good’ motherhood, defined by the literature as ‘intensive mothering’, reflects a position that is expert-guided and child-centred (Bemiller, 2010; Hays, 1996; Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, 1998). This ideal is understood as a ‘mantra’ in a child welfare context, at least in Norway, and the caseworkers in child welfare services are affected by these dominant views – along with their own experiences both as mothers and with their own mothers whilst growing up. Further, Norwegian legislation around childrearing might also affect the caseworkers’ ‘moral compass’ regarding their normative view of what they think is valued by society as ‘good’ mothering. As such, their perspective might not include the various ways of mothering and forms of motherhood that do exist, nor the fact that mothers from vulnerable families might have a different starting point and outlook on motherhood. Moreover, that the exhausting, all-consuming motherhood ideal is especially challenging to meet without support from partners or family (Alizade, 2018), which the mothers in this study often lacked.

This study relied on psychosocial theories that integrate psychodynamic and discursive thinking to explore how the mothers’ relations with their own parents when they were growing up shapes their parenting in the present: in other words, to understand the ways in which they are affected by a past that actively influences their parenting practices in the present (Woodward, 2016). In addition, these theories help to illuminate the ways in which the mothers in this study are invested in enacting contemporary mothering ideals that are somewhat different from those of the 1970s and 1980s, when they were children. Following psycho-social theories, these mothers’ parenting approaches are inextricably linked to their pasts, to their emotions and to different normative discourses. Exploring the mother’s emotions as they emerged through their reflections on being mothers proved essential for investigating their experiences of motherhood. Findings from this study are relevant to the field of social work, and may help enhance understanding around the ways in which a lack of support and care in one’s own childhood may be repeated in one’s own parenting years later.

Conjointly, the inner and the outer perspectives appear to affect the mothers’ views about themselves as mothers. This knowledge is thus an important contribution to the field of child welfare, as it shows how mothers negotiate the multi-layered phenomena of motherhood with a self-effacing awareness (Hollway and Jefferson, 2012; Thomson et al., 2012). Given the fact that each mother has an individual history that affects how she adjusts to cultural expectations around ‘good’ mothering, the findings in this article illuminate how these 15 women were trying their best to be ‘good’ mothers, despite having limited family support and occasional child welfare services involvement.

To conclude, the findings illustrate how these mothers negotiated the discursive ideal regarding ‘good’ mothering, specifically with regards to their motherhood, their pasts and their feelings about their ‘broken’ childhoods and having grown up in vulnerable families. It was at times challenging for them to negotiate enacting the intensive mothering ideal whilst also experiencing child welfare services involvement, as such involvement is often viewed as an indication that they have not managed motherhood adequately (Ladd-Taylor and Umansky, 1998). However, how they viewed themselves as mothers indicates that they, too, held high expectations for themselves, and many were able to manage the manifold task of motherhood in accordance with the discursive ideal, despite their own troubled childhood. For the mothers who wanted to break away from their childhood experiences, changing their approach towards their own children – as compared to their mothers’ approach when they were children – was key. However, the past still remains active emotionally, in their reflections on motherhood, mothering and themselves as mothers.

There is always a need to problematize motherhood from diverse perspectives, groups and disciplines because conceptualizations of motherhood must fit into the shifting, continuously changing landscapes of history, culture, politics and practices. While the concept of motherhood has been studied from many different angles, this article represents a unique contribution with its longitudinal angle, illustrating how women’s experiences of mothering and motherhood are shaped by cultural contexts and discourses, and the interpersonal processes that come into play.

Limitations

Some of the women from the original sample who may have had children were unable to be reached, which represents a limitation of the study. While this is unfortunate, it can be argued that the 15 interviews used in this qualitative, in-depth exploration were sufficient for the study’s objective: namely, to focus on a small sample in order to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of motherhood.