‘I know I'm a good mom’: Young, low-income mothers’ experiences with risk perception, intensive parenting ideology and parenting education programmes

Abstract

Intensive mothering, which fits within neo-liberal notions of individual responsibility and risk management, and is based on middle-class ideals, is widely accepted as the ‘proper’ mode of child rearing. Intensive mothering ideology also intersects culturally with expanding notions of risks to children's wellbeing and increasing portrayals of parents as risk factors in their children's lives. State-driven interventions aimed at promoting intensive mothering practices and maximising child outcomes target young and low-income mothers as particular risk groups. This study explored the experiences of young, low-income mothers with intensive parenting advice and educational programmes that focused on child cognitive development. Intensive mothering expectations, and the mandated programmes that promoted them, were experienced as a prescriptive and regulative force in participants’ lives, and age and social class intersected to influence these experiences. Despite this, participants negotiated their own self-perceptions regarding motherhood by resisting, to some extent, the internalisation of intensive mothering ideals, and critiquing the validity of the advice. As a result, the guilt and self-discipline that often accompany intensive mothering for older middle-class mothers were largely absent for this group. Findings also suggest that the provision of basic needs is a potentially more effective policy direction for improving child and maternal well-being than the current neo-liberal focus on risk targeting, education and surveillance.

Keywords:

• teenage motherhood
• risk management
• risk perception
• risk
• intensive parenting
• child cognitive development

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support for this research provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1.  All names have been changed to protect participant identity.