This article argues that to gain a more complete understanding of how lesbian families experience parenthood outside of the heterosexual context, scholars must consider how co-parents negotiate a parental identity, rather than presuming that women parents want to mother. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 17 women in a state that denies them parental legal rights, this article asks how a non—biologically related and non—legally related woman parent determines a parental identity in a social system that continually reminds her of her (...) liminal position. Interviewees divided roughly evenly into the self-identified categories of “mother” and “father” and a collectively generated category of “mather,” a hybrid of the two words. The word mather served to anchor co-parents in otherwise uncertain seas, but the other groups felt their parental identity was significantly constrained by ill-fitting role expectations based on gender. We conclude by addressing the possibility for alternative family forms to transform the institution of gendered parenting. (shrink)

Using data from 80 in-depth qualitative interviews with women randomly sampled from New York City, I ask: how do women develop expectations about their future workforce participation? Using an intersectional approach, I find that women’s expectations about workforce participation stem from gendered, classed, and raced ideas of who works full-time. Socioeconomic status, race, gender, and sexuality influenced early expectations about work and the process through which these expectations developed. Women from white and Latino working-class families were evenly divided in their (...) expectations about their future workforce participation, while the vast majority of white, Asian, African American, and Latina middle-class women expected to work continually as adults. Unlike their working-class white and Hispanic peers, all of the working-class Black respondents developed expectations that they would work continuously as adults. The intersections of race, class, and gender play a central role in shaping women’s expectations about their participation in paid work. (shrink)

Lesbian families have the potential to create families unmarked by the inequalities of power often found in cross-sex relationships. Yet, based on interviews with 27 women with children in such relationships, we find that living in a state that legally restricts the rights of nonbirth parents to child contact if the couple relationship dissolves severely undermines this possibility. Nonbirth parents engaged in three fear-induced strategies that were at odds with these couples’ desire for equitable partnership: acquiescing to the birth mother’s (...) wishes; making themselves financially, emotionally, and legally indispensable; and using communities to police partners’ behavior and ensure accountability. As a result, the potential for such families to model egalitarian family forms that would help destabilize established gender patterns is diminished. We conclude by pointing to the importance of galvanizing to remove the remaining laws prohibiting second-parent adoption and by discussing strategies for social change. (shrink)

The welfare mother is a powerful symbol of the supposed irresponsible, sexually promiscuous, and immoral behavior of the poor. Resting on dominant ideologies of race, class, and gender, the welfare mother suggests not a poor mother but a bad mother. Based on interviews with 34 mothers receiving public assistance, this article explores how women receiving assistance claim for themselves an identity as good mothers by defining the appropriate responsibilities of mothers to prioritize, protect, discipline, provide for, and spend time with (...) their children. The material realities of poverty combined with work requirements now attached to public assistance exacerbate contradictions between these roles and create difficulties for these mothers. This article explores these contradictions and examines the possibilities for and limits of their use as resistance strategies. (shrink)