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Mothering in the Margin: A Narrative Inquiry of Women with Children in a

Homeless Shelter

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DOI: 10.1080/10530789.2018.1548091

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Mothering in the margin: a narrative inquiry of women with children in a homeless shelter

Katharina A. Azim, Laurie MacGillivray & Donalyn Heise

To cite this article: Katharina A. Azim, Laurie MacGillivray & Donalyn Heise (2018): Mothering in the margin: a narrative inquiry of women with children in a homeless shelter, Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, DOI: 10.1080/10530789.2018.1548091

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Mothering in the margin: a narrative inquiry of women with children in a homeless shelter Katharina A. Azim a, Laurie MacGillivrayb and Donalyn Heisec

aDepartment of Psychology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA; bInstruction Curriculum Leadership, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA; cAdvance Learning, Inc., Austin, TX, USA

ABSTRACT Women living with their children in residential treatment family homeless shelters are often stigmatized on multiple fronts: for their addictions, being “homeless”, and assumptions about their mothering skills. This qualitative narrative inquiry study explored women’s experiences of living in a homeless shelter with their children as they recover from alcohol/drug addiction. Specifically, we examined the various ways in which the women conceptualized and performed mothering while residing at the New Beginnings shelter (pseudonym) in the mid-Southern U.S. Understanding the complexities of the women’s social, emotional, and health-based contexts can enable institutions to examine and shape implicit and explicit assumptions surrounding motherhood. We employed semi-structured interviews with six women and analyzed transcripts using two rounds of thematic coding. Five recurring themes emerged. The findings illustrate the way “appropriate mothering” is situated in specific institutional, political, historical, and economic contexts. We suggest hegemonic assumptions need to be interrogated to better serve families in crisis.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 25 March 2018 Revised 7 September 2018 Accepted 9 November 2018

KEYWORDS Mothering; homelessness; shelter; addiction; residential treatment program

Introduction

In the United States, over half a million people experi- ence sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on any given day, with mothers and their children represent- ing around a third of this number (Henry, Watt, Rosenthal, & Shivji, 2016). Homelessness manifests in several forms, including people living in shelters, in temporary living arrangements with friends and acquaintances, in unsheltered places, in transitional housing, etc. Consequently, difficulties in obtaining accurate data on poverty and housing suggests a higher census of homeless and houseless populations than official records may reflect (Holtrop, McNeil, & McWey, 2015). Homeless families are often headed by single young mothers with one or several young children (Guo, Slesnick, & Feng, 2016) who frequently find themselves, either, in temporary living arrange- ments with friends and family or in shelters. Before, during, and after periods of homelessness, mothers lack basic access to adequate health care, reproductive health options, and various health screenings (Grant, Gracy, Goldsmith, Shapiro, & Redlener, 2013; Teruya et al., 2010). The stigma of unequal membership in U.S. society (Finley & Barton, 2003; Finley & Diversi, 2010), cultural stereotyping, and differential treatment can be particularly devastating when homelessness is conceptualized as an individual failure or personal deficiency (Cronley, 2010). Stigmas of

homeless mothers, such as poor life choices, selfishness, and being an unfit mother, are intensified when the women are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol (Mayes & Truman, 2002; Savage, 2016). Amidst hardship, however, researchers observed that the relationship between mothers and their children, though compli- cated, can strengthen in response to adversity (Anthony, Vincent, & Shin, 2018; Heise & MacGilliv- ray, 2011) and forge interesting and complex parent– child relationships beyond nuclear familial ties.

In order to explore these relationships and specifi- cally investigate how women “mother” in the space of a homeless shelter, we interviewed women in a residen- tial recovery program for homeless families. The pur- pose of this qualitative study was to examine how the women made sense of different ways of mothering their own and other residents’ children. The research question informing this study was: How do women liv- ing with their child(ren) in a shelter for homeless families conceptualize and experience mothering? A better understanding of women’s transaction of auton- omous mothering in light of institutional regulations may inform the ways services are structured to support rich, dynamic familiar interactions. Additionally, this topic may offer practitioners insights into the ramifica- tions of tacit institutional and sociocultural messages on mothering and the ways mothers continue to care for their children in limited and stressful situations.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Katharina A. Azim [email protected] Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, 204 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA, ☎+1 716-645-0226

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DISTRESS AND THE HOMELESS https://doi.org/10.1080/10530789.2018.1548091

Literature review

Mothering can be broadly conceptualized as a person acting nurturing and caring toward another person (Glenn, Chang, & Forcey, 2016), though these relation- ships are particularly present between women and their biological, adoptive, step- or other non-biological chil- dren (Chodorow, 1999). Mothering is strongly influenced by social, cultural, and historical contexts and accessibility to resources (Glenn et al., 2016), and generally encompasses performing the physical, social, and psychological tasks of the primary caretaker within a family. Within patriarchal contexts of Western domi- nant society, the gendered responsibilities of familial caretaking are often laid on and performed by women (Chodorow, 1999). As feminist researchers, we use this theoretical foundation as our venture point in this study. In the following section, we will explore the literature related to women’s experiences of living with their children in homeless shelters.

Mothers’ struggles and opportunities in homeless shelters

Within the literature on women and children’s homelessness, there are various qualitative studies that examine families’ experiences of transitional and short-term shelter life and several studies that discuss the overall experiences of women who live together with their child(ren) in such shelters (e.g. Connolly, 2000; David, Gelberg, & Suchman, 2012). However, few studies discuss the diversity and com- plexity of ways in which women conceptualize and perform mothering as they negotiate institutional constraints of a shelter. While societal assumptions of “appropriate mothering” are touched upon implicitly in these works, we seek to explicitly address the specific issues of women’s ways of mothering with/in the social constructs of various institutional expectations. It is important to note that the women’s displaced housing and their con- tinuous engagement to maintain sobriety are struc- tural factors that underlie many of these studies as well as our own present work.

Recurring issues that mothers and children encoun- ter while living in a shelter are the physically limiting space and the strictly enforced routines. When entering highly structured and monitored living arrangements such as a shelter, women often report feeling a loss of agency and inadequacy in their parenting (David et al., 2012; Swick & Williams, 2010). For example, Abraham, Maida, Miller, and Pardy (2012) reported that, even though women experienced the tight rou- tines of the shelter as a positive influence on the chil- dren’s emotional and behavioral stability, it did not leave much room for autonomous childrearing. David et al. (2012) also highlighted that closed-off

living quarters did not allow mothers to practice a give-and-take approach, particularly in moments of frustration or exhaustion. The physical and social con- straints, and resulting feelings of inadequacy and incompetency, hindered mothers in their parenting approaches like setting limits and gearing their chil- dren toward autonomy.

Beside feelings of inadequacy and incompetency, women have also reported self-consciousness or embarrassment about their parenting abilities when mothering and negotiating power in plain sight of other families (Abraham et al., 2012). Living in such close proximity of each other and parenting children in full view of other families can potentially stifle other- wise positive experiences (Cowal, Shinn, Weitzman, Stojanovic, & Labay, 2002), such as tightened and strengthened family bonds (Schultz-Krohn, 2004). These feelings are difficult to resolve if mothers feel judged by other families, shelter staff, or counselors. According to Jackson and Mannix (2004), for example, homeless women often internalized feelings of blame for their role as mother, and discontinued services if professionals expressed mother-blaming attitudes. Even the fear of encountering mother-blaming in their support networks can lead women to withhold their feelings of anger, self-blame, and guilt from family and friends. These considerations are particularly sig- nificant in this study because mother-blaming and expectations that women experiencing housing instability lack socially acceptable mothering skills (Connolly, 2011) may be reflective of the ways, the places, and the situations in which the women mother children.

Despite the challenges associated with shelters, these places can also offer the peace of mind for both mothers and children associated with safe and reliable food and housing (MacGillivray, Ardell, & Curwen, 2010). When mothers are preoccupied with meeting basic living needs and managing their sobriety, a shel- ter environment can provide a structured and orga- nized space for families (David et al., 2012; Swick & Williams, 2010). Meadows-Oliver (2003) noted that despite feeling a loss of privacy, parental authority, and respect, mothers in homeless shelters also devel- oped survival strategies by turning to their faith (see, MacGillivray, 2010; MacGillivray et al., 2010 on the role of religion when homeless) as well as to the sup- port of other shelter residents. Peer support is particu- larly necessary for mothers in homeless shelters considering that mother blaming is a common experi- ence for women in poverty, those with mental and physical health issues, and other individual and social burdens (Ladd-Taylor, 2004). In their familial relation- ships, residents experienced tightened and strength- ened family bonds with their children in the shelter and extended family members outside (Abraham et al., 2012; Schultz-Krohn, 2004). Particularly with

2 K. A. AZIM ET AL.

accompanying children, women reported an increase in honesty and privacy in mother–child conversations (Swick & Williams, 2010).

Previous studies have largely focused on the experi- ences of women and children living with environ- mental and financial constraints in homeless shelters. However, the ways in which women engage with their children as parent and caretaker is largely over- looked. Often, mothering is presented as a subtheme within broader research on homeless shelters and is contextualized within the every-day struggles of home- less families. The present study seeks to address this gap by exploring the complexities of how the women describe their interactions with their children and their thought processes on decisions of mothering. This focus problematizes the dichotomy of positive and negative shelter experiences, and allows us to examine how the families sustain their relationships despite social strictures of mothering as an addict and the adverse circumstances of homelessness.

Methods

Background and context of New Beginnings

This study took place in New Beginnings (NB; pseudo- nym), a recovery program in an urban long-term homeless shelter in the mid-Southern United States serving mothers who have young children in their cus- tody. The shelter is operated by an international Chris- tian-based organization and has room for 45 residents, typically ten of whom are mothers and the rest are chil- dren. The three criteria for entry into the NB program are: a mother must be homeless, have custody of at least one child under 12 years, and be addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Women’s days and evenings, depending on their progress in the recovery process, are filled with activities such as AA meetings, group therapy, parenting classes, Bible studies, and prep- aration for general educational development (GED) examination. Opportunities to improve relations with children include parenting classes, formal and informal lessons with the children’s caseworker, and time to practice newly acquired strategies. Although the popu- lation is transient, the recovery curriculum is struc- tured as a two-year program.

It is important to note that the metropolitan city in which the study took place has experienced a long his- tory of racial segregation and urban poverty, and ranks well above the national average for non-chronic home- lessness in the U.S. (National Alliance to End Home- lessness, 2016). Child poverty impacts nearly 50% of children and is endemic throughout the city’s urban communities. Despite various local and national initiatives of supportive housing and community out- reach efforts, this number continues to grow slowly but steadily.

Participants

Participants were six women between the ages of 17 and 43 residing with one or more of their children at NB. The women were selected through their partici- pation in an arts and literacy program at the shelter and willingness to participate in focus group and indi- vidual interviews. Four participants self-identified as African American/Black and two as Caucasian/White. Similar to other NB residents, the women had pre- viously been exposed to multiple traumas, including physical, mental, emotional, and/or sexual abuse. Most of the women had not parented their children while sober previous to entering the shelter commu- nity. Some had three or more children and lacked cus- tody of one or more of them when they enter NB, although this was often rectified while the mothers were at the shelter.

Procedures

After approval by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at our university, data for this study were collected over a range of 1.5 years with six participants. This included six semi-structured individual and two focus group interviews with the women, and analytic notes and observational journal entries from the researchers. Par- ticipants provided written and verbal consent, as dic- tated by our institution’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed by the Authors for rich descriptions of the women’s experiences. As stated previously, the purpose of this study was to examine how the women narrated and made sense of different ways of mothering children while living at NB.

In order to gain insight into the women’s experi- ences of living with their children at NB, we chose nar- rative inquiry as the methodology, an approach particularly useful for its acknowledgement of stories informed by individual circumstances as well as con- textual influences (Chase, 2005; Riessman, 2007). Con- sidering the importance of situatedness and context within the social construct of mothering, this method- ology allowed us to explore the mothers’ individual, complex stories within the larger dominant discourse (Riessman, 2007) of institutional expectations. We uti- lized thematic analysis with the interviews and tran- scripts, and fleshed out context through the analytic notes and observational journal entries. First, all three authors independently engaged in an initial open line-by-line coding of the transcripts with the task to examine the interviews for specific and recurring utter- ances or actions (Charmaz, 2006; Saldaña, 2009). While comparing notes for similarities and differences, we noticed a prevalence of the theme around the women’s relationships with their children, their role as mothers, and the ways in which they performed

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DISTRESS AND THE HOMELESS 3

tasks of mothering. In a second round, we used descriptive and values coding (Saldaña, 2009) to read for contextual embeddedness of these experiences within the physical and institutional space of NB. We, then, generated categories by organizing the codes into patterns, and conceptually connected these categories to render themes.

Results

From our thematic analysis, five recurring themes emerged: (1) Knowing your child; (2) Mothering on shelter time; (3) Mothering with restricted mobility; (4) Mothering in absence; and (5) Mothering other children. Recognition of the larger sociopolitical, econ- omic, and cultural understandings embedded in the mid-Southern U.S. informs the degree to which the residents, staff, and institution wrestled within and against gendered expectations, and specifically mother- ing (MacGillivray, Curwen, & Ardell, 2012). While we teased out these themes to address them individually and through various contextual lenses, they are natu- rally interwoven with one another to produce the var- ious multilayered accounts of the women’s narratives.

Knowing your child

Within NB, we observed that shelter mandates largely framed conceptualizations and understandings of motherhood and “appropriate mothering.” These were enacted and reinforced by staff and caseworkers through shelter regulations, in the parenting classes, and the counseling sessions. These understandings were often grounded in the assumption that addicts have neglected their children, and, even when sober, were unable to adequately recognize their children’s needs and idiosyncrasies. Despite these expectations, the mothers repeatedly mentioned their knowledge of and dedication to their children’s habits, moods, abil- ities, likes, and dislikes.

One mother, Portia, described her daughter as an avid learner at school as well as at NB: “There’s no limit … [My daughter] is a very eager learner. She loves to learn stuff.” Her daughter would often bring projects to the shelter and work together with her mother on them, which created valuable parent–child time together. In another instance, Portia described a child’s behavior as reflective of their mother’s emotional state during initial entry into NB:

If the mom comes in with an attitude, the child’s going to come in with an attitude … She’d go through the motions too and they [the children] teach us that we are their role models. So, ‘If mom’s throwing an atti- tude and gets away with it, why can’t I do it?’

Because pleasure and enjoyment reflected in a similar way on the child, as Portia explained, she encouraged

a positive attitude in her daughter by collaboratively engaging in activities she knew would be enjoyable to the child. Reading books, for example, made her daughter “just content and calm [and] helps with her development.”

Even during small routines that were not necessarily connected to leisure or school activities, some women described an incisive understanding of their children’s behaviors and attitudes. Wilma, a mother of a young boy, explained that having a structured daily routine helped her better understand and relate to her child: “We’ve been going through the same thing over this two years that I’ve been here. He’s used to me and I’m used to him.” She became aware, for example, that her son had a particular morning routine and functioned much better if she accommodated it.

Noting these mother–child interactions is particu- larly significant because many of the women were mothering their children sober for the first time at NB since the birth. While the women were aware of the needs, routines, and idiosyncrasies of their chil- dren, people in authoritative positions in their sur- rounding did not always allow them to make critical decisions. Charlene, for example, described that she fought for her child to be in special education because of the specialized attention the child would receive to improve her learning and behavior. Despite the mother’s instinctive insistence, a caseworker strongly discouraged the woman from this step because of the irremovable labels that would be attached to her daughter for the remainder of her educational path.

Mothering on shelter time

Another theme that emerged from the interviews with the women was their experiences of mothering their children within the structures and routines of the shel- ter. Almost all women discussed how their residency at NB and the required afternoon and evening programs focused on them and their addiction, and only mini- mally on the bond between mother and child – some- times to the detriment of that relationship. This heavy concentration on the women’s addiction led to the mandatory meetings and sessions interfering with basic mother–child activities, such as doing homework or playing together.

Ellen and Portia shared that activities designed for both mothers and children were scarce because the women’s daily schedules were filled with required Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, parenting classes, counseling sessions, and/or Bible studies. Ellen, for example, remembered that she had “broke [her son’s] poor little heart” when he was returning from his after-school program to NB, just to watch his mother leave for her mandatory meetings. Her swift hello and goodbye seemed to confuse and sadden her son. Charlene also noted that the women’s schedules were

4 K. A. AZIM ET AL.

so packed with meetings that they would return to their rooms late at night and still need work on school assignments with their children:

I had to help both my kids with their homework … So, I was just going back and forth. He was like, ‘Can you help me with this?’ ‘What is this?’ ‘Mama, what I got to do next?’ I was like, ‘Y’all wait a minute, slow down.’

Supporting the children’s studies and homework was particularly difficult because the women were often pressing for time with their busy schedules. Ellen explained that the dynamics were particularly frustrat- ing when her son was exhausted or moody: “I feel like I can’t let him have a bad day for that little bit of time I have for homework, and that’s not acceptable to me.” Ellen, like other residents, was striving to support her child on someone else’s schedule.

Portia pointed out the irony she saw in the recovery program with its insistence on bettering women’s mothering skills: “This is what the program teaches you – spend time with your daughter, bond with your kids, and do things with them, and let the child be the most important thing in your life.” However, the women related that even mother–child interactions were scheduled and structured. During daily mandated family time, mothers participated in child-focused activities, such as storybook reading. While this activity highlighted the importance of building and maintaining the family bond, it could also be disruptive if the family was already engaged in an activity, as Portia recounted: “I don’t know if that’s a punishment or a privilege because we can be out doing something with the kids and they holler, ‘Family time! Family time!’” The inten- tion and actualization of mandated family time seemed to misalign frequently. On the one hand, the uniformity of the mandated times ensured that every woman spent time with her child(ren). On the other hand, though, the women were not able to pick up routine activities they had established with their children prior to living at NB and were sometimes curtailed in their mothering approaches when it did not align with shelter regulations.

Mothering with restricted mobility

Not only were family time and NB residents’ activities tightly scheduled throughout the day, the women’s stories also demonstrated restrictions they and their children experienced in their physical movement in- and outside of the shelter. Integral to the two-year resi- dential program was the restriction of free movement to curtail access to drugs until an addict was in a place where she could choose to stay sober. After sev- eral months of remaining in the shelter, residents earned the privilege to leave the shelter to attend AA meetings and parenting classes. Eventually, weekend passes were available to the mothers and their children.

At times, though, these restrictions felt arbitrary and without concern for the residents as individuals.

An example of these physical boundaries was the rule that women were not allowed to leave the building with their children unless they received explicit per- mission from staff. Portia recalled asking a staff mem- ber if she could take her daughter to play outside during nice weather, which was declined, “because everybody else might not want to go outside with their child.” This outside playtime, however, was experienced by many of the women as necessary for the children to relieve tension and built-up energy, and for the women to bond with their child. Ellen described that her son was “so used to being outside” playing football and running, which she strongly encouraged, that she now suspected some of her son’s health issues resulted from his extensive time spent indoors. Sylvia also said, “Kids love to run and play”, and wished the NB families had the opportunity to walk to the park or to the library, activities she used to do regularly with her children. Being outdoors with their children would also help the mothers to put some needed physical distance between themselves while still caring for the children from a distance. This necessity for regular mother–child space apart was observed when the women spoke about being uncomfortable and frustrated while confined to the building and in continuous close proximity to others. Charlene, for example, labeled her individual room “a little box” she lived in with her children. In Ellen’s case, she explained, “[my son] and my parenting dynamics are completely different living here and living in a room than what they would be in a house of my own”, where rooms are more spacious and the two can take time apart when needed.

At times, though, the women turned the confined private spaces into spaces of intimacy with their children that transgressed the strict shelter rules. For example, Sylvia kept a secret drawer with candy in her room: “I just pull out a lot of junk on the bed and I let her pick out what we’re going to eat.” Although she was aware that keeping candy in her drawer would break shelter rules and could result in expulsion from the facility, Syl- via harvested these short-lived, intimate moments with her child and took the risk anyway. Seemingly under- standing the necessity of these shared family moments, staff would sometimes turn a blind eye to these small transgressions.

Mothering in absence

Though every woman living at NB had at least one child in her custody, as is often the case with homeless- ness (Cowal et al., 2002), not all children lived continu- ously at the shelter. Some children lived with the women’s parents or grandparents and would occasion- ally or regularly visit the shelter. In other instances,

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DISTRESS AND THE HOMELESS 5

women made the conscious decision or were placed in a situation by court orders to give their children into the care of another family member so they could focus on their addiction recovery.

Ellen, for example, who resided with her four-year- old son at the shelter, had a daughter who lived with her parents but visited NB regularly. To engage her chil- dren in meaningful family time whenever the child vis- ited, Ellen would save craft supplies from an arts program so the three could work on them together: “It was really neat because I was able to bring a lot of tech- niques and ideas that I learned from the group up here” into the privacy of their room. These moments were par- ticularly valuable to Ellen because she experienced feel- ings of confidence and competence in front of her children, and she was able to observe her daughter express herself artistically, resulting in paintings and col- lages which they used to decorate the walls of their room.

Living apart from their children evoked many differ- ent emotions in the women. While the children lived with other family members, friends, or guardians of the state, the women felt sadness, devastation, but in some instances also relief for the opportunity to restruc- ture their newly sober lives. Jennifer shared the simul- taneous bliss and sorrow she felt whenever her son, who was living with her grandmother, came to visit her at the shelter and subsequently left again: “Every time he leaves and says goodbye, it melts my heart.” In Cynthia’s case, these separate living arrangements were experiences as constructive for the mother–child bond. While she longed for all her children to be with her, Cynthia simultaneously explained that she could fully dedicate herself to the recovery program, preparing her- self for the remaining children’s eventual move to NB: “I’m trying to get along with my children and stuff. But I’m here and learning. I’m unthawing.” Using strat- egies she had learned at the counseling and parenting sessions, Cynthia was trying to adapt her thoughts and actions into a sober, structured lifestyle, even if that meant mothering some of her children through absence.

Many of the women were well aware of the continu- ation of their mothering role, whether the children were physically present or not. Sometimes, the women used sought-out or court-ordered separate liv- ing arrangements to engage in self-care. While some mothers reported it unjust for their children not to be in their custody, many still tried to maintain the hope that the temporary situation was an investment into their children’s overall well-being, even during painful and lonely times.

Mothering other children

As described, not all children lived with their mothers; reversely, not all mothers only cared for their own chil- dren, either. Interestingly, a recurring theme in the nar- ratives of the women was the establishment of a form of

motherhood community at NB. Besides the care for one’s own child, in many instances women would engage with children who were not biologically their own. This particular familial bond and mutual under- standing flourished during collaborative arts-and-crafts activities, when the children needed help with a task, or when other women felt overwhelmed with the care of their children. Ellen, for example, explained,

I think we live more within the dynamic like a family … as opposed to a community. It’s not a whole bunch of different families living together. It is, but if you’re here and you spend time with us, it’s a giant family.

According to her, one of the reasons for this familial atmosphere came from the women caring for and taking joy in other residents’ children, as she experi- enced herself: “I had a lot of fun working with the other kids whose parents weren’t there … I’d just snag a kid and paint or whatever, just kind of bond. I loved it.” Edie, too, appreciated the contact with the children when they crafted together and enjoyed being their mother figure and nurturer in those moments: “I was helping other people’s kids and I just liked it because all the kids would come to me and ask me to help them.” This reflects an atmosphere where children feel safe and cared for enough that they reach beyond their mothers to other adults. Addition- ally, mothers felt validated in their competencies through the children’s outreach.

Even outside planned activity time, women found themselves mothering other children. Sylvia, for example, was surprised to spend intimate time with other women’s children while these residents attended a meeting outside the shelter: “So, I was kind of nurtur- ing their [the residents’] children while they weren’t there and that’s so not me. I never saw myself sitting down with a friend’s child.” Extending the care to others also greatly contributed to the women’s emotional state. Ellen, for example, explained that these familial relation- ships helped her process “a lot of guilt and a lot of shame” she had felt in her role as a mother when she initially entered NB. Collaborative mothering efforts even extended to situations in which children felt fru- strated or acted defiantly. When a young boy had difficulty controlling his anger over a broken kite and his mother was unable to calm him, the other women gathered around to console him and helped resolve the tension. In these moments of friction and frustration, the familial support the residents had created at NB allowed them to reassure each other in their mothering efforts and to empathize with one another’s struggles.

Discussion

As the findings of this study have yielded, and previous research has indicated, mothering a child is neither a definitive nor judgment-free endeavor (Appell, 1998;

6 K. A. AZIM ET AL.

Savage, 2016), particularly for women who live with(in) institutional, economic, and health-related restrictions (Cosgrove & Flynn, 2005). The presence of diverse and positive mothering is especially important in a popu- lation facing extreme challenges socially, economically, relationally, and in their health (Gewirtz, DeGarmo, Plowman, August, & Realmuto, 2009). Throughout this research project, we worked to recognize and unpack the tensions, conflicts, individual grapplings, and familial bonds inherently at work at a shelter for homeless families.

Within the NB shelter, staff and residents alike labeled certain practices rather simplistically as “good” or “bad” mothering, a phenomenon that is also reflected in popular culture (Phoenix & Woollett, 1991). For instance, nurturing appropriate mothering translated into structured, mandated activities that were grounded in White middle class practices of acceptable mother–child interaction and positive disci- plining strategies (Connolly, 2000). As was observed in the narratives, though, mothers reported that family time sometimes felt forced, arbitrary, and interruptive of the mother–child activities they were already engaged in. The requirement to mother one’s child in a physically confined space under continuous obser- vation potentially elevated tensions and negatively affected the mother–child relationship (Barrow & Laborde, 2008). The very wish of the women to occasionally place some physical and emotional dis- tance between them and their children challenged the stereotypical Western notion that “good” mothering equates to the mother’s continuous desire of physical contact and closeness (Rothbaum, Rosen, Ujiie, & Uchida, 2002). Nonetheless, these physical boundaries also encouraged the women to forge meaningful spaces in which they shared intimate moments of family time with their children and experienced feelings of competency and accomplishments. These findings of mother–child bonding are in line with several studies (e.g. Abraham et al., 2012; Schultz-Krohn, 2004; Styron, Janoff-Bulman, & Davidson, 2000) that found some relational benefits for homeless families despite limited shelter space.

To address the women’s frustrations on the rigid shelter rules, we suggest that management and staff working in family homeless shelters interrogate their own assumptions and explore strategies that explicitly communicate to their residents reasons for uniform rules that may appear arbitrary, suspicious, and stifling to families. This may make short and long-term evaluation integral to the residents’ efforts and potentially reduce frustration. Further- more, it may be beneficial for shelters to observe interactional patterns between marginalized families and foster private mothering and coping strategies (Gewirtz et al., 2009). Much of the mother–child interactions occur outside of shelter staff’s view;

however, these efforts could be discussed and inte- grated into the parenting classes to focus on the women’s specific mothering needs.

Despite the good intentions of the individual staff members at NB, the continuous interventions into and surveillance of the women’s parenting resulted in sustained tensions as described in their stories. This was even the case for some mothers who had con- sciously chosen, potentially due to a lack of other options, to enter the residential treatment program. Therefore, the negotiations of what was mandated by the shelter and what the women practiced individually with their children often came with feelings of inade- quacy and loss of agency. Studies reported that these tensions could result in the women isolating them- selves from other residents and shelter staff, or in the women leaving the shelter all together (Caldwell, Homan, & Flick, 2003; Connolly, 2011; Jackson & Mannix, 2004). It must be noted here that the struc- tural interference the women experienced into their child-rearing is not solely bound to the particular living arrangements in a family homeless shelter. Rather, as Phoenix and Woollett (1991) asserted, judgment and interference into mothering practices are rooted in longstanding Western institutional traditions aimed “to force parents into adequacy by making them con- form to the elements of the social constructions” (p. 19) of appropriate, acceptable child-rearing. In reference to vulnerable and marginalized populations, such as the women in this study, Connolly (2011) emphasizes that

[t]he ideal of motherhood becomes intensified even while many mothers are disconnected from a host of practical supports, as evidenced by the large number of mothers living in poverty, living without mates, exposed to violence, and living in unsafe conditions. (p. 180).

Homeless mothers, then, inevitably become “cultural scapegoats” (Connolly, 2000, p. 59) and “bad” mothers in need of being “fixed” (Cosgrove & Flynn, 2005). For the women in this study, as well as other mothers with- out stable housing, these assumed transgressions of ideal mothering behavior translate into more explicit regulations and formalized policies that further stigma- tize the families (Finley & Barton, 2003).

In circumstances in which women in this study resided apart from their children, whether court-man- dated or elective, they recounted particularly intense emotions of vulnerability and shame. Instead of accommodating these living arrangements as ben- eficial to the future mother–child relationship, though, homeless women living separate from their children are often deemed inadequate or neglectful parents (Barrow & Laborde, 2008) within the larger Western cultural context. Judging the individual contexts and routines of homeless families by the “dominant stan- dards of good mothering” (Barrow & Laborde, 2008,

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DISTRESS AND THE HOMELESS 7

p. 159) only reinforces the stigmatization of vulnerable mothers and emphasizes the unattainability of an idealized form of childcare. We, therefore, suggest that shelters critically examine how their parenting and counseling curricula align with the traditionalist White middle class venture points of mothering. Along with this, we recommend helping mothers unpack their own, often conflicted, emotions around these norms. While this unpacking may have hap- pened in counseling sessions, it was never mentioned by the mothers. As stated before, this mid-Southern metropolitan city has experienced poverty at twice the national average. Poverty, food and housing inse- curity, lack of educational resources, and unaffordable or inaccessible health, and other daily struggles can strongly influence families’ activities and priorities (David et al., 2012), and, by extension, women’s forms of mothering (Green, 2013). Curricula need to be strongly situated within the women’s circumstances of addiction, custody struggles, and prolonged homelessness.

While our study is unique in the way in which it centralizes the narratives of homeless women and their mothering experiences with their children, it inevitably presents several limitations. For example, while all women needed to identify as being addicted to drugs and/or alcohol to fulfill NB’s admission cri- teria, we did not specifically address the women’s experiences of addiction and sobriety. When the par- ticipants chose to touch upon the topic of mothering with addiction, we integrated the responses into the results; however, since we consciously decided to decen- tralize this topic in favor of multiperspective narratives around mothering interaction and the mother–child bond, no probes were directed to collect specific data on the women’s addiction recovery. Furthermore, this study relied on the observations and experiences of the mothers as they resided at NB with their children, which may be enriched by adding the perspectives of shelter staff, family members, and the women’s children. However, we deliberately chose one-on-one and focus group interviews that concentrate on the mothers’ experiences to avoid implying that the women’s narra- tives and experiential knowledge may be in need of being “validated” or “legitimized” (Riessman, 2007) by adding additional layers of data from other observers.

Since the shelter setting is limited to an urban mid- Southern U.S. city, research in other sociocultural and – political contexts may yield differing results informed by local policies and histories. Further, investigations into women’s mothering experiences at private shelters or those not affiliated with a religious organization may produce unique insights into shelter-specific regu- lations and policies. Regardless of social and insti- tutional settings, though, mothering as a gendered act of childrearing should be understood as complex and malleable and interrogated within hegemonic

assumptions held and reproduced by individuals as well as organizations.

Despite the small number of participants in this study from a single shelter, the results nonetheless illus- trated the complex and context-bound ways in which the women conceptualized and performed mothering while residing in a homeless shelter. In order to address lines of inquiry that were outside the scope of this research, future study could extend the theme of mothering other children within and outside the shel- ter influences. These may involve the perspectives of staff, siblings, parents and grandparents, and other extended family as caretakers for, both, the women and children residents. A longitudinal study could be used to record changes of the ways in which women’s mothering understandings and approaches change as they progress through the recovery program. A study investigating the effects these various mothering prac- tices have on the women’s children may also shed further light on mother–child interactions.

Homelessness overall has been declining in the U.S. (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2016); however, recent political propositions of cutting financial support for housing assistance, healthcare, and addiction treatment (Allen, 2017; National Low Income Housing Coalition, 2017; Pear & Kaplan, 2017) are undermining these positive developments. Women and their children are particularly impacted by national and local budgetary cuts, stripping them of “protective effects of socioeconomic advantages” (Caldwell et al., 2003, p. 156) that are essential for women mothering while addicted, poor and/or home- less (Page & Nooe, 2002; Williams, 2016). On an institutional basis, it is, therefore, paramount that these projects continue to be centralized in discus- sions on home- and houselessness in the U.S. and placed on the agendas of local and national policy makers (Marra et al., 2009). Within the closer com- munities, it is equally important that the various social, emotional, financial, and wellness-based cir- cumstances of homeless women and their children are acknowledged (Krahn, Caine, Chaw-Kant, & Singh, 2018), and that the residents’ nuanced ways of mothering become part of on-going discussions of strategies that support family health and overall well-being.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Katharina A. Azim, Ph.D., is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her current academic interests are ethnic identity and MENA/Arab/Muslim psychology, on the one hand,

8 K. A. AZIM ET AL.

and women’s health and agency, on the other hand. Within qualitative research, she focuses on postcolonial feminist the- ory, autoethnography, and narrative inquiry.

Laurie MacGillivray, Ed.D., is Professor of Literacy in the College of Education at the University of Memphis. Her research focuses on literacy as a social practice in classrooms, among families, and across communities. Recently, she has been particularly interested in systems thinking pedagogy in elementary classrooms.

Donalyn Heise, Ed.D., is founder and co-director of Teacher Effectiveness for Art Learning, and former Associate Pro- fessor of Art Education at the University of Memphis. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and resilience in education and community contexts for children who have experienced trauma.

ORCID

Katharina A. Azim http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9811-2729

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