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Jennifer Randles I "Willing to Do Anything for My Kids": Inventive Mothering, Diapers, and the Inequalities of Carework + Mothers across social classes express similar beliefs in support of the ideology of "intensive mothering" (Hays 1996), which characterizes good parenting as child-centered, time- consuming, and self-sacrificing (Christopher 2012; Gunderson and Barrett 2015; Ishizuka 2019, Lee 2008). Yet intensive mothering assumes class and race privileges, specifically that children's needs are satisfied and their human dignity recognized (Elliott, Powell, and Brenton 2015; Verduzco-Baker 2017); it emphasizes parenting labor, logics, and strate- gies that protect or promote children's high- class status (Milkie and Wamer 2014). These ideas overlook the distinctively rigorous and Keywords children, families, in-depth interviews, inequalities, poverty. ů Page view ASA Abstract Prior research highlights how mothers across social classes express similar beliefs that good parenting adheres to the tenets of intensive mothering by being child-centered, time- consuming, and self-sacrificing. Yet intensive mothering ideologies emphasize parenting tactics that assume children's basic needs are met, while ignoring how mothers in poverty devise distinctive childrearing strategies and logics to perform carework demanded by deprivation, discrimination, and a meager social safety net. I theorize inventive mothering that instead highlights the complexity and agency of poor mothers' innovative efforts to ensure children's access to resources, protect children from the harms of poverty and racism, and present themselves as fit parents in the context of intersecting gender, class, and race stigma. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 70 mothers who experienced diaper need, I conceptualize diaper work as a case of inventive mothering that involves extensive physical. cognitive, and emotional labor. These findings show how focusing on childrearing practices experienced as "intense" from the point of view of more affluent, white mothers perpetuates inequalities by obscuring the complex labor poor mothers, especially poor mothers of color, perform when there is limited public support for fundamental aspects of childcare. American Sociological Review 2021, Vol. 86(1) 35-59 American Sociological Association 2020 DOI:10.1177/0003122420977480 journals.sagepub.com/home/ast SSAGE often invisible forms of carework marginal- ized mothers do to ensure their children's basic needs are met. Prior research highlights how poor mothers aspire to poverty-adjusted versions of intensive parenting compatible with their socioeconomic constraints (Edin. "California State University-Fresno Corresponding Author: Jennifer Randles, Chair and Associate Professor, partment of Sociology, California State University-Fresno, 5340 N. Campus Drive, M/S SS97, Fresno, CA 93740-8019 Email: [email protected]
and Kefalas 2005; McCormack 2005; Weigt 2018). Less attention has focused on the par- enting ideas and practices poor mothers devise as they strenuously, meticulously, and cre- atively manage components of carework demanded by deprivation and a meager social safety net. To fill this gap, I theorize inventive mother ing as an ideology of parenting that accounts for the physical, cognitive, and emotional labor poor mothers perform. In addition to being child-centered, time-consuming, and self- sacrificing in specifically classed ways, inven- tive mothering is innovatively resourceful, harm-reducing, and stigma-deflecting. Focus- ing on the case of how mothers in poverty man- age diaper need-lacking sufficient diapers to keep an infant dry, comfortable, and healthy l develop the concept diaper work as a previ- ously unanalyzed form of childcare labor that reveals the complexity, agency, and inventive- ness of low-income mothers' parenting. As the first to conceptualize diapering as a social arrangement shaped by gender, class, and race inequalities, this study answers three key questions: How do poor mothers man- age the material and emotional conflicts that arise around children's diapering needs, spe- cifically in a sociopolitical context that does not recognize diapers as necessities? What does this reveal about low-income mothers" childrearing logics and strategies? Conse- quently, how should we expand sociological theories of parenting to encompass the ways marginalized mothers do much more than try to live up to poverty-adjusted versions of intensive mothering? Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with mothers who experienced diaper need, I show how parents use diaper- ing and diaper access strategies to claim a good-mother status in the context of poverty, racism, welfare state curtailment, and limited public support for basic hygiene needs. These findings reveal that diapering involves much more than the physical labor of purchasing or procuring diapers and disposing of or cleaning used diapers. It entails classed and racialized forms of emotional and cogni- tive labor necessary to oversee limited diaper supplies, invent and utilize diaper-stretching strategies, and manage stigma and threats to a "good" parent identity. Mothers' narratives capture the complexity and rigor of coping with diaper need and claiming identities as good, worthy parents through diaper work. More broadly, inventive mothering draws necessary theoretical attention to how the taken-for-granted, if tedious, tasks of middle- class mothering-such as diapering, feed- ing, and housing children are often judged as less rigorous and consequential than par- enting tasks intended to promote children's upward mobility and high-class status. With implications for sociological understandings of parenthood, poverty, and welfare policies, this study reveals that focusing on childrear- ing practices experienced as "intense" from the point of view of more affluent, white mothers perpetuates inequalities by obscur- ing the complex labor poor mothers perform to secure children's basic needs. In the con- text of extreme and growing inequality and a shrinking social safety net in the United States (Collins and Mayer 2010; Edin and Shaefer 2015), these findings compel us to revise existing frameworks of how structural inequities intensify parenting. BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION Mothering Ideologies Intersecting with Gender, Class, and Race Inequalities Based on her study of an economically diverse group of mothers, sociologist Sharon Hays (1996:8) theorized "intensive mother- ing" as a gendered ideology of parenting that compels women to engage in "child- centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorb- ing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive" childrearing practices. "Intensity" in parenting has come to mean what sociologist Annette Lareau (2011) termed "concerted cultiva- tion," whereby parents deliberately develop children's abilities and dispositions as part of "status safeguarding" (Milkie and Warner
2014) through methods such as enrolling chil- dren in organized activities and consciously developing their language skills. Education, occupation, and income are associated with distinct parenting strategies (behaviors and skills) and logies (interpretive frames for understanding those strategies) (Calarco 2014; Lareau 2011), and higher-SES par- ents are more likely to practice the tenets of intensive mothering and concerted cultiva- tion (Cheadle and Amato 2011). This is more structural than cultural, as lower-SES parents espouse the same beliefs but do not have the same means to enact them (Bennett, Lutz, and Jayaram 2012). Some mothers' class and race privileges enable them to manage, if not entirely meet, intensive mothering expecta- tions (Gunderson and Barrett 2015; Lee 2008; Walls, Helms, and Grzywacz 2016), espe- cially as they work to protect and promote children's status and security (Cooper 2014; Nelson 2010; Villalobos 2014). The parenting labor of working-class and poor mothers, who often adopt an "accom- plishment of natural growth" logic focused on meeting children's basic needs and provid- ing love and limits (Lareau 2011:3), is often presumed to be less demanding and conse- quential for children's status. Given equi- table opportuniti economically vulnerable mothers would presumably parent much like their middle-class counterparts, implying that poor women cannot be equally good mothers until they are able to access the resources required of intensive parenting (Verduzco- Baker 2017). As Hays (1996) and Lareau (2011) suggest, this results in a deficit lens of low-income parenting that obscures how mar- ginalized women work at least as hard and I often harder to develop parental self-efficacy and meet their children's needs within the context of deprivation and discrimination. Complex considerations of inequality inform low-income mothers' parenting deci- sions, such as when they spend some of the little money they have on "non-essential" items that give children access to valuable main- stream cultural experiences (Pugh 2009). Elliott and Bowen (2018) theorize how low-income mothers try to avoid criticisms through "defensive mothering" tactics of rejecting negative assessments, conveying a favorable impression of their choices, and dif- ferentiating themselves from "other" neglect- ful parents. Elliott and colleagues (2015) and Verduzco-Baker (2017) similarly find that low-income mothers' parenting strategies not only align with intensive mothering ideolo- gies, but these mothers perform additional rigorous and innovative labor intended to promote upward mobility and help children avoid and cope with poverty and racism. Low-income mothers tend to emphasize more concrete parenting goals attuned to these inequities, such as ensuring children get to school safely, rather than abstract parent- ing values and beliefs (Tsushima and Burke 1999). Research also shows how poor moth- ers creatively manage meager resources and perceptively weigh the costs and benefits of marriage, legal work, underground money- making activities, welfare receipt, and mone- tary and in-kind support from kin and friends (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Edin and Lein 1997). Despite how its tenets reflect the objec- tives and opportunities of white, middle- class, able-bodied, highly educated parents, intensive mothering remains the universal standard for all mothers (Johnson 2014). Sociological literature has documented how differentially positioned mothers adhere to, adapt, and resist intensive mothering ide- ologies, including research on mothers of color (Christopher 2013), employed moth- ers (Christopher 2012, 2013), incarcerated mothers (Lockwood 2018), mothers with dis abilities (Frederick 2017), and mothers who receive welfare (McCormack 2005; Weigt 2018). Theorizing the work that low-income mothers do as their "own, equally valid, form of intensive mothering and cultivation strat- egies," Verduzco-Baker (2017:1034) argues that sympathetic scholars underestimate the sophistication of poor mothers' attempts to adapt middle-class parenting logics to their children's needs. Yet inequitable access to opportunities and resources requires lower-income mothers and
self-presentations as fit parents, as varying levels of cleanliness among children differ- entiate "normal" and "neglectful" mothers (Collett 2005). Poor mothers therefore devote vigilant attention to their children's hygiene and keeping them publicly clean to ward off critiques of their parenting abilities and not risk losing children to state custody (Edin and Kefalas 2005; Roberts 2002). In this context, diapering becomes uniquely impor- tant as mothering ideologies intersect with growing inequality, a meager social safety net, heightened scrutiny of poor parents, and mothers' strategic efforts to provide children cleanliness, comfort, and security. Inventive Mothering through Diaper Work Diaper need is a problem of inequality expe- rienced by one in three mothers in the United States (Smith et al. 2013), and disproportion- ately by poor mothers of color (Raver et al. 2010). All parents must dispose of children's waste, but affording and managing limited diapering supplies is a complex physical, cog- nitive, emotional, and social process for poor parents who must plan, calculate, save, stretch, sacrifice, and innovate regarding diapers. Fol- lowing Collins's (1994) theory of "mother- work" as the extensive racialized parenting labor needed to preserve children's dignity, and Marjorie DeVault's (1991) concept of "feeding work" as the feminized, often invis- ible, labor of producing family meals, I term this process diaper work. No prior research has analyzed diapering, specifically managing diaper need, as a distinct form of care labor that marginalized parents must perform. Despite how children, and ultimately many adults, require diapers for numerous years throughout their life course, diapering is almost completely absent from the socio- logical literatures on parenting, carework, and welfare policies. There are only brief refer- ences to diapers as expenditures in budgets for families with young children (Edin and Lein 1997), common items that nonresiden- tial fathers provide through informal child support (Edin and Nelson 2013; Kane, Nel- son, and Edin 2015); part of maintaining a consistent supply of household toiletries and paper goods (Daminger 2019); and one task among many that mothers do to feed, clothe, and clean their children (Hays 1996). Moreover, U.S. social policy does not sys- tematically recognize diapers as a need of early childhood. Diapers are categorized as "unallowable expenses" by public food pro- grams, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Parents can use Temporary Assistance for Needy Fami- lies (TANF) cash aid to purchase diapers, but benefits often do not cover other needs, and only one in four U.S. families in poverty receives TANF (Edin and Shaefer 2015). The $75 average monthly diaper bill would alone use 8 to 40 percent of the average monthly state TANF benefit (Safawi and Floyd 2020). One state, California, offers diaper vouch- ers for TANF recipients, but only as a work support for parents with approved welfare- to-work plans, Cloth diapering in poverty is prohibitively difficult due to lack of personal washers and dryers, laws against washing dia- pers in public laundry facilities, and daycare center requirements for disposables. As with menstrual hygiene products, most states still tax diapers as a "discretionary expense Research on menstrual politics has analyzed how the "tampon tax" reflects social stigma and taboos that prevent policy- makers from recognizing menstrual hygiene needs (Bobel 2010). Diapers similarly touch on issues of marginalized identities related to poverty, gender, and race. Low-income. women disproportionately perform low-status carework involving feces and urine (Jervis. 2001), a form of labor that is socially invis- ible due to how bodily products deemed disgusting and contaminated transgress per- sonal boundaries and adult dignity (Isaksen 2002). Diapering has also historically fallen outside the purview of intensive mothering ideologies, in large part because the labor of containing children's waste often falls to low-paid, hired women of color (Hays 1996).
to acquire or compensate for what more privi- leged parents already have or can simply buy. Whereas intensive mothering operates on a logic of maximizing children's potential and protecting their class status, inventive mothering operates on a logic of maximiz- ing children's access to basic needs and pro- tecting their humanity. Using diapering as a previously unexplored lens, this analysis illuminates a larger social phenomenon that has received insufficient sociological atten- tion: inequalities and inadequate social safety nets intensify parenting in gendered, classed, and racialized ways that demand different, not just adaptive or reactive, parenting practices. DATA AND METHODS I conducted in-depth, qualitative telephone interviews lasting between 45 and 70 minutes that inquired about respondents' experiences accessing diapers and devising diaper-stretching strategies, effects of diaper need on caregiv- ing experiences, and individual and family demographic and household data. All respon- dents resided in California. I recruited inter- viewees by distributing flyers to family and healthcare service providers, including WIC offices, hospitals, prenatal support programs, and postnatal home visitation programs, as well as through social media groups for low- income parents and caregivers. I also utilized snowball sampling by encouraging inter- viewees to share my contact information with others who qualified for the study parents, guardians, or caregivers for a child age 5 or younger, including people preparing to care for an unborn child. I used gender-neutral language ("parents" and "caregivers") and images (a close-up pic- ture of adult hands changing a child's diaper) ple, I next targeted fathering programs, diap- banks, and other social service organization for recruitment using flyers specifically as ing about "fathers." This led to one additiona respondent who identified as a man, and he asked his wife most of the questions dur ing the interview. Although initial recruitmer efforts focused on service organizations serv ing mothers, which not surprisingly generated a sample of mostly women, subsequent unsuc cessful efforts to recruit more fathers poin to how diaper work is a form of care labor performed predominantly by women. That the sample was ultimately so skewed according to gender, despite targeted efforts to recruit men, is a finding itself about the highly gendered nature of diaper work. I ultimately chose to focus the analysis on women's performance of diaper work and did not include data from the three respondents who identified as men. I otherwise did not recruit according to specific demographic characteristics. Telephone interviews are often deemed an inferior alternative to face-to-face interviews given the loss of nonverbal and contextual data and the presumption that they compro- mise rapport and the ability to probe for clari- fication (Novick 2008). However, evidence does not suggest they produce less valid data, and phone interviews may allow for even greater rapport and respondent comfort (Novick 2008), especially when interview- ing marginalized women about sensitive top- ics (Drabble et al. 2016). Phone interviews seemed less intrusive and more convenient for the mothers I studied, most of whom were providing childcare, including diapering, dur- ing the interviews. This provided an in-the- moment opportunity for mothers to reflect on their thoughts and feelings about diaper need.
FINDINGS: THE INVENTIVE LABOR OF "LIVING DIAPER TO DIAPER" Patricia, a 32-year-old Black mother of three, bought the 120-count box of supermarket brand diapers for $30 within hours of receiv- ing her cash aid check on the 2nd of each month. Neither the cheapest nor highest- quality diapers she could find, this brand was the best balance of price per diaper, minimal leakage, and less skin irritation for her 1-year- old daughter, Sofia. Patricia devoted exact- ing attention to stretching that box as far as possible until next month's check. She kept a careful diaper log and closely monitored the toddler's liquid intake to optimize each diaper's capacity. Patricia also sold food stamps, aluminum cans and glass bottles, and her blood plasma for diaper money. When at home, she sometimes used paper towels secured with duct tape around Sofia's waist as makeshift diapers. Patricia knew to save her limited diaper supplies for times when Sofia was seen in public, especially by welfare case workers and healthcare providers. She feared that a baby without what others recognized as a legitimate, clean diaper was grounds for having Sofia taken into state custody and away from a mother who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a victim of intimate partner violence. She told me: "Providing those diapers means I'm a good mom who keeps them away from my trauma and our money problems. For diapers, I'm willing to do anything for my kids." Patricia went without food, toilet paper, and tampons to save diaper money and prevent the diaper rashes that she knew could trigger suspicion of a poor Black mother's parental fitness. As Patricia's experience suggests, diaper work becomes a central form of care labor for mothers in poverty and involves three primary components as a case of inventive mothering: (1) creatively meeting children's basic needs through remarkable resourceful- ness; (2) productively protecting children from the harms of poverty and racism; and (3) strategically presenting themselves as fit parents in the context of intersecting gender, class, and race stigma. Drawing on mothers' narratives to illuminate these components of inventive mothering reveals that diaper work exceeds the criteria of intensive mothering as child-centered, labor-intensive, financially expensive, self-sacrificing, and expert-guided (Hays 1996). More than a survival strategy, inventive mothering as a productive class- based logic of parenting prioritizes protecting children from the physical and psychological harms of deprivation and discrimination and staking a good-mother status in the context of scarcity and stigma. Inventing Diaper Supplies and Diaper Need Management Strategies Mothers described diaper work as a par- ticularly demanding form of care labor they performed to meet their infants' specific basic needs, which included milk and diapers. Sonia, a 33-year-old Latina mother of two, described diapers as "part of babies' develop- mental and physical needs, which means it's really scary for a mom not to have diapers, not to be able to provide this basic thing for your child." Over half of respondents told me diapers were the household expense they worried about most, more than food, housing. or electricity. According to Cora, a 30-year- old Black mother of five: "I worry about dia- pers more than food because we can portion our food. We get some food stamps, always have at least a can of something. You can't really portion your diapers in the same way and say, 'Okay, I'm going to use only three diapers today. What if your kid goes poop four times?" Diapers were the bigger concern for mothers like Cora in part because they received public aid, including food stamps and housing assistance, to offset the costs of other necessities. Few mothers received public diaper assistance, and all struggled to cover costly diaper expenses with limited cash aid and low wages earned from work. Mothers thus prioritized diapers in their accounting of household and personal expenses and devised strategies for managing
Cognitive, and emotional labor of coping with lack of access to diapers. As mothers Randles deficient in resources, not how they rarely lack resourcefulness. Yet mothers' abilities to manage diaper need and affronts to their families' dignity reflect agency and ingenuity, not merely attempts to live up to intensive mothering ideologies. Diaper work and inven- tive mothering are responses to our collective failure to recognize some items and par- enting practices as necessary for children's survival and well-being. They also powerfully remind us that, when it comes to what parents in poverty are willing to do for their children, necessity is indeed the mother of invention. hygi child Cheadle, titativ sions Famil Christoph Emplo Mothe Christophe nas' M Pp. 18 Perspec by M. K UK: En Collett, Jess Impress of Moth Collins, Jane
ported that they struggled with ession, or post-traumatic stress SD). Their resourceful efforts aper need during times of des- e a bulwark against affronts to eem and sense of security. Dia- s likely a contributing factor to health challenges. Nonetheless, ced their diaper work as proof ervingness as good mothers when If-doubt or dehumanized by oth- , a 25-year-old Asian American hree, told me: es I feel hopeless, like I can't do all. But I know I've tried to provide as I can for my kids, times when DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Conveying the middle-class presumptions of what makes parenting intensive, Hays (1996:5) notes that "modern American moth- ers do much more than simply feed, change, and shelter the child," and intensive mother- ing refers to the "more." Dominant ideologies of mothering tend to center the experiences of white, middle-class mothers by assuming children's physical and psychic survival are not at stake and their basic needs are met (Collins 1994). These ideologies marginal- ize poor mothers and mothers of color, not just by setting an impossibly high bar for good parenting, but by failing to account for ng redistributive policies that vilify aring among poor women; exceed- gh rates of racialized childhood pov. nd a child welfare system that defines ons of that poverty as parental neglect. g public programs for food and hous- il to meet families' full needs, but xistence is public acknowledgment that needs exist. The focus on diapering illu- es how accessing basic needs that are er formally recognized as necessary nor matically subsidized via policy demands tive mothering. It also shows how the components of inventive mothering- physical, cognitive, and emotional labor ved in accessing key resources, protect- hildren's dignity, and constructing a pos- and valued maternal identity in the face gender, class, and race stigma-become American Sociological Review 86(1) choices to provide other household necessi- ties and all in ways that protect children's dignity and parents' self-efficacy. Mothers' comments about ensuring adequate food and housing point to similarly inventive tactics. This suggests areas for future research on parents' inventive efforts to cope with various forms of deprivation. I did not recruit accord- ing to demographic characteristics such as income or education, so subsequent stud- ies could analyze how these factors shape inventive parenting practices. A comparative approach analyzing diaper need in the United States with that in other countries would further illuminate how social, economic, and political conditions, such as level of state support for caregiving, influence incidence of diaper need and diaper work techniques. The inventive mothering strategies and log-