Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
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1824 research outputs found
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Journeys of Healing and Self-Actualization: An Autoethnographic Examination of First-Generation Mother-of-Color Professionals in Higher Education
Full text linkAs mothers of color in higher education professional roles, we share our experiences of being first-generation college students and mothers of color, as well as, our resolve to unravel the perceptions of intersectionalities connected to our experiences. Mothers of color experience different forms of sexism than men and white women—and different forms of racism. We consider solutions to address racial and gender disparities around attrition, degree completion in a timely manner, and gaps between transfer aspirations and outcomes for diverse student populations. To address the need to explore shared first-generation experiences at community colleges and a state university, in this article, we discuss current research on first-generation faculty, staff, and administrators; highlight autoethnographic narratives of former first-generation college students of color who are now higher education professionals; and continue the critical dialogue regarding the need to better consider education generational status as it intersects with other non-traditional student identities to shape student and practitioner experiences
Mothering as a Social Worker: The Gifts and the Tyranny
Full text linkThis autoethnography wanders into one academic social worker’s reflections on her doctoral training some twenty-five years previously and how her exposure to certain theories and literatures impacted her maternal thinking and mothering role. Through an analysis of gathered data from doctoral course syllabi and other documents of reflection, three areas of theoretical contribution and deep influence were identified as the primary influences that helped to shape and make sense of the author’s unfolding maternal and social work professional identities. The article describes and elaborates upon John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s work related to attachment theorizing and subsequent categorization. The anxieties identified in mothers who parent to these theoretical formulations are considered, along with the often impossible demands this theorizing makes upon mothers as they strive to embody the behaviors necessary to ensure a secure attachment bond. In contrast, the work of Jerome Kagan, Stella Chess, and Alexander Thomas that identifies an infant’s temperamental predispositions at birth challenges infant attachment as fostered exclusively within a maternal responsiveness and orients thinking towards infant temperamental predispositions that innately construct attachment relatedness in a certain way, regardless of maternal responsiveness. These opposing nurture vs nature views are considered. Finally, the article considers the work of Jean Baker Miller and her contributions to understanding the forces of structural inequity at play that marginalize and devalue women’s maternal role as situated in the existing patriarchy of the twenty-first century. Miller’s work proves instrumental in validating the writer’s own experiences of maternal devaluing
ohpikhâwasiw: kiskeyihtamowin âcimowin: She Raises the Children: Sharing Our Knowledges from Stories
Full text linkThe stories we braid within this article bring together narratives of Indigenous mothering, which highlight the importance of culture and kinship to support the healthy development, safety, and wellbeing of our children. In our motherwork, we resist colonial forces and counter child welfare practices and the profession of social work, which enforce Eurocentric parenting and enact racist policies that continue to remove Indigenous children from their families at a disproportionate rate—a continuation of assimilationist tactics and genocide of Indigenous peoples enacted during the residential school era, the Sixties Scoop, and ongoing genocidal policies. Our braided stories provide a counternarrative—one of resistance in (re)claiming Indigenous mothering, stories of resiliency in (re)webbing kinship systems and stories of hope in (re)membering our cultural identities. In (re)claiming, (re)connecting, and (re)webbing, we acknowledge being in different places in our journey of Indigenous mothering. Some of us have been born into the web of our kinship systems, whereas others have been on a journey of reattaching the threads to reassemble the intricate web of kinship, culture, and community. In the spirit of reconciliation and the decolonization of child welfare practices, our work serves as a counternarrative—liberating our realities from the dominant negative stereotypes imposed by colonial systems and oppressive forces—and provides insight into the power of Indigenous mothering. Indigenous mothering provides the love and nurturing, as well a web of kinship, that support and establish life-long relationships that will sustain the wellbeing, resurgence, and prosperity of our families and communities
The Biopolitical Corporeality of the White Female Body: Exploring the Experiences of Women Descended from Central and Eastern Europe Residing in the United States
Full text linkThis study draws upon twelve interviews with women of Central and Eastern European descent currently residing in Los Angeles County, California. It utilizes the concepts of “biopolitics” and “empire” to explore how various scales of power generate the ideology of white moral motherhood and connotations of race in the socio-political context of the participants’ places of origin and the United States. The findings show that reproductive measures, policies, and regulations deracialize by default, reinforcing the hierarchy of motherhood experiences with the top belonging to the white, heterosexual, middle-class women. By identifying race-blind and institutionalized descriptions of the female body and the way women explain reproductive politics, the study achieves three goals. It revisits women’s constructs of the ideal motherhood, explores why race is removed from their paradigm of thinking, and illustrates how white supremacy lives in and among the transnational female residents
Strategies for Resistance: A Study on Black Mothering as Practices of Disruption for the Schooling of Black children
Full text linkBlack student learners in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) schools face a host of barriers to fair and equitable education. Research has demonstrated that Black students have higher rates of suspension and expulsion (James and Turner 35-37), have lower expectations, face more severe punishment and are ultimately “pushed out” of schools (Dei et al. 10). Black mothers have long employed resistance strategies to combat such barriers, such as navigating race and racial microaggressions (Allen and White-Smith 412), racial and class socializing of their children (Turner 248), and developing an overall understanding of how race impacts their children’s education (Williams et al. 937). Much of the literature on Black mothers’ experiences and effective social and political mobilization comes from an American perspective, and thus further investigation of such action in the Canadian context is warranted. This article draws on findings from a doctoral dissertation project on Black mothering experiences in the kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) education system. Thirty-three mothers, primarily from the Jane and Finch community in the GTA, participated in three focus groups and three one-on-one interviews. Using a Black feminist theoretical framework, this article focuses on three key study findings: the systemic racism faced by student learners, the intersectional systemic racism faced by Black mothers, and the resistance strategies employed by Black mothers. By analyzing the data emerging from this qualitative research, this article explores the resistance strategies of Black mothers, which open up new possibilities for Black educational futurity. 
The Anticarceral Promise of Deregulating Motherhood and Decriminalizing Substance Use
Full text linkCarceral systems in the United States (US) criminalize individuals who engage in substance use and marginalize them under the guise of public safety. In particular, the US war on drugs has disproportionately affected incarceration rates of eco-nomically disadvantaged Black women—a majority of whom are mothers of children under the age of eighteen. Within carceral systems, social workers have dual and fluid roles as both social service providers and compliance managers who enforce the carceral logics that disadvantage Black mothers. This article asserts that social practitioners, especially social workers, should advocate for anticarceral efforts and engage in community-based practices that reduce harm, remove stigma, and replace perceived criminality with dignity. 
Letter from a Mother to a Daughter to a Mother: Caste, Patriarchy, and Intergenerational Trauma of Narcissistic Abuse
Full text linkThis creative nonfiction piece is an autobiographical narrative of a daughter, career feminist, and survivor of maternal narcissistic abuse. Written as a letter to her daughter, which is frequently interspersed with the author’s own internal monologue with her narcissist mother, it demonstrates how narcissistic abuse by mothers passes on as intergenerational trauma from mother to daughter through the abused body. By centring the intergenerational trauma of narcissistic abuse by mothers, this letter challenges mainstream discourses around motherhood that uphold the image of the sacrificing and loving mother. It also reveals bad mothers not just as cultural tropes or emblems of patriarchy but narcissistic individuals who actively sabotage their daughters’ lives through their own unprocessed traumas. The letter is ultimately a feminist intervention because it shows how systems of caste and patriarchy combine not only to create narcissistic mothers but also to shelter their abuses. In other words, it demonstrates the inseparability of individual and systemic abuse. By centring the body—at once abused and hurt but also loving and desiring—as the main source of experience and healing, it proposes a vision for feminism that acknowledges the intertwined nature of individual and systemic forms of gender violence and elevates queer kinships, as sources of love and nourishment, beyond the figure of the biological mother
Mother, Service User, and Social Worker
Full text linkIn this article, I share some of my parenting experiences and reflections on being a mother, child services user, and mental health service provider. I have two aims: to bring visibility to some of the issues that marginalized mothers, such as single immigrant mothers and Indigenous mothers, may experience when accessing support services; and to call on social workers to reflect on our attitudes in our work with racialized immigrant mothers and Indigenous mothers. This article is informed by decolonial and borderlands theories. In the first section, I focus on the marginalization of racialized mothers through my own mothering experiences as a racialized mother of two children and the expectations put on single mothers. In the second section, I discuss my experiences as a mother and service user attempting to access support services. I analyze the influences of white heteropatriarchal and neoliberal ideologies in shaping parenting support services and the surveillance in those practices. In the third section, I connect my experiences as a mother and service user with my conflicting role as a service provider. There were many complexities involved in my position as a racialized immigrant mental health worker. My experience as a social worker while being a service user and mother informs my argument that demands made of service users are often unrealistic and there is very little support offered to meet these demands. I suggest that service providers step out of their social worker role and, as individuals, question their demands of service users and how reasonable they are, based on the situation and the location of the service user. The person on the line let me know that I was going to be a mom. The news came unexpectedly. I sat on my chair. I could not feel my hands. I was lost as to what to do next. I was going to be a single mom in a city that was unfamiliar to me, and I was clueless as to what being a mom meant. I was a knot of excitement, panic, and happiness
Mothering a Child with Autism Under the Weight of Marianismo: Implications for Social Work Practice
Full text linkThis article explains and offers context for how marianismo undermines a mother’s coping when her child has autism. It asserts that without an informed understanding of cultural value systems, such as marianismo, and how these values shape a mother’s cultural and personal experiences, social work efforts to help Latino mothers and families cope with the implications of their child’s autism are simply insufficient. Practice implications are addressed and suggestions for meaningful and impactful work provided