‘Undeserving’ mothers? Practitioners’ experiences working with young mothers in/from care

Abstract

Although teen pregnancy is on the rise in Canada, and while adolescent mothering in general has received considerable recent attention from researchers, there is a paucity of information about the particular experiences of young women who become mothers while in government care. Emerging out of a study guided by a grounded theory methodology to address this knowledge gap, this paper examines the experiences and perspectives of government‐based social workers who work with young mothers in/from care. Our findings indicated that social workers reflect prevailing middle class values, including norms about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parenting, and centred around the belief that adolescent pregnancy is, in and of itself, bad. One of the most significant ramifications of workers’ values was their belief about the inevitability of ‘the cycle’: of children in care begetting children who ultimately came into care. Ironically, though workers and young mothers were both preoccupied by the concept of ‘the cycle’, and each were determined to break it, the two groups had very different ideas about what the cycle was all about and what perpetuated it. Unfortunately, this disjunction in perspectives, along with major recent shifts in the direction of child welfare policy and practice and related constraints in the resources at workers’ disposal, conjoined to create significant barriers to what workers and young women both recognized as supportive practice with youth in care.

‘I Wouldn’t Change Having the Children—Not at All.’ Young Women’s Narratives of Maternal Timing: What the UK’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy Hasn’t Heard

“…Rutman et al 2002) or middle class notions of acceptable transitions to adulthood through education, work and family-in that order (Knudson and Valle 2006). The notion of teenage pregnancy as restorative fails to be reflected in governmental policy which focuses on reduction through increased technical knowledge and increased aspirations regarding education.…”

Maternal Ambivalence in Female Psychotherapy Relationships

“…The difficulty of women judging other women's maternal capabilities has been acknowledged within social work (Featherstone, 1997b;Davies et al, 2003;Tempel, 2007). Some studies address and report social workers' emotional and relational challenges of engaging with mothers whose children are in danger (Rutman et al, 2002;Tempel, 2007). Other studies explore and describe the experience and meaning of maternal guilt (Seagram & Daniluk, 2002;Shelton & Johnson, 2006) and the relational challenges created by racial, social, and cultural diversity between female clients and their female therapists (Trotman, 2002).…”

Risk factors for teenage childbirths among child welfare clients: Findings from Sweden

“…Several scholars have stressed factors that are highly frequent in this subgroup, like adverse family background (often coupled with poverty), experiences or child maltreatment, and specific characteristics of OHC environments, especially for girls in group care settings (Corlyon & McGuire, 1999;Dworsky & Courtney, 2010;Geiger & Schelbe, 2014;King et al, 2014;Överlien & Hydén, 2004;Rutman, Strega, Callahan, & Dominelli, 2002). Others have focused more on prominent risk factors found in studies of teenage childbirth among majority population peers, like school failure, intergenerational transmission of teenage parenthood, low family socioeconomic status, and family disruption (Barn & Mantovani, 2007;Vinnerljung, Berlin, & Hjern, 2010, Vinnerljung, Franzén, et al, 2007.…”