Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage

Interviewees throughout Promises I Can Keep define what it means to be a good mother in terms that differ from the middle-class definition. Middle-class Americans define good mothering based on children’s successes, like academic excellence and achievements in sports or other extracurriculars. Low-income mothers, alternatively, define good mothers as those who are “there” for their children. This distills motherhood down to its core elements and presents an egalitarian idea of parenting, one that asserts that low-income mothers can be good parents.

“Being there” for one’s children takes many forms and does not center on children’s achievements or providing luxuries. By contrast, they believe it essential that a mother provides care for her children, not regularly leaving them with others to pursue her own fun or priorities. Study participant Corinda, for example, reports that a successful mother “never leaves her kids with nobody. A good mother is someone who’s always there with them, takes good care of them” (145). This creates a distinction between low-income mothers and their wealthier counterparts, who might pay for childcare and subverts the standard idea of what it means to provide for one’s child.

According to the study participants, motherhood is about self-sacrifice. This self-sacrifice extends to resources, and mothers who spend money on themselves while their children are poorly dressed, malnourished, or dirty are viewed with disdain.