Still a Mother

Noncustodial Mothers, Gendered Institutions, and Social Change

Jackie Krasas

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501754326
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Jackie Krasas traces the trajectories of mothers who have lost or ceded custody to an ex-partner. She argues that these noncustodial mothers' experiences should be understood within a greater web of gendered social institutions such as employment, education, health care, and legal systems that shapes the meanings of contemporary motherhood in the United States. If motherhood means "being there, " then noncustodial mothers, through their absence, are seen as nonmothers. They are anti-mothers to be reviled. At the very least, these mothers serve as cautionary tales.

Still a Mother questions the existence of an objective method for determining custody of children and challenges the "best-interests standard" through a feminist, reproductive justice lens. The stories of noncustodial mothers that Krasas relates shed light on marriage and divorce, caregiving, gender violence, and family court. Unfortunately, much of the contemporary discussion of child custody determination is dominated either by gender-neutral discussions, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, by the idea that fathers are severely disadvantaged in custody disputes. As a result, the idea that mothers always receive custody has taken on the status of common sense. If this was true, as Krasas affirms, there would be no book to write.

1

A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS

If motherhood is being there (E. Boyd 2002), then mothers without custody of their children are nonmothers. They are anti-mothers. Bad mothers. Undeserving mothers. They are suspect, to be reviled, or at the very least a cautionary tale. For the purposes of this book, a noncustodial mother is one who does not have majority physical or legal custody of her child or children in a postdivorce or postrelationship agreement. This is not a book about mothers who have had children removed by the state, nor is it a book about mothers who had their children adopted. Each of these populations is important in its own right, and their stories are not entirely discontinuous with those of the mothers in this book. The population of noncustodial mothers in this book appears to be growing as postrelationship parenting arrangements are changing. What are the challenges of being a mother without primary custody of one’s child? Might there be benefits to being a noncustodial mother? What might the growth of noncustodial motherhood signal to us about motherhood more generally?

Since the 1970s, divorce and child custody have become more gender neutral in the eyes of the law. Families increasingly choose or are assigned shared custody of children in the wake of relationship dissolution. Many, but far from all, custody arrangements will have come into contact with the family court system; however, the outcome of each case is determined in a more fluid manner than a simple custody hearing. Some disputed cases are actually resolved before they come before a judge. Some undergo a formal custody evaluation. Others involve round after round of motions and court appearances, charges of contempt, and changes in parenting time.

As of 2010, shared child custody arrangements were more common than sole mother custody after divorce (Meyer, Cancian, and Cook 2017). However, it is difficult to precisely gauge the size of the noncustodial mother population. There is no single data set to count them. Much of the data on custody arrangements is held at the state and local levels. Many custody arrangements are informal, and not all families have child support orders in place. We do know that in 2016, of the 27 percent of children under twenty-one who had a parent who did not reside with them, 19.6 percent had a custodial father. This figure increased from 16 percent in 1994, representing a 22.5 percent increase in father custody in a little more than twenty years (Grall 2018). While it is problematic to assume that a custodial father always implies there is a corresponding noncustodial mother, we can approximate that 5 percent of all children in the United States have a mother who is noncustodial.

This book arose in part out of my own short-lived journey as a mother without primary custody when I took a new job half a state away. I found it excruciatingly frustrating that, as a gender scholar, I was having feelings about being a noncustodial mother that I knew were socially driven. That is, there were times when I was uncomfortable with my status as a noncustodial mother, even as I looked at my situation with a critical, sociological eye, knowing I should know better than to buy into societal prescriptions of motherhood. I decided to dive into the scholarly literature on noncustodial mothers to better understand my own reality. Finding very little, I decided to conduct my own research and analysis, ultimately leading me to write this book.

Early on, I turned to the internet and eventually found several groups of noncustodial mothers discussing, making sense of, and theorizing about their realities. Hesitantly, I joined in and quickly realized that this seemingly invisible group that I was a part of had existed all around me. I was not the only mother without custody of her child. While my noncustodial journey was brief in comparison to that of many of the mothers I met and spoke with, I remained connected to these communities of mothers who gave me much food for thought. I have enjoyed their company and their spirit since 2008, which makes this a long-term participant observation endeavor. I conducted thirty-five formal, in-depth interviews with noncustodial mothers and have had too many informal conversations and interactions to count. I approached the project as an institutional ethnography, which, although it focuses on the experiences of individuals, endeavors to understand the social relations that shape those experiences. Institutional ethnography is more than just qualitative interviewing. It starts where people are to understand their everyday lives but also attends to power relations, or the relations of ruling (D. Smith 2005). Toward that end, institutional ethnography incorporates multiple sources of data that can include things like interviews and participant observation, as well as discursive analyses of texts or documents.

There are some places where my own experiences will resonate with those of the mothers in this book, but there are many places where my experiences differ. My social location as a cisgender, white, heterosexual, middle-class, tenured professor shaped how I experienced my status. For example, I could easily afford transportation and time away from work to travel to see my daughter and to bring her to me. Child support payments did not mean that I struggled to pay my rent. Some noncustodial mothers I interviewed were similar to me in this regard, but many were not. Despite some obvious differences, the fact that I was a mother who had been noncustodial seemed very important to many of the participants and it likely smoothed the way for more candid discussion than would have been possible had I not had that experience.

My research has several aims. First is the desire to make visible and give voice to a highly stigmatized group of women who hold a seemingly contradictory identity in contemporary US culture. In addition, the analysis seeks to examine common trajectories leading to noncustodial status, the common experiences of noncustodial mothers, and concerns where these lived experiences intersect with gendered social institutions. At the same time, I seek to incorporate a range of experiences, as noncustodial mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Some reflect a portion of the negative stereotypes that tell us only mothers who have done something wrong lose custody of their children. Others more closely resemble June Cleaver. Or Roseanne Barr. Or Clair Huxtable.

This book concerns more than just noncustodial mothers, however. Although they are the immediate subject of the book, the analysis of their experiences provides us with a window into the complexities and contradictions of contemporary motherhood overall (Hays 1996), as well as the varied institutions, from psychology and employment to the legal system and popular opinion, that construct, enforce, and shape motherhood. Contemporary motherhood rests firmly on the ideology of intensive motherhood (discussed in depth in chapters 3 and 4), which promotes both the primacy of mothering in a woman’s life and the primacy of a mother in the life of a child. Intensive mothering practices require substantial investments of time and money and an adherence to the mothering expertise of the time (Ennis 2014; Hays 1996). Class, race, and other dimensions of social inequality shape women’s ability to closely adhere to the tenets of intensive motherhood, which often cannot be accomplished without the unpaid and underpaid labor of less privileged groups of women.

The ideology of intensive motherhood also resonates with principles of neoliberalism (Giles 2014). As understood by sociologists, neoliberalism is a set of political economic relations that rests on principles of market rationality, individualism, and privatization, resulting in a reduction in government support and oversight of social programs and institutions. Social problems become individualized and conceptualized as failures of individual choices. For example, employment relations in the United States and global North have been subject to neoliberal forces since the 1980s resulting in a decline in decent employment that provides a living wage and important employment protections like sick days and paid family leave, supports that working people need. Neoliberalism is organized on a global scale, with much of the reproductive labor in the global care chain undertaken by poor women, women of color, and women from the global South (Hochschild 2000; Parrenas 2015). Intensive motherhood places mothers in the role of the primary source through which individuals learn to make good choices, and in the absence of necessary social supports, the responsibility (and blame) for raising good, productive citizens rests squarely and solely in the hands of mothers. Thus, neoliberalism and intensive motherhood are mutually reinforcing.

We also live in a time that is purportedly postfeminist, and postracial, where critics of movements for social equality contend that they are longer needed because equality has been achieved (Hall and Rodriguez 2003). Similar discourses are emerging with the advent of marriage equality. Although these are cultural myths, post-ism ideologies have had important effects on power dynamics. When it comes to gender inequalities, gendered language is eschewed in favor of gender neutrality. Critics of affirmative action have struggled against the policy on the grounds that it is racially biased because it takes account of race. In this context, pointing out racism or sexism can be cast as racist or sexist. Intensive motherhood, neoliberalism, and post-isms are powerful companions in the social context of contemporary mothers’ lives. The experiences of noncustodial mothers are instructive because they bring to the surface the dynamics of these social forces experienced by other mothers, particularly in heterosexual families, that are more easily hidden until child custody is at stake.

Motherhood and the Sociological Imagination

C. Wright Mills (1959) urged us to connect biography and history in order to understand individuals’ experiences in their milieu within the larger social context. Motherhood is a social phenomenon that feels like a highly personal space. Romanticization of motherhood and intensive motherhood have urged us to see motherhood as a highly individualized experience. Yet motherhood is not merely personal.

Motherhood is a concept and status engaged by nearly every variety of feminist theory, although there is very little agreement in regard to its meaning, nature, or anything else. Of biological motherhood alone, assessments range from its being the means of our oppression (Atwood 1986) to its being an epistemological advantage (Ruddick 1980). A common theme through much feminist analysis of motherhood is the distinction between the institution of motherhood, embedded within and intertwined with deeply patriarchal institutions, and the experience of motherhood. Adrienne Rich (1976) drew our attention to the fact that, although highly personal, motherhood is also a social institution. Thus, the experiences of mothers should be understood in sociohistorical context. In other words, noncustodial mothers’ personal troubles should be understood as public issues (Mills 1959).

Monolithic and romanticized portraits of motherhood have not held up to intersectional interrogation. The experience of motherhood, however, has never been the experience of motherhood, although feminist theories across the spectrum often proceeded with that unspoken assumption. Much of second-wave feminism’s discussions of motherhood rested implicitly on white, middle-class, cisgender, and heterosexual motherhood. A classic example is Betty Friedan’s (1963) concept of the problem that has no name, the alienation and lack of purpose experienced by suburban college-educated stay-at-home mothers. Friedan’s work did not resonate with mothers who had neither the privilege of college education nor the choice to stay at home full time with their children. The work of Friedan and other second-wave feminists, however, may have unintentionally contributed to the devaluation of motherhood (Rothman 1989).

While mainstream liberal feminist publications like Friedan’s Feminine Mystique pointed to a kind of motherhood malaise, cultural feminists celebrated mothers’ special and embodied closeness to children, an approach that relies heavily on gender essentialism. Some radical feminists eschewed childbirth and mothering altogether and saw them as the root of women’s oppression. The polar opposite of a romanticized motherhood is Shulamith Firestone’s infamous characterization of childbirth as “shitting a pumpkin.” For more than four decades, feminist literature was filled with proposals for group parenting, artificial childbearing, and the liberation of children. Socialist feminists went about the task of having mothering recognized as work that benefited both men and capital. Black feminists, like Patricia Hill Collins (1991a), note that Black¹ women’s mothering does not rest on the Eurocentric and class-laden cult of true womanhood but rather has always incorporated work both inside and outside the home. Black families are less tightly associated with the strict gender-divided nuclear form, with “othermothers” being fundamental in the institution of Black motherhood (Collins 1991b). Similarly, work on transnational mothering shifts our focus to financial caregiving in lieu of in-person intensive motherhood (Hundley and Hayden 2016).

Contemporary cultural constructs of motherhood can be harrowing and exceedingly narrow pathways to navigate. It is almost, by definition, impossible to be a good mother given the expansive responsibilities shouldered by many mothers today in an era of decreasing social safety nets. Breastfeeding is a matter of moral imperative, but mothers must be sure not to breastfeed in public. Natural childbirth holds cultural approval even as caesarean rates climb. And we are still playing tug-of-war between Ferberizing and attachment parenting. Employed mothers are seen as neglectful; stay-at-home mothers, indulgent. The balance between work and family is a frustrating mirage for so many mothers who shoulder the bulk of household labor despite having an adult partner in the home. Shaming mothers for being employed is nearly beside the point when the United States has no federal provision for paid maternity leave or even mandated paid sick days. Poor women and women in precarious jobs are unlikely to access such perks even when provided by employers. Our anachronistic minimum wage and high levels of multiple job holding are both a cause and consequence of poverty. Through all of this, mothers remain the objects of intense cultural surveillance.

The 2016 comedic film Bad Moms takes on the myriad ways in which mothers, even middle-class, college-educated mothers, continuously feel that they are failing. Rejecting the gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, egg-free, milk-free, salt-free bake sale instructions from the PTA president, Mila Kunis’s character exclaims, “I’m so tired of trying to be this perfect mother. I’m done!” Commiserating, her friends declare, “There’s so many fuckin’ rules now! Don’t punish your kids. Don’t say no to your kids.” The center of much of the comedic action, these mothers are labeled “bad” for merely pursuing common adult behaviors such as going out with friends and having a cocktail.

Terms such as tiger mother, single mother, Jewish mother, and welfare queen reveal that, where motherhood is concerned, more than gender is at play. Definitions of good mother and bad mother are bound up with, among other things, race, class, and religion (Gustafson 2005, 29). Increasingly, motherhood is criminalized through surveillance (Minaker and Hogeveen 2015), also known as maternal profiling, in which mothers “are the scapegoat for community concerns about child welfare” (Park 2013, 50). Poor, Black, and Latinx mothers are particularly vulnerable to policing of motherhood and experience greater surveillance and harsher consequences thanks to laws that criminalize or prosecute mothers for neglect or drug use (Love 2008). For example, a mother whose child fell into the gorilla exhibit at a zoo immediately was the target of calls for her arrest. A mother who let her seven-year-old child walk to the park alone was arrested for felony child neglect, and a mother who could not afford childcare was arrested for allowing her nine-year-old child to play in a park adjacent to her workplace. Another mother left her two small children in the food court so that she could interview for a job in an adjacent shop. She received a sentence of eighteen years’ probation.

There is some outrage and resistance to all of this surveillance. However, the cases that seem to draw the most outrage have been those in which middle-class, college-educated, cisgender, heterosexual, white mothers (and fathers) have found themselves the object of surveillance. Free-range parenting is a parenting movement that resists overly close supervision of children in order to promote their independence by allowing them to walk to school or play in the park by themselves. One couple subscribing to this practice made headlines because they were investigated for allowing their children to play independently away from their home. The free-range parents who were investigated were white, and in the end they were not charged with a crime. A quick internet search supports the suspicion that free-range parenting is a parenting movement primarily aimed at whites and wealthy folks (Land 2016).

On the other end of the spectrum from neglect, mothers are criticized for overparenting. Despite the gender-neutral buzzword helicopter parent, most of the shaming directed at overparenting is reserved for mothers. Attachment parenting is the controversial cousin to helicopter parenting. Television star Mayim Bialik routinely faces criticism for various facets of her adherence to attachment parenting, including public breastfeeding and co-sleeping. The Time magazine cover featuring the question, “Are you mom enough?” caused quite a stir and, predictably, the animus was directed at the mother on the cover, who was breastfeeding her three-year-old son, a practiced labeled as extreme parenting. One thing is for certain. Whatever the practice, mothers are always doing it wrong—too much, too little, the wrong kind.

A History of Custodial Practices in the United States

Noncustodial mothers have always existed. For most of US history through colonial times, with the important exception of slavery, fathers had sole rights to their children, as children were understood to be economic property of their fathers. Fathers determined how, for whom, and under what conditions children labored, and fathers received the proceeds of their children’s labor. Fathers alone determined custodial arrangements for their children even after the father’s death. In this era, “the natural right is with the father unless the father is somehow unfit” (Mason 1994, 50...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. A Contradiction in Terms
• 2. The Mothers
• 3. She Must Have Done Something
• 4. Still a Mother
• 5. Father of the Year
• 6. Manufacturing Bad Mothers
• 7. Still in an Abusive Relationship
• 8. Lessons Learned
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index