Parenting for the State by Teresa Toguchi Swartz

Author:Teresa Toguchi Swartz [Swartz, Teresa Toguchi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780415650670
Google: 1Fj9LwEACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T03:52:18+00:00

Expressing Gendered Identity

While most foster families lived in tiny but tidy homes on residential streets near busy commercial areas loaded with fast-food restaurants and older strip malls, the smaller group of single and childless middle-class foster mothers lived in spacious houses or condos in quiet residential neighborhoods in the more affluent hillside suburbs and did not need additional income to make ends meet or seek foster care as a strategy to address work-family tensions. Despite these differences, the stories of both groups of women were similarly gendered, involving their desire to mother and their assumptions of what makes a woman's life meaningful.

The case of Gina Tilly illustrates the experiences of these women. Gina was a single, white, and middle-class thirty-six-year-old college-educated woman. When I asked her about herself, Gina constructed a life history oriented around helping others. As a girl she had participated in church community service activities, volunteered with the blind, and cared lor others' children. She wanted to go into what she called a helping profession but was dissuaded by a counselor in college, who had advised her to go into business instead. Gina always assumed that she would be married and a mother, but she felt that at thirty-six, her chances of getting married and having biological children were disappearing. While she did not mind remaining single, she craved the experience of becoming a mother. Thus Gina became a foster parent to fulfill her life ambitions of helping others and having children:

Ever since I was in junior high, I wanted to help people, but a college counselor talked me out of it. ... I always expected to have a lot of children—I wanted ten kids. So far I've had nine foster children. ... I had no grand dreams, I just expected to be married and have children. . . . but as I got older, it was clear that I was not going to get married. But I still wanted kids. . . . My whole life I wanted to hold babies, I always liked children. . . . When I first got into foster care, I thought I'd have just one child. But I didn't realize what it would bring to my life.

At the time of this research, Gina was trying to buy a bigger house so that she could take care of more children. She was in the process of moving her work into her home office so that she could spend more time with the children. Gina planned to leave her career in finance altogether a few years down the road and open a group home with six beds.

If it was possible, I wouldn't work and would take care of these kids full time. Right now my hours are flexible. . . . But I want to stay home more, and not spend so much time at the office. . . . I'm setting up an office at home, so that I can spend at least half-time at home. ... If I could take care of children and support myself, I would.

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