The Moral Underground by Lisa Dodson

Author:Lisa Dodson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2019-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Children Picture the Good Mother

Wendy Luttrell, who is studying the daily lives of lower-income children, rejects the common “deficit model” of working-class families and the perspective that these families lack in strengths and capacities, even if they are materially deprived. Luttrell seeks out children’s ways of seeing and valuing their world and finds that it encompasses hardship but also joy and deep ties.10 She asked a group of youngsters to take photos of their home and social lives, and afterward asked them to choose several and talk about them. Among the many photographs the children took, mothers stood out as the most admired figures in their lives. Felix (age ten) described a photograph of his mother in the kitchen by saying, “I admire her because she comes from a long line of intelligence.” He explained that his mother emigrated from Colombia and has worked hard since she arrived, raising her three children while working. He said he didn’t know how she managed to do all this while still “being there for us all the time” and cooking his favorite meals.

Another boy, Gabriel (age ten), reflected on a photo of his mother in the kitchen, saying that he admired her “’cause she’s creative with food.” “You can tell because the cupcakes are there,” he said. “She’s baking cupcakes for the cupcake sale. They were gone quick.” He gazed at the picture and said, “I love her so much, I could just explode from too much. That’s why I love her very much, because she helps me with a lot of things.” Luttrell asked Gabriel, “What else does she help you with?” He responded, “She helps me with my homework, and mostly, she helps me with being a child.” “How does she do that? “With mama’s rules, do this, do that, clean up your room. But I don’t mind because I love her.”

I have heard children talking about their mothers in just this way, mothers who try to be there as much as they can, mothers who tape homework on the wall or who celebrate a child’s role in a play or a concert even if she couldn’t leave work to be in the audience. How would her absence be understood by the school principal and children’s teacher? Wouldn’t it fall under what Kristin called “negligence” in families?

Luttrell believes that many working-class children sense that their mothers are judged for not being able to measure up to the traditional middle-class norm. But listening to the children in Luttrell’s research, as they talk about pictures of family and home—and above all, their mother—they tell another vital story, about the invisible work of care when resources are scarce. They picture a good mother based on care that she tries to provide— perhaps not always according to a mainstream script. “She helps me with being a child,” says Gabriel, and he is already wise enough to know that this is an extraordinary accomplishment.

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