Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction Biographical approaches to mothering: identities and lived realities
- 1 Becoming and being a Polish mother: narratives on the motherhood experience
- 2 ‘A good mother is a good mother and a good wife’: gender politics and mothering practice among older Iranian Muslim women
- 3 Exploration of mothering and shifting identities in Kenya
- 4 Biographies of Roma mothering in contemporary Czechia: exploring tapestries of multi-ethnic gendered identity in a marginalised social position
- 5 Identities and life choices of mothers in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in England
- 6 Giving voice to Irish mothers experiencing separation and divorce
- 7 Ideal, good enough and failed motherhood: how disabled Canadian mothers manage in hostile circumstances
- 8 Confronting meanings of motherhood in neoliberal Australia: six crystallised case studies
- 9 Unplanned breakdown of foster mothering: biographical perspectives on identity challenges of foster mothers
- 10 Non-mothers: identities, ambiguity, biography making and life choices
- Conclusion Exploring mothering in future biographical research: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and new research agendas
- Index
9 - Unplanned breakdown of foster mothering: biographical perspectives on identity challenges of foster mothers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction Biographical approaches to mothering: identities and lived realities
- 1 Becoming and being a Polish mother: narratives on the motherhood experience
- 2 ‘A good mother is a good mother and a good wife’: gender politics and mothering practice among older Iranian Muslim women
- 3 Exploration of mothering and shifting identities in Kenya
- 4 Biographies of Roma mothering in contemporary Czechia: exploring tapestries of multi-ethnic gendered identity in a marginalised social position
- 5 Identities and life choices of mothers in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in England
- 6 Giving voice to Irish mothers experiencing separation and divorce
- 7 Ideal, good enough and failed motherhood: how disabled Canadian mothers manage in hostile circumstances
- 8 Confronting meanings of motherhood in neoliberal Australia: six crystallised case studies
- 9 Unplanned breakdown of foster mothering: biographical perspectives on identity challenges of foster mothers
- 10 Non-mothers: identities, ambiguity, biography making and life choices
- Conclusion Exploring mothering in future biographical research: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and new research agendas
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Across the world, many children who cannot continue living with their biological parents are placed into foster care. Female foster carers or foster mothers play a particularly important role in this context. Despite the increase in non-traditional forms of parenthood and participation of fathers in the child's upbringing, mothers, including foster mothers, are still ascribed a central role in relation to child and family care. The mother's central role is both self-ascribed as well as imposed upon them. This chapter discusses the importance and structures of foster care in Germany, and presents the tensions and difficulties that foster parents and foster mothers experience in their various role identities as ‘carers’ and ‘parents’ (Schofield et al, 2013).
In this chapter, I reconstruct two multi-perspective cases of foster mothers who experienced premature and unplanned breakdown of their foster motherhood. These cases are reconstructions of stories of Ms Baggins and Ms Meyer from Germany. The reconstructions include their own perspectives on the foster care case, the perspectives of the supervising social workers, and the perspectives of their foster sons – all of whom were individually interviewed and told their own version of the breakdown of foster care. In the next step, both cases are analysed from the mothers’ perspective. All names used are pseudonyms.
The experience of foster motherhood breakdown is then discussed, focusing on how this experience seriously affected the identities of both foster mothers, and how their experiences reveal central characteristics of a (foster) mother's role. Finally, the question is posed as to whether the observed characteristics of a foster mother's role shape the general image of motherhood in Germany. This puts into question whether mothers can simultaneously uphold modern expectations of being emancipated and selfdetermined, pursuing career and labour market participation, and meet the societal expectations of good motherhood at the same time.
Foster care, foster carers, foster parents, foster mothers: roles, ambiguities and ideas
Foster carers and foster parents
The aim of the first part of the chapter is to contextualise what will be discussed further regarding foster mothers. This part provides a brief introduction to the context of foster care in Germany and Europe, and the particularities, stress factors and challenges of the foster parent role, as well as its ambiguity, lying between a carer role and a parenting role.
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- Information
- Biographical Research and the Meanings of MotheringLife Choices, Identities and Methods, pp. 194 - 215Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023