Constructing the “good” mother: pride and shame in lone mothers' narratives of motherhood

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explore how lone mothers define “good” mothering and outlines the extent to which feelings of pride and shame permeate their narratives.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical data on which the paper is based is drawn from semi-structured interviews with 32 lone mothers from Northern Ireland. All the lone mothers resided in low-income households.

Findings

Lone mothers experienced shame on three levels: at the level of the individual whereby they internalised feelings of shame; at the level of the collective whereby they internalised how they perceived being shamed by others in their networks but also engaged in shaming and at the level of wider society whereby they recounted how they felt shamed by government agencies and the media.

Originality/value

While a number of researchers have explored how shame stems from poverty and from “deviant” identities such as lone motherhood, the focus on pride is less developed. The paper responds to this vacuum by exploring how pride may counterbalance shame's destructive and scarring tendencies.

Citation

Leonard, M. and Kelly, G. (2022), "Constructing the “good” mother: pride and shame in lone mothers' narratives of motherhood", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 42 No. 9/10, pp. 852-864. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-06-2021-0151