“If I got it, she got it”: Black mothers’ food provision and symbiotic mothering

Objective

This study advances contemporary theories of motherhood, mothering, and foodwork within the context of poverty by focusing on the ways that low-income Black mothers engage interdependent culturally distinct mothering strategies in light of a porous social safety net.

Background

Contemporary standards for good parenting are increasingly resource-based.

As such, the intricate and tactical ways that low-income Black mothers manage to make food ends meet with little means and few resources are often obscured in favor of hegemonic forms of mothering.

Method

This study draws on 44 in-depth interviews with low-income Black mothers and grandmothers to examine their survival strategies, focusing on food provision.

Results

Findings reveal that these mothers prioritize basic needs provision, such as food and feeding, and achieve this often difficult goal by engaging a cultural toolkit that we term symbiotic mothering. Symbiotic mothering is constructed and reinforced through the collective processes of maternal exchange, mutual aid and resource pooling, and the intergenerational and horizontal transmission of cultural knowledges, values, and practices.

Conclusions

While there is a wealth of scholarship interrogating the ways Black women deviate from dominant mothering expectations, symbiotic mothering highlights the unique cultural skillsets these mothers actively engage to meet the everyday demands of mothering, particularly related to food provision.