Parenting with Precarity: A Narrative Analysis of the Role of Child Welfare System Surveillance and Threat in Shaping Parenting Identity and Decision Making Among Young Mothers in Foster Care

Background and Purpose: Young mothers in foster care are faced with multiple, often simultaneous developmental transitions to parenthood, to adulthood, and to exiting the child welfare system (Courtney 2009; Pryce and Samuels 2010). However, scholarship on pregnant and parenting youth in foster care has largely focused on their risk for adverse life course outcomes, and on their children’s risk for intergenerational child maltreatment(Putnam-Hornstein, Cederbaum, King, Cleveland, et al. 2013). Comparatively little attention has been paid to how young mothers’ experiences of how the child welfare system shapes their parenting. Specifically, this paper addresses the extent to which young mothers’ experiences of child welfare system surveillance and threat of child removal shapes their pregnancy and early parenting development.

Methods: This qualitative, narrative study uses data from in-depth interviews with 29 parenting youth in foster care who are participating in an evaluation of the Illinois Pregnant and Parenting Youth in Care Home Visiting Pilot. The sample includes young mothers who were in foster care and either pregnant or parenting a child under age one at the time of enrollment. The study sample is predominantly first time mothers (n = 19) who are African American (n=18). Their ages range from 15 to 21-years-old.

Findings: Young mothers experience child welfare system surveillance and the threat of child removal as key features of their transitions to parenthood. Young mothers make meaning of their identities as mothers through their perceptions of child welfare system rules and surveillance, through the threat of child removal, and for some mothers, their experiences of their children being placed in foster care (n=6). Young mothers narrate how their parenting decisions, mothering identities, and parent-child relationships are influenced by their experiences with their child welfare system involvement.

Conclusion and Implications: This study contributes to our empirical knowledge of the transition to parenthood for young parents in care. The findings suggest a need for child welfare providers to consider how young parents experience child welfare system surveillance and the persistent threat of child removal in how child welfare staff are trained to support this population of young parents and their children. They also highlight the need for additional investigation of how young parents experience child welfare system policies and practices during the transition to parenthood.