(Un)Expected Allies and Adversaries: Relationships That Define Young Mothers' Experiences with the Child Welfare System

Background and Purpose: Young mothers face various challenges following the birth of their child, including higher concentrations of poverty, housing instability, social isolation, and mental health concerns. Consequently, they experience an increased risk of child welfare involvement and more intensive interventions than their older counterparts. Young mothers’ relationships, both within and external to the child welfare system, can trigger involvement, impact their trajectories, and shape their experience of child welfare, yet little is known about the nature and quality of those relationships.

Methods: Twenty-one young mothers with child welfare involvement in Ontario while under 25 and pregnant or parenting participated in this study. Participants completed an online demographic questionnaire and then participated in a virtual semi-structured interview via video conference or telephone. This was a geographically and racially mixed sample (29% were white, 29% were First Nations, Métis, or Inuit, 24% were Black, and 19% were East Asian, South Asian, or Latin American). The majority (86%) endorsed struggling with mental health concerns, 62% indicated they relied on government assistance as their primary income or reported no income, and 38% had been in foster care as children or adolescents. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to identify themes related to relationships that defined young mothers’ experiences with the child welfare system while pregnant or parenting.

Results: Young mothers’ descriptions of the relationships that defined their experiences with the child welfare system were conceptualized into themes. First, some mothers identified how child welfare workers, service providers, and family members acted as critical supports, often buffering the impact of their challenging circumstances as young mothers and the distress resulting from a child welfare investigation and ongoing involvement. Second, mothers described how child welfare workers and family members acted in ways that threatened their safety and the integrity of their families. These relationships were characterized by a misuse of power to threaten more intensive state surveillance or family separation. Third, mothers described ways in which unexpected allies emerged within highly contentious contexts. These allies, often in positions of significant power, were able to interrupt the trajectory of harmful and unwarranted state intervention in young mothers’ families. Lastly, young mothers described the unpredictability of allies and adversaries, underscoring how experiences with the child welfare system depend entirely on which workers or other professionals were assigned to their case.

Conclusions and Implications: Young mothers with child welfare involvement in Ontario articulated how relationships with family members, workers, and other key professionals defined their experience with the system. Sometimes supportive, sometimes adversarial, young mothers emphasized how critical allies could be in helping them navigate their involvement with child welfare. These findings highlight how key supports can shift mothers’ experiences and provide insights about creating positive relationships that help to address the challenges of early parenthood in settings less characterized by coercion and surveillance.