Becoming a Mother without a Home: Pregnancy, Homelessness and Early Motherhood

This paper explores the processes through which women without homes become mothers. The subjectivities of pregnant women and new mothers experiencing homelessness are mediated by ‘good’ mothering discourses, and they face multiple barriers associated with structural oppression to meet societal expectations and to enact these discourses. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Australia that investigated women’s experiences of homelessness, pregnancy and early motherhood, constructions of the ‘good’ mother are contested through an exploration of how mothering subjectivities are produced under the conditions of homelessness.

Building on Beverley Skeggs’ conceptualisation of subjectivity and how it is inextricably linked to exchange value, and how for women this is profoundly attached to their femininity and their capacity to hold respectable distinctions, this study revealed the following key findings. First, the process of becoming a mother without a home encompasses value regimes, intersectional structures of oppression, and questions of respectability that shape how women without homes prepare for and experience motherhood. Second, mothering while homeless can be imbued with feelings of shame and, because constructed notions of ‘good’ motherhood are incompatible with homelessness, can result in a sense of abjectness for not meeting these moral standards. And last, becoming a mother without a home encompasses ongoing and invisible labour, occurs in the absence of structural support, but can also be transformational.