Informal Networks of Low‐Income Mothers: Support, Burden, and Change

• Date: 01 August 2019
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12573

M R Florida State University

L M. MW Florida State University∗

Informal Networks of Low-Income Mothers:

Support, Burden, and Change

Objective: The authors examined the support

and burdenof low-income, urban mothers’ infor-

mal networks.

Background: Living or growing up in poverty

strongly predicts barriers and instability across

several life domains for mothers and their chil-

dren. Informal networks can play a critical role

in promoting maternal and child well-being par-

ticularly in the midst of poverty. Understanding

informal support and the reciprocal burden it

may create is especially relevant for low-income

families living with a reduced public safety net

in the post–welfare reform era. Therefore, study

aims were to measuresupport and burden among

low-income mothers and determine if support

and burden change over time.

Method: Data were from the Welfare, Chil-

dren, Families project, a longitudinal study

of 2,400 low-income caregivers of children

and adolescents living in Boston, Chicago,

or San Antonio. We applied latent class

analyses to support and burden indicators

in four domains—emotional, favor, child care,

and nancial.

Results: The results supported the following

four proles of informal networks: healthy,

unhealthy, burden only, and support only.

Although most mothers had healthy informal

Florida State University,College of Social Work, 296

Champions Way,Tallahassee, FL 32306 (mradey@fsu.edu).

∗Florida State University,College of Human Sciences,

Sandels Building 210, Tallahassee, FL 32306.

Key Words: family relations, kinship, latent class analysis,

low-income families, poverty, social support.

networks, approximately one third experienced

no support or support imbalance, which related

to network changes at later time points. Demo-

graphic characteristics largely were not predic-

tive of support prole or prole change.

Conclusion: Although many mothers had

healthy support and burden, the most vulnerable

did not have consistently healthy informal net-

works. The identication of a sizable minority

of low-income mothers who cannot consistently

rely on informal support is signicant in light

of the diminished formal supports available

to children and families.

Approximately one in 10 U.S. families live

in poverty, including 28% of single-mother

families and 18% of all children (Fontenot,

Semega, & Kollar, 2018). Despite the detrimen-

tal impacts of poverty on health, educational

outcomes, and lifestyle behaviors (for a review,

see Edin & Kissane, 2010), poor families in the

United States benet less from the public safety

net than families in other industrialized nations

(Institute of Medicine, 2013). The Personal

Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconcilia-

tion Act (1996) replaced the formal cash safety

net with an employment-based system. This

increased poor families’ reliance on informal

supports (Levine, 2013). Post–welfare reform,

the percentage of families “disconnected” from

employment and cash welfare grew from 12%

of low-income single mothers in 2004 to 20%

in 2008 (Loprest & Nichols, 2011), and welfare

redistribution spending across all government

programs decreased among the poorest families

(Moftt, 2015). Of eligible families, Temporary

Journal of Marriage and Family 81 (August 2019): 953–967 953

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12573