Hope Springs Maternal : Homeless Mothers Talk about Making Sense of Adversity

by Gerson, Jill

• ISBN13: 9781884092718
• ISBN10: 1884092713
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of New England

Summary

This revised and updated edition of Hope Springs Maternal incorporates the latest data on homeless mothers, changes to laws and policies regarding the homeless nationally and in New York, and an expanded discussion of their implications for social workers, planners, politicians, and shelter administrators concerned with helping homeless mothers establish independent lives for themselves and their children. Through extensive interviews with twenty-four young women of color living in temporary shelters in New York City who were either pregnant or had very young children, Dr. Jill Gerson analyzes the shelter users' backgrounds, current living experiences, and views of home, family, and parenting. Employing a life-history approach, she focuses on the ways the mothers' lives were shaped by both socioeconomic context and interpersonal experiences. Gerson finds that most of the mothers had experienced various disruptive experiences in childhood and adolescence and that their shelter use was closely related to the adverse economic realities faced by many poor women of color. These shelter experiences were actually part of the mothers' search for a safe haven that could help them become self-sufficient adults and competent parents. The narratives reflect each individual's capacity to use limited social resources for personal development. Such transitional shelter use often coincided with efforts to achieve economic stability, obtain appropriate housing, and develop caring personal relationships.

Author Biography

JILL GERSON received a DSW from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and a MSW from Hunter College School of Social Work. A longtime resident of New York City, Dr. Gerson has focused her social work practice on program development for under-served youth and families with young children. She is currently on the faculty of Lehman College in the Bronx, NY, Department of Sociology and Social Work. While teaching at Lehman, she developed an introductory course for human service workers aimed at enhancing their skills in working with families facing the complex challenges of poverty and social injustice.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Profiles of the Mothers	p. 41
The Mothers' Past Lives: Understanding Pathways to the Sheher	p. 91
The Mothers' Present Lives: Making Sense of Adversity While Living in the Shelter	p. 117
The Mothers' Future Lives: Making Sense of Hope	p. 187
Hope Springs Maternal: Considerations and Questions About the Future of Mothers Without Homes	p. 214
Table of the Mothers' Characteristics	p. 273
References	p. 277
Index	p. 307
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