Compensatory Connection: Mothers' Own Stakes in an Intensive Mother-Child Relationship

In the past several decades, mothering has intensified by a number of measures. Explanations for this intensification tend to forefront women's concerns about others, such as concerns about their children's future economic security. This qualitative 3-year longitudinal study of U.S. mothers of young children looks at women's own needs in relation to their mothering intensity. It finds an additional factor contributing to this intensity is compensatory connection, or increasing the attention and prioritization given to one element of one's life in order to make up for insecurity experienced in other realms. Specifically, women who experience their partnerships or work lives to be insecure are the women most prone to draw on ideals of the centrality of the mother-child relationship and to exhibit pronounced attachment behaviors with their children. As partnership and work insecurities can occur across class, this study nuances prior work on class differences in mothering.