Mothers in the Field: How Motherhood Shapes Fieldwork and Researcher-Subject Relations

Ethnography as a qualitative research method has evolved over time to increasingly demand that social scientists become reflexive by analyzing the effects of their presence in the field. The emphasis on reflexivity means that the researcher acknowledges his or her subjectivity and the consequences of the fact that the ethnographer is, in the words of Robert Smith, "his own research tool" (2006, 351). The dynamics created by the researcher's presence and interaction with the research subjects may only become apparent once the fieldwork has been completed. Of course, not all ethnographic researchers see the value in having a reflexive approach to their work in the field, and many continue to give short shrift to the complexities of their "place" in the field when writing up their work.

For researchers who are mothers, engaging in ethnographic fieldwork with women provides a unique opportunity to analyze the effects of motherhood in the research process and relations with participants. This essay is a reflexive analysis by two ethnographic researchers whose status as mothers became an important component of studies of working women in two very different urban research sites: one in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and one in Brooklyn, New York. We begin by discussing the use of reflexive analysis in ethnography and then provide brief descriptions of the two ethnographic research projects.

In the rest of the essay we explore four dimensions of motherhood relevant to the ethnographic research process. Through the lens of motherhood, we show how social science research can be enriched by researchers reflecting on their multiple roles and paying attention to dimensions such as (1) motherhood as building rapport between participants and researchers, (2) researchers' and subjects' philosophies on disciplining children, (3) researchers' and subjects' philosophies and practices of child care, and, (4) motherhood as a component of methodology throughout the research process. When useful, we shift into first-person narrative accounts.

Ethnographic Reflexivity

What many consider to simply be thorough ethnography, that which includes an analysis of the researcher's position in the field, stems in part from the core principles of feminist methodology that have been absorbed into sociological and anthropological research (DeVault 1999). Women have often been studied peripherally—in the context of men's lives—as evidenced in the works of Wacquant (2004), Duneier (1992), Liebow (1967), and others. Sociologist Dorothy Smith (1989) argued that women's lives should be studied ethnographically from the women's points of view and that this empirical work could lead to the theorizing of gender and power from women's "standpoints." Feminist researchers also put forth the idea that by having female researchers study female participants, a more open dialogue could be explored, allowing for deeper understanding of social issues. Women anthropologists responded emphatically to the claim by leading male scholars that women's writing was not innovative, pursuing such innovation in part by writing the (gendered) researcher back into the anthropological narrative (Behar and Gordon 1996). Matching the researcher and participants by gender, race, language, marital status, and culture, though, is not enough to eliminate the class and power differences that prevail while doing ethnographic research (Lal 1996; Warren 2001; Wolf 1996).

An exploration of the effects of motherhood in the field humanizes the researcher in ways that are not always disclosed in academic writing, even in ethnographies that reflexively analyze the researcher's class/racial/gender identity. Carol Warren has pointed out that motherhood is a key marker of mutual identification between women researchers and participants (2001). With some notable exceptions (Allison 1991; Grasmuck 2005; Stack 1974), researchers who are mothers often leave these identities out of their written ethnographies. The discussions of ethnographic research presented here are attempts to fill the void in earlier studies, by following the lead of other women ethnographers who place themselves as both insiders and outsiders (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Joseph 1996; Lan 2006; Naples 2003; Stack 1996). Taking the position of insider on the basis of common characteristics that the researcher shares with her participants, in this case being mothers or doing "mother work," at times...