Myths and Monsters: Challenging assumptions of poor working class motherhood through feminist research

This chapter focuses on the ways in which a feminist approach to research can challenge hegemonic understandings of poor working-class mothers. Enmeshed relations between knowledge and power, hegemonic, 'common-sense' understandings, and the state's involvement in families' lives form an oppressive net, which has long held such women in its snare. For the past several decades, feminist research has provided a means of unraveling these affairs and examining the invisible bonds that continue to constrain large sections of the population. The chapter explores how feminisms have shaped my work in terms of knowledge production and in challenging commonly held assumptions. This ethnographic research with poor working-class mothers at a Sure Start programme in the UK provides an illustrative example.