Perspectives on being mothered and on negotiating the transition to motherhood: A qualitative study of low-income single mothers in Botswana

Abstract

This study explored the different circumstances that single, low-income women from Botswana had to navigate in childhood with their own mothers and how they experienced and negotiated motherhood as single mothers living in poverty. Grounded in a constructionist paradigm and in literature on motherhood as a practice, discourse, and social identity that is constructed in the intersecting contexts of culture, class, ethnicity, and gender, in-depth data were gathered in semi-structured interviews with 15 women living in a rural region in Botswana. Women felt unprepared for motherhood and struggled in this role, yet they also viewed motherhood as transforming.