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Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 3, 2000

Single Mothers and Social Support:

The Commitment to, and Retreat from, Reciprocity
Margaret K. Nelson

Drawing on interviews with thirty-nine single mothers living in a rural area, this
paper describes the relationships of support between single mothers and those on
whom they rely for assistance in daily living, and explores the extent to which these
relationships are based on expectations of reciprocity. After a description of the
setting and methods, this article is divided into two sections. The first section argues
that single mothers hold most tightly to a narrow norm of balanced reciprocity of
material goods and services in their relationships with others in similar situations,
but that they stretch that norm as they broaden their support networks outward to
those they view as being more fortunate than themselves. In the second section,
the work involved in maintaining relationships of dependence and mutuality is
analyzed.
KEY WORDS: single mothers; social support; exchange.

INTRODUCTION

For over twenty-five years, Carol Stack’s All Our Kin (1974) has shaped ideas
about how survival strategies of poor, single mothers are based on relationships
of exchange. A central theme in that analysis is that the give and take in these
relationships can be understood within the anthropological perspective of the gift:
giving carries with it the obligation to reciprocate, an obligation enforced by “kin
and community sanctions” (p. 14). The idea that social networks operate on the
basis of reciprocity is now a well-worn, if often underexamined, assumption.1

Direct correspondence to Margaret K. Nelson, Department of Sociology, Middlebury College,

Middlebury, VT 05753 (e-mail: mnelson@middlebury.edu).
1 Some scholars relying on this assumption acknowledge negative outcomes that follow from the re-
quirement of reciprocity such as limited mobility (Dordick, 1997; Stack, 1974) and the work of
maintaining relationships (Edin and Lein, 1997). Many, however, focus on the positive features of re-
ciprocal support, especially when characterizing relationships among and between African American
women. To a certain extent this tendency arises in reaction to a body of literature (Frazier, 1939/1966;

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The distinctiveness of the population, community, and even the time of stable
welfare2 in which Stack undertook her research raises questions about the extent
to which similar relationships of mutual support would be found in areas where
single mothers are white, live in the small villages and towns of a rural state,
and have access to relationships with those who have greater resources than their
own. Although single mothers living exclusively in rural areas are less frequently
the target of scholarly investigation than are those in urban communities (for
exceptions, see Schein [1995] and Wijnberg and Reding [1999]), relationships of
mutual support in the countryside are frequently romanticized. The “fictive kin”
of Stack’s research stands next to the barn raising as, if not a scholarly icon, a
cultural one.
A substantial body of quantitative research offers more skepticism about the
degree to which those in need can rely on others for support in getting by. Using
a somewhat narrow definition of support networks—living in an extended family
situation, receiving at least half of her income from someone other than her hus-
band, or getting unpaid child care—Hogan, Hao, and Parish (1990, p. 810) found
that although the majority of single mothers participate in a support network, “sub-
stantial proportions of single mothers fall outside such informal support systems.”
In a later study, limited to intergenerational support, Hogan, Eggebeen, and Clogg
(1993, pp. 1444–1445) found that while unmarried mothers more often receive
support from their parents than do their married peers, less than half of the single
mothers receive significant amounts of this support and that “parents in poverty are
significantly less likely than persons with higher incomes to be involved in either
the giving or receiving of support.” Roschelle (1997) similarly offers a contem-
porary challenge to research that claims that social support is prevalent and can
mitigate against the deleterious effects of poverty (see, for example, Stack, 1974;
Allen, 1979; McAdoo, 1980) when she asserts that the “informal social support
networks typically found in minority communities are not as pervasive as they
were in the past” (p. xi).
Most of the quantitative studies can not explore the issue of reciprocity.
Roschelle, for example, acknowledges that her data do not allow a determination
of whether “the individuals giving help to respondents are the same individuals
who are also receiving that help.” By focusing exclusively on intergenerational
exchange, Hogan, Eggebeen, and Clogg (1993, p. 1455), however, do examine
reciprocity and they report mixed results: “Nearly half of all persons receiving
intergenerational support also give support”; the other half do not. However, even

Moynihan, 1965; Wilson, 1987) that highlights social disorganization and welfare dependency in
minority communities. Rather than seeing pathology, scholars like Dickerson (1995, pp. 6–7) empha-
size “the strengths of the matrifocal, consanguineous pattern in maintaining generational continuity,
providing services to kin, and resisting the negative impact of pressures outside the family” (see also
Sudarkasa, 1981; Ladner, 1972; Roschelle, 1997, p. 181).
2 In 1996 Vermont received a waiver that released it from the requirement to comply with “welfare
reform” until 2001 (Kitchel, 1998). The women in this study who did rely on “welfare” had thus not
yet had to come to terms with the new restrictions.
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Single Mothers and Social Support 293

those quantitative studies that do examine exchanges between partners in a relation-

ship (and thus explore reciprocity to a limited extent) neither assess the quantity of
goods given or received (but simply record presence or absence of giving or receiv-
ing) nor consider whether their definitions of reciprocity are shared by the actors.
Indeed, there is good substantive and theoretical reason to believe that indi-
viduals might view themselves as being in reciprocal relationships even when the
available quantitative data suggest that they are net recipients. First, quantitative
data cannot get at the subtlety of exchange relationships. As theorists have noted
(Malinowski, 1926; Mauss, 1954; Gouldner, 1960; Levi-Strauss, 1969; Sahlins,
1972; Homans, 1974), gratitude, dependence, loyalty, and deference might serve
as items of reciprocation and these are notoriously difficult to measure. Second,
the time span in most studies is quite limited: many draw on reports of items
given and received within the recent past; thus they are more likely to measure
what Sahlins (1972, pp. 195–196) defines as balanced reciprocity, where “relations
between people are disrupted by a failure to reciprocate within limited time and
equivalence leeways” rather than what he calls “generalized reciprocity” where
“the material flow is sustained by prevailing social relations” and the “expectation
of reciprocity is indefinite.” Some of the single mothers identified as net recipients
by Hogan, Eggebeen, and Clogg (1993) might understand their current receipt of
goods and services as repayment for gifts offered in the past or even of obligations
they expect to fill sometime in the future. They might also view themselves as
net givers because the items they consider relevant to an exchange had not been
measured in that study. Finally, a body of research has shown that individuals
often report giving more than they receive (Komter, 1996) and that this may result
from what Pahl (1984, p. 25) terms “the general concern of people not to appear
too dependent on others.” Even among families, where Sahlins would argue that
generalized reciprocity applies, Finch and Mason (1993, p. 172) note that “people
try to keep a balance between dependence and independence” in their relationships
and that “[s]ome very fine calculations (which of course may not be successful)
take place to try to ensure that no one becomes a net giver or net receiver, or is
beholden to someone else.”
In short, while Stack’s (1974) research suggests that reciprocity is the norm
among bounded communities of shared poverty, where what each individual has is
available for all to see, her study leaves open the question of whether reciprocity is
also required by those who live in quite different circumstances. The quantitative
data suggest not only that support may be less available than has been assumed in
the past but that, at least insofar as flows can be measured, balanced reciprocity
is not invariably the norm. However, those studies leave open the question of
whether “net recipients” understand themselves as such. Finally, both some quan-
titative research and much theoretical literature would suggest that, in fact, most
individuals want to avoid an understanding of themselves as dependent and thus
might strive to understand their relationships with others as having achieved some
kind of balance.
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294 Nelson

This article seeks to shed light on at least some of these questions and thus to
fill some of the gaps in the existing literature. Most importantly, I seek to understand
the degree to which single mothers in a rural state require reciprocity of themselves
and, more specifically, the logic of reciprocity that underlies their giving support to,
and accepting support from, others. I also seek to shed light on the work involved
in establishing and maintaining social support. In what follows, I first describe
the setting for this research and the sample of single mothers from whom data
were collected. The main body of the article is divided into two sections. In the
first (and larger) I suggest that single mothers believe that balanced reciprocity
should be the norm in their exchange relationships, but that they use a different
understanding of the requirements of balance among different groups of people as
distinguished by need and degree of familiarity.3 In the second section I analyze
the work involved in maintaining relationships of dependence and mutuality. In
the conclusion I reflect on some features of the findings and consider the degree
to which they can be generalized.

METHODS

This study is based on interviews with thirty-nine single mothers with at least
one child under the age of eighteen. Initially, I located respondents through a vari-
ety of techniques such as placing notices about the research in the State Department
of Health office (which handles the WIC Program), at a local Parent-Child Center
(a resource for young mothers and their children), and at various day care centers.
Those who agreed to be interviewed were then asked to provide the names of other
single mothers. The snowball sample technique was particularly appropriate for
this study because it allowed my research assistants and me to interview women
involved in the same networks of social support. All interviews were conducted in
Vermont.

SETTING

The growth in the number of single-parent families in the U.S. as a whole—

as well as in other countries (Burns and Scott, 1994)—is a well-established fact.
Vermont is no exception. While an image of stable, white families predominating in
rural areas proves to be correct about the past, by 1990 rural areas were catching up
with the rest of the country in the breakdown of the “traditional” family structure
(McGranahan, 1994). As is the case elsewhere, Vermont’s families headed by
3 Although this article explores relationships between single mothers and the members of their
support networks, it excludes relationships between single mothers and their boyfriends/domestic
partners. Because this latter set of relationships introduces a distinctive element—that of
sexuality—it cannot easily be characterized within the framework of this analysis. In addition, it
should be made clear that this study excludes as well professional relationships (e.g., with social
workers) and relationships with those mediated by organized groups (e.g., ministers or agencies like
Alcoholics Anonymous).
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Single Mothers and Social Support 295

women are highly likely to be poor even though the majority of them are white.4
In 1990, when 12.3 percent of all persons in Vermont lived in a family consisting of
a female head of household and her children, almost half (42%) of the state’s poor
consisted of those very female heads of families and their children (Livingston and
McCrate, 1993, p. 6).5 In 1995, when the median income for all Vermont families
was $44,000 (slightly above the median for all U.S. families), the median income
for single mothers with children was only slightly more than a third of that—a
paltry $16,000 (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 1998).

SAMPLE

Like single mothers in the U.S. in general, the women interviewed in this
study were quite poor although their median family income ($20,000) stood
somewhat above that found by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research study
four years earlier. (Family incomes ranged from $6,600 to $45,000.) Of the thirty-
nine women, eighteen had one child, eleven had two children, and the remain-
der had three or more. At the time of the interview, the women ranged in age
from twenty to forty-nine with a median age of thirty-six; at the time at which
they first gave birth or adopted a child, the women ranged in age from seven-
teen to forty with a median age of twenty-four. Five of the women held no job
and relied on a package of state supports (including ANFC,6 food stamps, and
Medicaid), nine of the women had some combination of part-time work and state
support, and the remaining twenty-five relied on their own earnings and/
or support from others (including child support) but received no assistance
from the state. Three-quarters of the women had previously been married (although
not in all cases to the father of their child or children); the remaining nine women
had never been married. All but five of the women lived alone with their children:
three lived with a domestic partner (two with men; one with another woman);7 one
lived with another single woman and her children; and one had some other adult
relative living in the household on a temporary basis. Although all of the women
were white, three were raising children who were not white: one was living with
her adopted Chinese daughter; two had given birth to biracial children.
4 For a discussion of the poverty of rural single-parent families see Lichter and Eggebeen (1992) and
Lichter and McLaughlin (1995); for the significance of race see Dill and Williams (1992).
5 A significant body of research demonstrates clearly that official poverty rates are understated. Not
only is the poverty level itself out of date, it is not adjusted to a basic needs budget (Renwick and
Bergmann, 1993). The Vermont Job Gap Study (Kahler, 1997) calculates the cost of basic needs for a
single parent with one child and a single parent with two children in both rural and urban Vermont; it
finds that a realistic account of monthly expenses ranges from $1,800 (single parent with one child in
a rural area) to $2,299 (single parent with two children in an urban area). Thus it estimates that single
parents require annual incomes of between $25,712 and $43,478 when the federal poverty level is
pegged at $10,360 for the former group and $12,980 for the latter.
6 Vermont’s welfare program is called ANFC (Aid to Needy Families with Children) rather than the
more common AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children).
7 Although some of the women were living with boyfriends, they spoke of themselves as “single
mothers.”
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296 Nelson

DATA COLLECTION

The interviews generally lasted at least two hours; they were all taped and
the tapes were subsequently transcribed. All interviews used an interview guide
and followed essentially the same format adapted to special circumstances and
the flow of information. The women were asked a series of questions about their
background (education, marital history, age at which they had their first child), their
current living situation (who lived in the household, whether they owned or rented),
and sources of income (jobs, reliance on means-tested programs, child support).
The women were also asked about access to different kinds of material and
emotional support that might be necessary in the course of daily life: transportation,
home repairs, financial assistance (both small and large sums), child care, and
comfort or emotional support. More specifically, the women were asked whether
they ever needed any of these kinds of assistance and whether they had in fact asked
for assistance when it was needed. If they had requested assistance, they were then
encouraged to discuss further the situation in which they had done so, to specify
whom they had asked (and why), and to indicate whether the requested assistance
had been received. Follow-up questions probed their feelings about receiving help
and their sense of obligation to make a return gesture to those who gave them
assistance. (If they did not receive help when they had asked, they were asked
about their feelings about that refusal.) They were also questioned about times
they needed help and did not request it.
In addition, respondents were asked to describe in more detail their relation-
ships with individuals they named as being members of their support networks
by specifying what was given to and what was received from each named person.
Towards the end of the interview, the respondents were asked a set of general
questions about giving and receiving which were not attached to relationships
with specific individuals but probed their broader expectations about what it was
appropriate to ask from, and what it was appropriate to give to, extended family
members, neighborhoods, and the broader communities in which they lived.
As many of the following quotes illustrate, respondents found the interview
questions thought-provoking. Although their responses make it clear that they did
have “policies” to manage their exchange relationships—the logics of reciprocity
discussed here—they might never have articulated these policies, to themselves or
others, prior to the interview.

THE COMMITMENT TO, AND RETREAT FROM, RECIPROCITY

Given the substantial body of theoretical scholarship that argues that reci-
procity both initiates and sustains relationships, it is not surprising that the single
mothers interviewed for this study expressed a strong verbal commitment to this
notion.
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Single Mothers and Social Support 297

Anne Davenport,8 when asked whether she believed it was important to make
returns for assistance received, responded, “I try really hard to . . . reciprocate [to
my friends]; same with my family. I always feel obligated to give back.” Simi-
larly, Kate Harrington, when asked about her feelings about receiving assistance,
said, “It’s okay if we can do a barter thing—like, I would like to be able to
do something for the people who help me with child care.” Janet Linden said
as well that she preferred that her requests operated as “a two-way street” and
that “if it turned out not to be after a couple of requests” she “would probably
hesitate to request again.” And Maria Nash said that when people did some-
thing for her, she would “try to do something for them. Even if they don’t ask
me for anything, or they don’t need anything, I’ll try to do something else for
them.”
While theory might suggest that compliance with an abstract, but nonetheless
real, cultural norm of reciprocity alone motivates these statements, the interviews
suggest that a desire to be—and to be perceived as being—independent and self-
sufficient provides an equally strong motivation. Janet Linden, for example, when
questioned about what she believed it was appropriate to ask of her friends and
family, responded, “You’re talking to a real independent person here. I don’t ask
for much.” To the same question Cathy Earl responded, “I like to do things on
my own; I like to be self-sufficient, so [asking for help is] not something that I do
a lot.”
In short, to the extent that single mothers could describe their exchange rela-
tionships with others as being governed by the self-imposed expectation that they
would give back as much as they had received, they could sustain an image of
themselves as independent agents in their own lives rather than dependent on the
kindness of others. Indeed, this should come as no surprise. Sustained one-way
flows (a feature of what Sahlins [1972] calls “generalized reciprocity”) are often
preserved for children and for those who are disabled. Self-sufficiency is a valued
norm within this community of Vermonters (Nelson and Smith, 1999) as well as
among other single mothers (Hertz and Ferguson, 1997).
However, the single mothers in this study faced challenges to both the com-
mitment to balance and to that of independence/self-sufficiency. Because they
lived in situations of very real need—whether with respect to the emotional de-
mands of raising a child on their own or with respect to the material demands of
getting by on limited incomes—they often found themselves drawing deeply on
the resources of others. But unlike the the “Flats” described by Stack (1974) or
the community of homeless persons described by Dordick (1997), both of which
operated on the basis of assumed need and reserved harsh judgment for those who
did not reciprocate, these rural single mothers could not assume that others would
be understanding of their needs. Indeed, Cathy Earl, who had suggested that she
liked to be self-sufficient, indicated that she had arrived at this preference through
8 All names are pseudonyms.
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repeated negative experiences of asking for help in the past:

Interviewer: Has there ever been a time you’ve needed [financial assistance] and
haven’t asked?
CE: Oh, all the time.
Interviewer: And why don’t you ask?
CE: Because . . . you don’t want them to think, “Here’s Cathy again, she needs
help again,” you know, “she just can’t make it.” [My brothers] don’t have any
idea what it’s like to be poor, to not have savings to fall back on. They’ve never
been in that position. So there’s a tendency to judge, even though they do help,
they kind of feel like, you know, “What’s wrong with her? Why can’t she make
it?” They don’t have any idea what it’s like to be single, to be a woman, to have
three kids to support.

AN OVERVIEW OF THREE LOGICS OF RECIPROCITY

Not surprisingly, then, as the women in this study discussed the manner in
which they negotiated the details of their daily lives, they relied on a shifting
interpretation of the demands of reciprocity (and, indeed, of the demands of self-
sufficiency).
These single mothers appear to divide their world of social support into three
central groupings and to apply a different logic of reciprocity to each. Those
who seem to them to have similar needs—by virtue of shared life circumstances
(other single mothers) or comparable situations—are singled out for a narrow kind
of balanced reciprocity in which they hold themselves responsible for making
exchanges of equivalent material goods and services.
In relationships with those thought to be in a more comfortable position
(whether this belief is true or not), the women retain the norm and language of
balanced reciprocity while freeing themselves from the obligation to make returns
of equivalent material goods and services and sometimes even any return at all.
Employing “strategic explanations,” to the interviewer and perhaps to themselves,
they provide accounts of how a very different kind of give-and-take can still be
reckoned as balanced reciprocity. In particular, they either shift their understanding
of what they owe to nonmaterial goods—an “economy of gratitude” and “emotion
work” (Hochschild, 1983), ties of affiliation, fulfilling another’s expectations—
or they erase obligation altogether by asserting that the gift (and perhaps their
acceptance of it) should be, or is, its own reward.
Finally, with respect to those who stand outside of intimate relationships
of friendship or kinship, the single mothers shed the requirement of balanced
reciprocity altogether by envisioning a world peopled by those (and here they
include themselves) who should (and sometimes do) make spontaneous gestures
of pure generosity.
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Single Mothers and Social Support 299

RECIPROCITY IN A COMMUNITY OF NEED

Many of the single mothers in this study spoke about their involvement in rich
relationships of exchange with other single mothers. As was true of the women
interviewed by Stack (1974), the women shared a variety of resources including
transportation, child care, small sums of money, and emotional support. And as was
true of those women as well, the women in this study used kinship terminology to
represent the nature of the bonds they shared with other single mothers. Speaking
retrospectively and thus reversing causality—where family follows from obligation
rather than creating it—Betsy Black said,
It’s always been clear to me that my friends [who are single mothers] are my family here,
because I can count on them more than I can count on my own family often. I mean, I can
call up and say, “Look, I need this or I need that,” and they’re available.

Anne Davenport similarly made a distinction between her relationship with her
parents and those in her “created” family to argue that mutual obligation trumps
biology:
I have a group of friends that are absolutely amazing as far as the sacrifices that we make
for one another are huge. Easter was a really good example. I had lunch with my parents,
which was the traditional lunch with my parents and our minister . . . and then I had dinner
with my friends. Somebody asked me what I was doing for Easter and I said, “I’m having
lunch with my parents and I’m having dinner with my real family.”

As an illustration for why her friends were now her “real” family, she described
how they had provided support at a time of enormous crisis:

My friend [Joan Meyer] was in a car accident in December and [my son was hurt in
the accident]. It was really difficult; it was very stressful; and everybody just took over
immediately. I was not going to leave [my son’s] side but I had another child—what was I
going to do with him? I had friends that immediately took over. From the day we were in
the hospital, until eleven days later when we left, I didn’t have to worry about where [my
other child] was or who was going to take care of him because they had already made the
arrangements. It was done for me.

If kinship terminology helps to bind individuals in trusting relationships, trust

does not rely on an assertion of kinship alone. Perhaps even more important to the
creation of trust is the assurance that those who live in similar circumstances will
understand, and be sympathetic about, daily needs. Kara Lattrell, after describing
a variety of people (and agencies) on whom she depended for support, spoke
with special warmth about her relationship with her friends Mary and Claudia. In
accounting for why they offered each other support and respect, she referred to
their common situation—the fact that they were all older single parents:

You know, we’re really kind of in the same boat. I mean, all three of us are single parents
and we all have one child. We were all older parents when we had our children; I mean, we
weren’t eighteen-year-olds. So I think there’s a lot of that common bond . . . you know, sort
of a shared life situation. It kind of makes it easy to think about helping each other out.
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Other respondents also referred to a “shared life situation” as the reason why
other single mothers would understand the strains in their lives and be sympathetic
about the need for support. Using precisely the same image as did Kara Lattrell—
the “same boat”—Anne Davenport said of her friendship with Joan Meyer, the
woman who had been in the accident with her son,
Joan [Meyer]—she’s the one we switch kids—we talk four times a day. I think that we
really support each other. She’s a single mom and I think we’re both in the same boat and
we utilize each other in very positive ways . . . I can trust her that . . . she’s not going to judge
me or look at me in any different way and respects me for me.

It is perhaps because those perceived as having comparable needs (even if

they aren’t found in precisely the same boat) can also be relied on to understand
why support is necessary, that single mothers expand their networks of a balanced
reciprocity of material goods and services to include them. Thus Cathy Earl, who
mentioned that she had often done without rather than abase herself before her
brothers, explained that she has established a relationship of mutual support with
an older woman friend who, she believes, because of her own history, will provide
nonjudgmental assistance:
You are either going to be seen as somebody who just can’t make it, or [is] always needy,
and I think that is the real drawback in asking for help—except for my friends who are
in similar situations, like other single mothers. I don’t hesitate at all to ask them for help
because they know what it’s like. And same with Dorothy, the older woman, who lives on
a fixed income, who raised her kids on welfare, and knew what it was like to be a single
parent. Those are the people who I know that I can go to. They aren’t going to judge me,
look down on me. They’re going to be there because they understand.

Carol Poirier believes herself to be fortunate in her relationship with Jack, an elderly
man in her neighborhood who is lonely, because “He doesn’t have a lot of family.
He didn’t have any children. His wife’s gone.” He provides Carol with those vital
services which, in a married couple, are often handled by the man in the house:
He makes sure to get my trash to the dump, you know, he just, he kind of checks in. We don’t
spend time together, we don’t do things together, but if my car one morning [didn’t start]
I’d probably call Jack . . . He came down when we were in [our new house] and rototilled
my garden.

And when she can, and when he asks, Carol offers similar services in return:
One day he got really sick and he couldn’t go out and he needed something from the store
and he called and said, “Could you go up to the store?” You know [I do] that kind of stuff
[for him]. [I’m] that kind of neighbor.

In Making Ends Meet, Edin and Lein (1997) refer to the work of maintain-
ing relationships of interdependence between single mothers relying on welfare
and low-wage work and the members of their support networks. This work will
be explored more intensively later. However, it is important to note here that the
relationships I have described are not automatic and that becoming a single mother
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Single Mothers and Social Support 301

does not ensure entry into a network of like-minded or similarly situated friends.
Some single mothers, in fact, know no others in their same situation; others may
even avoid this kind of relationship. In addition, each individual who does par-
ticipate in an intimate relationship of support has to both earn her place in that
relationship and abide by its implicit rules. These rules include making equiva-
lent returns, being sensitive to individual situations, and not taking advantage of
momentary vulnerability.
If the members of these networks might respond to each other’s extraordinary
needs—as in the case of Anne Davenport’s son’s car accident—by and large these
networks operate on the basis of a fairly balanced exchange of equivalencies within
a limited time span even though the language of more generalized reciprocity—
what goes round comes round—prevails. Joan Meyer, when asked whether she
had drawn on support for child care during the past six months, described how
during more routine times the friendship network appeared to operate on a loose
formula of “switch-offs”:
I ask my friends. My friends and I do switch-offs [for child care]. That’s the only way any of
us can afford day care . . . Anne Davenport and Martha Hickock, we do switch-offs . . . The
other switch-off that I do is switch off with rides. If I’m going to Centerville and I have
an appointment, I make it known: “I’m going there—does anybody need a ride? I have to
go anyway, it’s mandatory.” So we try to schedule appointments around the same time
frame . . . So those types of switch-offs we do and we do car-pooling kids. “Okay, I’m going
here, does anybody need anybody picked up during this time period?”

Similarly, Kara Lattrell described how her friendship with another single mother
involved easy-going trades of goods and services:
We’re sort of like the old, across-the-fence kind of neighbors. We trade back and forth, you
know? The old roll of toilet paper goes back and forth from house to house. And . . . the cup
of sugar, that kind of thing. We’ve traded child care a little bit, and [Mary] gives me rides
sometimes now because she has a car.

She explained that it was “easy to think about helping” out Mary and Claudia, the
other single mother in the same boat, as well, because she could assume that what
went round would, indeed, come round:
Because if it’s me, it means that sooner or later I’ll help her and sooner or later Claudia will
help me and then I’ll help Mary and then Claudia will help Mary, and, you know . . .

As the women are questioned more fully about the details of these relation-
ships, however, it becomes clear that emergencies and a loose language of sharing
aside, a balanced exchange of equivalencies is expected. On the one hand, Cathy
Earl, like Kara Lattrell, said she did not operate on a strict basis of immediate tit
for tat:

Interviewer: Do you try and keep track, for example, with your friends, if you’ve
asked one at one point do you try and ask someone else another time?
CE: No, not with my friends, I don’t.
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Interviewer: So you pretty much just call who comes to mind first.
CE: Yeah, yeah.

Yet Cathy also suggested that she kept a mental balance sheet:

Interviewer: If you needed money, for example, and your brothers weren’t avail-
able to you, what do you think you would do?
CE: Actually, Sarah has loaned me money before, so I could probably ask her,
and Dorothy, for small amounts.
Interviewer: How do you feel about receiving that kind of support from Sarah or
Dorothy?
CE: Again, actually, I feel okay about that. I always pay them back and I’ve done
the same for them. Like I say, they know what it’s like so it feels okay.

Anne Davenport also suggested that she tried to maintain balance because she
viewed herself as having special obligations to the single mothers in her network:
Because my group of support also involves single women, single parents, moms . . . I want
to make sure that it’s reciprocal. Yeah, [all that] comes into the decision: when have I last
called them, are they able to handle this right now, what can I do for them in exchange,
is there something I could do this week to help them out. I mean, you’re always thinking
about that.

The rules for survival in these relationships extend beyond maintaining bal-
ance. Anne Davenport continued her discussion of implicit norms to explain that
her network expected its members would be sensitive to individual situations and
would not take advantage of momentary vulnerability:
I think everybody—community, friends, family—has different things to offer and I think
you need to be mindful that this one friend may be on overload and you cannot ask them
for any more. Joan, for example—I knew she was tired, I knew she was in pain from the
accident. It wasn’t like I was going to call her up and say, “Hey, want two more kids?” Even
though I had a need I wasn’t going to make her life miserable because of it. Being mindful
of that and paying attention to what is available and making sure that you’re not asking too
much, keeping an eye on that [is important].

Failure to abide by these rules can result in being thrust out of a sustaining
network. Kate Harrington (about whom more will be written later) described how
a violation of these norms had broken up her circle of support. In her description
she vacillated between taking responsibility for the dissolution of her community
and a sense of grievance at being abandoned:

KH: I’ve needed a lot of emotional support.

Interviewer: And where does that come from?
KH: Well, it’s not [coming] right now. Because my community is kind of dis-
solving . . . I’m in transition trying to create a new one.
Interviewer: What are your feelings about asking people for that kind of support?
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Single Mothers and Social Support 303

KH: Well, prior to last week, I was comfortable with it, and now I’m not real
comfortable with it because there are some things that have happened, some
relationships are going through some tension, so I’m having a lot of . . . well,
I’m not asking for it right now, I’m just kind of waiting it out . . .
Interviewer: How do you decide who you are going to ask for particular kinds of
support?
KH: . . . With the emotional support it was my little community of women friends
and I had a couple of real close friends that I could turn to. But that’s dissolving,
and that’s kind of in transition right now . . . I just had two people really kind
of back off of me, and my feeling was I was asking for too much although
realistically I don’t believe that I was, but I think that that’s what they were
feeling, so they backed off. So I just lost two of my support people.

Without privileging either voice, it is worth noting that one of the lost two members
of her network—another single mother—believed that Kate had violated all three
norms: according to Barbara Quesnel, Kate took more than she gave, was not
sensitive to availability, and took advantage of a momentary crisis:

Interviewer: And Kate is a friend?

BQ: Yes. [in an exasperated tone of voice] [laughs]
Interviewer: Oh! [laughs] And what’s given and received in that [relationship]?
BQ: I actually do more giving than she does. She’s a taker . . . [I give her] baby-
sitting, emotional support, listening to her victimized life.
Interviewer: So how do you negotiate that relationship?
BQ: I’ve had a very, very hard time pulling away from people because I don’t
want to hurt them. But this relationship . . . .she’s a taker . . . I make up excuses
why I can’t do certain things for her, as opposed to being direct . . . I met her in
the crisis of my life. And she was very, very emotionally supportive; I was very
vulnerable. And . . . she is a very strong personality, and . . . when I’m with her
I find that I lose my voice. And she’s constantly asking things of me, and I have
a tendency to say yes when inside . . . it’s not really what I want to do.

NEGOTIATING RECIPROCITY IN RELATIONSHIPS

WITH THOSE MORE FORTUNATE

While single mothers appear to find comfort in, and rely heavily on, their
equitable and balanced exchanges of material goods and services in their relation-
ships with other single mothers (and with others who have similar needs), they
also find themselves in relationships with those they determine to be more fortu-
nate than themselves. Like the single mother friends, these other people (which
include family members and friends) offered a full range of goods and services to
the respondents, including emotional support, limited financial support, and help
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with the tasks of daily survival (e.g., transportation and baby-sitting). However,
these “others” were more likely than were single-mother friends to offer substantial
financial support—a form of assistance which is unavailable from those who have
little extra themselves. If the elements of these exchanges (that is, those with
other people and those with single mother friends) are otherwise the same, the
understanding of these relationships is quite different.
Having said as much, it is true that not all relationships with those more
privileged (whether economically or by life circumstances) lack elements of a
reciprocal exchange of goods and services. When possible, single mothers try to
sustain the exchange of equivalencies. Joan Meyer, for example, listed her mother
(in addition to her friends Anne and Martha) as someone with whom she had a
“switch-off”:

And my mom helps out quite a bit, which is a godsend, and with her the switch-off is
that . . . when they go away, I have to go watch their house and feed their dogs and take care
of their birds and do that kind of thing.

However, Joan also admitted, as did other respondents, that she could not always
return equivalencies, even to her mother, because, although her mother does child
care while Joan does house-sitting, her mother also provides Joan with substantial
financial support.
The failure to be able to reciprocate in kind is not surprising. Recall that
the single mothers do have acute needs and (for the most part) limited material
resources with which to make exchanges. This is not to imply that the women saw
themselves as dependent. Recall as well that pride in their own self-sufficiency was
a significant theme in their self-accounts. In order to accept substantial assistance
without assuming dependence, Joan, like the other single mothers interviewed,
offered a variety of strategic explanations for their actions.

Reciprocity Through Gratitude, Emotion Work, and Affiliation

As much theoretical writing about reciprocity would suggest, exchange re-

lationships can be balanced by repaying material goods with gratitude, emotional
support, and loyalty. What is striking, however, is that it is only with respect to
those identified as being more fortunate than themselves that single mothers define
these not merely as vital elements of repayment for goods and services received
but sometimes as the sole repayment. In asserting that these are sufficient items of
exchange in some, but not all of their relationships, the single mothers both make
a tacit nod to imbalance and deny it.
A simple economy of gratitude operates in some cases. Phoebe Stark first
asserted that her relationships with others were “all pretty reciprocal,” and she
noted that she preferred it that way because she didn’t want to “be obligated to
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people.” Yet she also acknowledged that she was the recipient of gifts for which
she incurred debts fulfilled in part by thanking people.
I mean sometimes at Christmas, you know, I always feel like, oh, you know, people are
always giving stuff to my kids and I’ve had to like [cut back]. I don’t give gifts anymore,
except for my immediate family . . . We make sure that [people who give presents are]
thanked and we are grateful.

She added that in these relationships she viewed emotion work as a valuable item
of exchange:
I might give in other ways. I have a tendency to give in other ways to people, not in material
ways—by being there or calling and, you know, checking on people and friends and talking.

Similarly, Kara Lattrell suggested that she recognized a debt to her brother and
sister-in-law because “they’re supportive of me in my situation . . . They take my
daughter and provide me time to rest and sort of recharge my body.” She suggested
that she paid off a portion of this perceived debt by sharing her insights:
I give them support in different ways. I mean, sometimes we’ll talk about a problem and
then we’ll just discuss it. And I’ll listen to them. I guess sometimes they appreciate my
insight into things.

In addition to gratitude and emotion work, single mothers view affiliation

with their children, and, in some cases, with themselves, as available resources to
meet the demands of reciprocity. Indeed, children frequently become “pawns” in
equations of giving and receiving. Betsy Black simultaneously asserts her rights
as a single mother to have care provided by her own mother and suggests that she
is not left in debt because her mother derives pleasure simply from being with
the grandchildren: “Because I’m a single mom I ask [my mother] to spend time
with the kids . . . And it’s a really good experience for the kids and she loves it, of
course.” When Kara Lattrell was asked about her brother and sister-in-law “what’s
given and received in that relationship,” she initially responded, “Well, let’s see. I
probably get more from them than I give, but I give them my kid! That’s a lot!”
(She then added the comment about listening.) In a somewhat different variation
on this theme, Carol Poirier described a relationship between her son (Mark) and
an older man (Rob) who had provided a male role model for her son:
He has cared about Mark. He was the rock that Mark—the male strength—that Mark needed,
that I guess teenage boys need. He’s the one that says get A’s or I’ll beat your head in, you
know, although you wouldn’t believe that he would do that. Of course Mark doesn’t get A’s
and he doesn’t beat his head in, but he’s the one that says don’t screw up. Just that form of
authority.

When Carol was explicitly asked, “Do you ever feel a sense that you owe him
something for giving your son so much,” she first responded with reference to what
Rob had received from affiliation with Mark: “No, because I know he’s gotten a
lot back. And he’s got this sixteen-year-old kid that thinks he walks on water and
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that feels really, really good.” She also suggested that she did feel “obligated to
him as my own friend but not as Mark’s support” and that affiliation with her could
be a resource as satisfactory as affiliation with her child:
I think sometimes it gives Rob some legitimacy because I tend to lead a normal life. And
everybody goes, “Oh Rob’s so off the wall, but, you know, he’s friends with Carol, so he’s
all right,” you know . . . Like yeah, and I think it’s helped him that way.

In this comment, interestingly, Carol simultaneously asserted that her single parent
family was “normal” and set up an account sheet in which she had fulfilled her
own obligation.
Before moving on to other forms of strategic explanations, it is worth noting
that in making these equations, the women are putting value on precisely the kinds
of skills and abilities feminist writers on caregiving and emotional work have long
valorized (DiLeonardo, 1987; Abel and Nelson, 1990). It might be argued that
these equivalencies cheapen the nonmaterial services—the talking, the gratitude,
the affiliation—by putting a “price” on them and by making them items in exchange
relationships; but it can also be argued that these equations take such activities out
of the realm of naturalized abilities and into the realm of skilled work. When
women “use” these skills as items of exchange they are explicitly recognizing
their intrinsic worth.

Satisfying the Giver’s Expectations

A different but closely related strategic explanation involves drawing on

evidence that they have satisfied the giver’s expectations. Most simply, the women
point to their own survival and the survival of their children as meeting a perceived
desire of friends and relatives to ensure the livelihood of those they value.
Although Anne Davenport refers to her friends as her “real family,” she has,
indeed, been very dependent on her real parents: she has not paid them rent in years
or reimbursed them for paying her fuel bill during the previous winter; she uses
their car; and they provide babysitting on a regular basis. While it is not easy for
her to dispel her sense of dependence, she balances the account sheet by pointing
to the satisfaction her parents derive from ensuring that their grandchildren are
well-cared for:
Because I’m an only child and because I have their only grandchild, it’s their way of feeling
like they’re helping . . . I also know my parents and know them well enough to know that
they would not be happy if they didn’t feel like they were doing something and making sure
that their grandchildren were taken care of.

In some exchanges, single mothers understand well that satisfaction on the

part of the giver is linked not just to “survival” but to the expectation of specific
actions on their part. As will be shown, Betsy Black suggested that her father had
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learned that it was enjoyable to give. She also understands that her father’s pleasure
is tied to the fact that she is pursuing a goal he values:

My dad’s helping me out . . . I think he thinks it’s really important. I know he thinks it’s really
important. He’s very excited that I’m going back [to school] . . . I’m sort of the only one of
the four [children in the family] that has, you know, real interest in going and continuing
education.

Amanda Silver makes a similar claim. During the interview she itemized some
of the help she had recently received—and for which she was grateful—from
members of her family:

My father recently [helped when] I . . . just had a whole bunch of car trouble, car insurance,
all that stuff . . . My family has been very good and when they know I’m in trouble, they
help. They’re very generous. My mother on her own decided that she would write me a
check every month for $100 to help with the rent, for example. Or when we go visit my
brother he’ll pay for both the kids’ tickets and he’ll pay for mine . . . I’m really fortunate.
But at the same time that’s the one time I did ask for money from my dad.

When asked whether she believed she had an “obligation” to reciprocate to those
family members who had helped her out, she responded affirmatively and further
noted that she felt that obligation as a persistent pressure tied closely to her family’s
expectations of her:

Oh yes, that’s the kicker. I pressure myself a lot about [that] . . . Bottom line—they really
would love to see me get a B.A., an M.A., a Ph.D. and really really just shine the way they
see shine. But I also know that they’re cool and they’ll be happy if I’m happy. If I get to the
place where I’m happy and I’m really loving what I do and taking care of myself the way I
want to take care of myself, they are there and they are willing to help me get there. So, the
money thing, they don’t really hold it over my head too much. It’s really inside my head.
It’s constant though. It’s constant.

When probed to explain further how she managed this constant, she responded:

I just try to get better and better at my life. Just get better and better at my life and get happy.
Yeah, I’m existing well. I’m feeding myself. I’m feeding my kids. I’m really proud [of ]
that . . . I guess to fulfill an obligation is just to show them that I am living well and doing
well by my kids.

While it is not surprising to find that the discussions of exchanges that rest on
the recipient’s assumption that the giver will be satisfied by ensuring her survival
(and that of her children) are found with reference to relationships with parents
and siblings, some single mothers used the same logic in their relationships with
friends. Martha Baldwin was asked directly, “When things are done for you or given
to you, do you feel obligated to do something in return? Is there a sense of keeping
balance?” She responded, “Yes” and then added that balance was “complicated.”
To illustrate what she meant, she described her relationship with a friend, Jon, who
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had not charged for the chiropractic work he had done on her back:
Jon’s decided not to charge me any money! . . . And there’s a part of me that is like, oh, God,
what can I give back to him! You know? And I’ve struggled with it and I’ve said, “Jon,
please charge me!” And I’ve begged him to charge me, you know? And he just sort of, you
know, has this little twinkle in his eye, and kind of laughs at me . . . One day I said, “Just
explain to me why you won’t charge me.” And he said, “Martha, I don’t know exactly why,
but I just know I’m not supposed to charge you any money.” . . . And I wrote him a card and
I said to him that, when I was young, my mother often told me that I didn’t deserve things.
And one of the things that she told me I didn’t deserve was my son . . . And the other thing
was that I was undeserving of any financial help . . . And at one point I realized that I didn’t
need to do anything [for Jon] other than just love myself . . . What I was getting at in that
card was that his giving to me like that, without my giving him anything back . . . just really
brought all that stuff up about me being undeserving. And . . . I knew that he knew. That’s
why he was doing it.

In this rendition, as in Amanda Silver’s relationship with her family, Martha can
repay the obligation by learning to “love [her]self”; by viewing herself as deserving
she satisfied the demands of the gift relationship.

The Giver Is Satisfied By Giving

Scholars have pointed to the ways in which employers of domestic help and
child care providers often redefine employees in ways designed to minimize the
costs of the work to the latter (Rollins, 1985; Romero, 1992). For example, mothers
who rely on family day care providers describe those providers in ways that make
giving love and daily care part of the individual’s personality rather than a service
requiring financial reimbursement. As one mother said in describing her day care
provider (Nelson, 1990, p. 86), “[She] is just a special person with little kids—it’s
a mothering, nurturing thing that doesn’t stop with her own.”
In relationships where the shoe is on the other foot—when the less powerful
person is in the position of receiving more in the way of assistance than she is
able to repay—these same techniques are used to evade responsibility for mak-
ing an equivalent return. In this new equation, the recipient describes how the
giver derives pleasure from an act of generosity and argues that the pleasure thus
derived is sufficient to annihilate any further obligation. One single mother says
that she is not sure what she offers in her relationship with a downstairs neighbor
(“I guess to some extent some emotional support”), but that, in a sense, returning
something of equivalent value doesn’t matter because that convenient neighbor is
“an incredibly giving person.” Similarly, Amanda Silver can accept presents from
her brother because he is “sweet, very sweet” to think of buying her sheets for her
new household and she can accept clothing from her mother because her “mom
tends to like to buy [Amanda’s daughter] a dress or something.” Betsy Black can
accept help from her father not only because she is meeting his expectations, but be-
cause “he’s learned that it’s delightful to be able to give support.” And Janet Linden,
who struggles with the fact that she often feels dependent on her mother, can
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resolve that struggle by emphasizing her mother’s (understandable) desire to help:

My mother is not the kind of person that makes you feel as though you owe her; I think in a
way it sort of nourishes her and it’s very clear to me that it does, to be able to feel as though
she’s been helpful. And I can fully understand it because I like to feel as though I’ve been
helpful too.

STRETCHING AND RESISTING RECIPROCITY

As the women interviewed discuss their relationships with the broader com-
munity in which they live, the logic of reciprocity shifts once more. At one level,
the women sound as if they believe the world should operate on the basis of an easy
flow of balanced reciprocity over time. When questioned about what is appropriate
to ask of the community in which she lived, Emily Beyer responded, “I feel it’s
appropriate to ask as little as you can get away with, give as much as you can,
and somewhere along the line everybody gets what they need.” Similarly, Anne
Davenport, when asked about how important reciprocity was for her, spoke about
a world in which there could be long delays between receiving and giving:
I was in the lobby of the hotel one day and all I had was sixty dollars in my hand and I
needed to stay the night at this hotel. This man from Louisiana walks up to me and hands
me the four dollars that I need. I’m never going to see this person again, but at another point
in life I may be able to do the same thing back for somebody else.

At another level, if both of these women do accept the requirement to make

returns for gifts received, they acknowledge that the constraints are much looser
than those that apply in their more intimate friendships: Emily has only to give
what she can; Anne might some day run across a person in the same need she faced
in Louisiana.
Some women assert that given their immediate needs, they should be the
recipients of generosity without either having to ask, or, it appears, returning the
favor. Kara Lattrell, for example, tires of always having to be in a position of
asking and believes that sometimes she should simply be the recipient of “pure”
generosity. In explaining how she arrives at this position, she tells a story about
having yelled at her child in public and then being the object of a neighbor’s gossip.
She then examines her anger at that neighbor:
But then, after a while I got to thinking . . . why am I angry at her? . . . And then it kind of
sunk in that the reason why I was angry at her was not because she was talking about it,
or not because she noticed it, or not because she was concerned about it, but because what
the hell had she ever done to prevent it? And it kind of gets back to the whole thing, I
mean, doesn’t anybody ever think about giving me a lift every once in a while, or is it all
on me? . . . And so I still have to talk to her about that . . . And [I want to tell her] that the
thing to really look at is not how awful I was that I yelled at my kid, but how, if she doesn’t
want to be part of the problem, she needs to be part of the solution. And part of the solution
means that . . . she has a responsibility to the kids, and having a responsibility to the kids
doesn’t mean just sort of saying, “Oh, hi, kid. How are you doing?” . . . but really going to
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a parent and saying, “Hey, you know, I noticed you’re a single parent. I’ll bet that’s pretty
stressful.” And it’s like, “Gee, I guess I could have your little Billy or little Susie come over
to my house and play with my kid, like, you know, once a week for a couple of hours.” And
how would that be? That would really help you out. God! If somebody did that to me I’d
feel like I was in seventh heaven.

Amy Phelps expressed the same sentiment in a less ferocious way:

I just did [my own snow shoveling and plowing] and then eventually [a neighbor offered]
to plow and that was nice. I think there’s still some people out there that will see that it’s
just her and her two kids and maybe I can help out. There still are a few nice people like
that. And that’s happened to me a couple of times so that’s been great . . . Sometimes I feel
kind of weird—like you think I can’t do this—and then sometimes, I guess it depends on
the day, it’s like, “Oh, thank you.” Most of the time I don’t refuse them. I say, “Thanks so
much.”

In short, while the single mothers want to see themselves as equal partici-
pants in a world where generous giving prevails, they also believe that being a
single mother entitles them, at least temporarily, to be on the receiving end of that
generosity.

THE WORK OF MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS OF SUPPORT

The strategic explanations discussed above are sometimes designed to sustain

a (self) illusion of independence and reciprocity while the single mothers are in
a position of receiving substantial material goods and services they cannot repay
in kind. This should not, however, conceal the work involved in developing the
capacity to ask for assistance, the efforts that go into trying to maintain reciprocity,
and the learning that goes into trying to manage life as a single parent.
As noted previously, many women said that it had been difficult for them to ask
for help. Not surprisingly, then, women view both acceptance of their own needs
and the acquisition of the skill of seeking out assistance as concrete achievements.

Well, I really think that [asking for help is] something I never did before and I just, as a
single parent, I’ve realized that I have to ask for the support I need. So I’ve learned to do
that. And it may have been hard at first, but I really, at this point, I feel like okay, they
can say no, you know. And the financial part—that’s just a small, small piece of the whole
picture. Mostly what I need are [sic] support with the kids. And I do ask for help . . . I just
have gotten a lot better at it than I was before, particularly with my dad.

Although Betsy Black was earlier quoted as being convinced that her mother did
not mind helping her out, Betsy does recognize that she has expanded her demands
and that doing so took special effort on her part:

It’s easier to ask my mom [than other people]. I’ve gotten better at it, like I’ve said, it’s
easier because I’ve been practicing. You know, the first time it was what, a couple of days
with the kids and then, you know, and then a little more. This summer I’ll be at school for
three weeks and my mom is going to take the major portion of that.
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Single Mothers and Social Support 311

Even those who have mastered the fine art of asking have to acquire the
additional skills of judging who is available, competent, and appropriate for a given
need, and of maintaining some form of balance in these complex relationships.
Janet Linden said,
It’s really hard to trace my thought processes because there’s just an image that comes up
and when I feel like I need someone to talk to, a face appears, and that’s who I call, and I
would be real hesitant myself to try to trace what has happened.

Amanda Silver spoke similarly about an intricate process of determining whom

she could ask for assistance with different tasks of daily survival:
So I decide by—I try to decide by checking in and seeing what I need. And if it’s a financial
thing I call my dad—or my mom. And if it’s an issue of like an immediate thing or an
immediate crisis or decision I would call a friend . . . But also, if it’s something I feel like
my mom just wouldn’t get it, I just wouldn’t call her . . . I guess it’s pretty intricate . . . because
then you’re thinking about what is this person’s relationship to you. And I guess different
parts of me are out there with different people.

As these quotes suggest, Janet and Amanda, like many of their peers, have become
adept at judgment and balancing.
Kate Harrington, the woman whose network was dissolving, spoke eloquently
about not yet having acquired the necessary skills. While her focus in the quote
below is on learning how to be a single mother—what she calls this “24-7, just
me”—her comments also make it clear that she has not yet learned about how
being a single mother has changed her needs—and thus her relationships within a
circle of friends—and that she also has not yet learned what she can give in return
for what she asks. As she considered this issue, she both assessed her own gifts
and acknowledged the limits of her energies and understanding:
Well, you know, this is kind of new. You know, before [my daughter, Mira, was born],
friendships were friendships and I didn’t have as many needs. Since Mira, you know, it’s
just kind of like trial and error. There’s a lot I can do. I’m really good at giving emotional
support. You know, I’m good at that. But there’s a lot of other things I can do too that
people—like my one friend didn’t accept my offers to help her move. I’m also a professional
massage therapist so I try to do that when I can . . . I have to be careful because I don’t
have a lot to give right now. So I have to be careful about how much I ask for because
I don’t have a lot. I mean everything is pretty much going into learning how to be a
single mother and handling this like 24-7, just me. So I don’t have a whole lot to give
out.

If Kate believes that she has much to learn, those who already mastered these
skills view an understanding of the demands of reciprocity as part of a growing
maturity. Amanda Silver, after describing the intricate process of choosing who to
ask for help, describes this shift in herself:
More and more so I feel that I reciprocate. I just try to give back. That’s tricky sometimes.
And as I get older I’m more aware of the balancing. I think when I was younger I just tended
to take it for granted, like someone would always be there, always, always, always. And it’s
just not like that.
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312 Nelson

Although Amanda is more aware of balancing and sees that as being a part of
her own maturation, she and other women make it clear that maintaining support
networks requires enormous efforts. Recall how Cathy Earl included an older
woman, Dorothy, in her close network because she thought she could empathize
with her needs. But this relationship requires a lot of daily maintenance and is not
simply there for the asking:
She can consume a lot of my time, she’s quite needy, and sometimes I get frustrated with her
because she gets kind of possessive of my time, but she’s always been there for me . . . We
have fights. You know, she’ll get annoyed at me because I didn’t call her, you know, I have
to kind of keep constant contact with her so it’s kind of a high-maintenance relationship.
If I don’t call her every few days her nose gets a little bent out of joint and, you know, she
can be difficult in that respect. In the past I would let it get to me and I would get annoyed.
Now I just kind of [say], “Oh, Dorothy, get over it,” or whatever and she does. It’s kind of,
I’ve learned how to handle her basically.

Finally, maintaining the strategic explanations may be its own kind of work.
A failure to find a way to believe that one has repaid a gift may result in the
temporary termination, or avoidance, of a relationship with an individual with
whom one perceives one’s self as being in debt:
I haven’t called [my friend Peter] for a long time because . . . I really want to pay [back the
money I owe him] and I hate not being able. And he says, I mean, he says over and over
and over again, “I know you’ll pay it when you can.” It’s very hard for me. And so I have
withdrawn . . . I haven’t talked to him in almost six months.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The research reported here has shown that, as in other areas, single mothers in
a rural state do indeed rely on others for assistance to get by, and that in accepting
this help, they operate within the constraints of reciprocity broadly defined. The
logic of reciprocity they apply, however, shifts with the (perceived) situation of the
giver. Among relationships with others in similar life circumstances and in similar
situations of need—that is, primarily, but not exclusively, other single mothers—
the women interviewed held to relatively strict norms of return in what could be
defined as a balanced reciprocity of goods and services within a relatively short
time frame.
Most of the women interviewed for this study, however, had access to rela-
tionships with those they deemed more fortunate than themselves. In no position
to give back precisely what they had received, single mothers use a logic of reci-
procity that allows them to believe in their own self-sufficiency while relying on
a great deal of support from others. In addition, they offer a variety of strategic
explanations of how they can accept support without creating dependence: they
stress their own nonmaterial gifts as items of exchange and, in so doing, recognize
implicitly the value of skills frequently naturalized; they assert that their survival
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Single Mothers and Social Support 313

and that of their children should be counted as ample repayment; and they make
gift-giving its own reward. Finally, in a more abstract vein, they envision a world
peopled by those who should be, and indeed sometimes are, spontaneously and
completely generous.
Moreover, the research shows that maintaining relationships of support—
whether balanced or not—is challenging work. From their careful descriptions,
the women reveal that they have had to learn to overcome shame and humilia-
tion and that learning how, when, and whom to ask involves complex skills. The
concept of strategic explanations thus should conceal neither the work that goes
into maintaining these interpretations nor the possibility of their failure. When
substantial gifts cannot be repaid, single mothers withdraw from relationships less
because they are thrust out than because they cannot live with that kind of sustained
dependence.
Having described the different logics of reciprocity, four issues bear further
consideration. First, Hertz and Ferguson (1998) have suggested that single mothers
can be roughly classified with respect to their access to social and material resources
to create four different groupings. They suggest that the type of tight network of
mutual support (described here for the relationships with other single mothers)
is found predominantly among those who have high social resources but low
material resources. Given this finding, the question arises of whether in describing
the different logics of reciprocity I am really describing different people. The
data suggest otherwise. Both Anne Davenport and Amanda Silver, to pick two
examples, are deeply bound in intense relationships with other single mothers
even though Anne relies on a combination of ANFC and self-employment while
Amanda holds down a secure, relatively well-paying position. Moreover, both of
these two women rely as well on other people with whom they use quite different
logics of reciprocity.
Second, both theory and research suggest that family has a special place in
relationships of reciprocity, that the normative obligations of kinship help sustain
generalized reciprocity over long periods of time. The question might well be raised
of whether the women in this study distinguish between family and friends in their
strategic explanations and believe themselves less obligated to make returns to the
former. Here the answer is more complex. On one hand, assumed family obligation
clearly is a factor insofar as respondents, like Anne Davenport and Amanda Silver
again, find it easier to come up with a strategic explanation for making returns to
family members. (“They would not be happy if they didn’t feel like they were doing
something and making sure that their grandchildren were taken care of”; “And also
I guess to fulfill an obligation is just to show them that I am living well and doing
well by my kids.”) Indeed, the use of kinship terms helps to bind individuals in
frail relationships. The prominent cases of failed reciprocity involved relationships
with nonfamily members with whom debts incurred could not be explained away.
On the other hand, both Anne and Amanda, like others, did require that explanation
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314 Nelson

of themselves—suggesting that the normative obligation of family is not in and

of itself a sufficient basis for receiving unreciprocated assistance. Moreover, some
women—witness Martha Baldwin—could satisfy themselves with the same kind
of explanations in their relationships with those bound neither by fictive nor factual
kinship.
Third, the logics of reciprocity are not neatly wrapped as separate policies
applied to separate people. The single mothers do require balance with those they
perceive as having similar needs and they do make stretches to a commonsense
(if not anthropological) understanding of reciprocity in their relationships with
those they believe to be more fortunate than themselves. However, the latter cate-
gory of relationships might have exchange elements that follow the rules of bal-
anced reciprocity as well as elements that require strategic explanations. For ex-
ample, Joan Meyer both makes “switch-offs” with her mother and rationalizes her
acceptance of financial assistance as something her mother offers because “she
knows I need a car to drive the children to the doctor.”
Finally, as noted in the beginning, much research on single mothers has
focused on those living in urban areas, and often on those living in dense commu-
nities of others in similar situations. Although a couple of the single mothers in
this study do live in small cities, the majority live in small towns and even, in some
cases, in quite remote rural areas. The question naturally arises, then, of the extent
to which these findings are distinct to such areas. Clearly, geographical dispersion
marks a substantial difference from “the Flats” described by Stack (1974) or the
urban neighborhoods that characterized the living conditions of the respondents
interviewed by Edin and Lein (1997). Unlike women living in close proximity
to one another, the women in this study could keep resources to themselves and
conceal from others when the welfare check arrived or when they had won a small
prize in the lottery. But there is little reason to believe that secrecy about earnings
or income plays a major role in their lives or that they are likely to hoard goods so
that they do not have to share. If there is secrecy and concealment, it seems more
often to involve hiding from others just how many times one has done without.
Indeed, the isolation of rural life carries its own unique burdens. While those who
live in small towns or even in small cities, can, like Kara Lattrell, borrow a roll
of toilet paper from a neighbor, or easily visit with friends, those who, like Joan
Meyer, live half a mile from the nearest neighbor need a working car to manage
the simplest act of sociability.
Every study of single mothers finds that their lives are marked by complex
difficulties, and every author (indeed much public policy as well) struggles to
find feasible solutions. Hertz and Ferguson (1997), for example, note that “It
is the generosity of other individuals that aids [single mothers] during the tem-
porary period of mothering infants,” and, they add, “the problem is that there
are not enough individuals among the ‘rich’ willing to help facilitate the aspi-
rations of the poor by sponsoring them one by one.” The findings in this paper
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Single Mothers and Social Support 315

lend strength to both observations. Clearly, as single mothers discuss their re-
lationships with family and friends, they suggest that the “rich” can help on an
individual basis. Clearly, as well, single mothers both appreciate the help that
they so receive (“I think there’s still some people out there that will see that it’s
just her and her two kids and maybe I can help out. There still are a few nice
people like that. And that’s happened to me a couple of times so that’s been
great.”) and resent times when that help is not forthcoming (“I mean, well, Jesus,
doesn’t anybody ever think about giving me a lift every once in a while?”). But
these individual solutions—described by Hertz and Ferguson as a “moral obli-
gation to be active participants in securing solutions to the dilemmas all parents
face”—are, as Hertz and Ferguson also acknowledge, not a social solution. That
solution—as most writers have suggested—lies in living wages and more gen-
erous state support. In the meantime, it is important to recognize the costs to
those who struggle to maintain dignity through meeting the normative require-
ments of both reciprocity and self-sufficiency as they learn to manage “24-7,
just me.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks the Middlebury College Faculty Development Fund for
supporting this research; Jessica Lindert, Bethany Johnson, and Carol McMurrich
for help with interviewing and transcribing; and Rosanna Hertz and two anony-
mous reviewers for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this article was
presented at “Work and Family: Expanding the Horizons,” a conference sponsored
by the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation, the Center for Working
Families at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foun-
dation, San Francisco, March 3–4, 2000.

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