Poverty, Homelessness and Domestic Violence among Poor Mothers: Issues and Opportunities for Programs

This research draws on a ten-month ethnography of a domestic violence shelter. While the central research goal was to explore how mothers accomplish mothering in a semi-permanent space, what was discovered is a system of networks shaped by social class and gender, interwoven with the experience of intimate partner violence, which resulted in a limited set of options for poor mothers escaping intimate partner violence. This work contributes to the literature on the social networks of poor mothers, arguing that the dynamics of violence further restricts the already limited networks of poor mothers. To manage the gaps in their networks, mothers greatly relied on one another to work to exit the shelter