Complexities of Negotiating Power When Re-Constructing Stories About Lone Mothers

Abstract

Building social inclusion was the primary theoretical and practice goal of a group of researcher/academics who partnered with lone mother research assistants in participatory action research. One outcome was the creation of a video recording that was based on a day in the life of a lone mother receiving income support. The work of creating and sharing the video recording became the lightning rod that focused the partners’ attention on the complexities of negotiating power in the well-intentioned but problematic struggle to reconstruct stories about lone mothers. The distinct voices of individual authors are honored in this shared story about our journey.

Brenda: How dare all these academic types—you know who you are—take my life, my horrible wretched life, and use it to further your agenda. My life of poverty and destitution, my life of suffering, my life of having to eke out an existence for me and my children, my life of frustration, my life of sadness of not being able to adequately provide for my children, and use it to write papers and show people who should already know how absolutely gut-wrenching-awful poverty is, to realize that they maybe would/should think before they act.

My Story/Our Story/Shared Story

Diana: Researchers who engage in studies with (or about) single/lone ¹ mothers’ experiences are implicated in the construction of those stories. The academy and published works are often the institutional spaces where these stories are collected, scrutinized, deconstructed, and disseminated for wider consumption and often without the benefit of lone mothers’ active and meaningful participation. This article explores the work of single-mother research assistants (RAs) and researcher/academic partners who created a popular theater performance and produced a video recording called The Last Quarter ² to tell one such story. The performance captures one day in Brenda’s life, ³ a lone mother receiving income support, ⁴ and poignantly illustrates her struggle to negotiate an inaccessible system when caring for her sick child—all the while facing the critical gaze of professionals, neighbors, and strangers. The work of creating and sharing the video recording is the centerpiece of this discussion about how Brenda’s story was used in the well-intentioned but sometimes problematic struggle to challenge dominant constructions of lone mothers in society.

After providing an overview of the social context of lone mothers in Newfoundland and Labrador and our assumptions about social inclusion, we describe the DVD project (as we came to refer to it) as a tool for challenging stigmatizing images associated with the social exclusion of lone mothers living in poverty. Next, we tease apart Brenda’s experiences of evolving self-perception and empowerment as her story (My Story) was told and retold with each viewing of the video recording. This leads to critical reflections (Our Story) on what lone mother RAs and academic partners learned from each other about building alliances and negotiating power. Finally, we want to reflect our ongoing commitment to privileging voice in the writing and formatting of this article by highlighting the intellectual contributions of individual contributors. We do this by naming the primary author(s) who crafted each section so that the power and authenticity of each voice is represented in this Shared Story.

Brenda whose quote leads the article is a lone mother RA whose story is told in the DVD project, Tracy is the academic partner who worked closely with the RAs from inception to completion of the DVD project, Janice is the Newfoundland site lead for Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion of which the DVD project was one part and the daughter of a single mother, and Diana is an academic partner and formerly, a lone mother.

The Context of Lone Mothers in Newfoundland and Labrador

Janice/Diana:Income inequality has grown significantly in Canada over the last three decades with terrible consequences: About one in seven children live in poverty, with 1.1 million of them experiencing food insecurity (Bradford, 2005; Campaign 2000, 2013; Lightman & Good Gingrich, 2012). In 2010, St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador had the highest rate of child poverty (18.7%) of any major Canadian city (Campaign 2000, 2012). Children live in poverty because their parent(s) have inadequate access to economic and social resources. The vast majority (80%) of single-parent families were led by women, and lone mother-led families comprised 12.8% of all 2011 census families (Portrait of Families, 2012). Given the gendered nature of poverty, very many such families live in poverty. In 2008, an estimated 33% of single-mother-led families lived below the poverty line (Campaign 2000, 2008). The gendered wage gap and social policies that reinforce gender-based inequality in Canada continue to disadvantage single-mother-led families and contribute to their class and gender-based exclusion (Good Gingrich, 2010; Legghio, Alcaide, & Caragata, 2010). For instance, Canadian Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics data reveal that single-mother-led families receiving income support have the highest rate of core housing need (78.4%) and the highest rate of occupancy in unaffordable housing (69.5%; Dunn, Caragata, & Onishenko, 2007; Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, 2009).

The harsh realities of a life in poverty can have dramatic and sometimes devastating effects on aspirations, education, nutrition, health and well-being, housing, and safety for an entire family (Gurstein & Vilches, 2010; Parsons, 2008; Raphael, 2007). An Atlantic Canada-wide study of single mothers acknowledged that labor market conditions militated against them being able to support their families without turning to income support (Barber & Clow, 2013). These conditions placed them at a disadvantage with respect to seven key indicators of social and economic inclusion: education, employment, financial security, housing, health, access to essential services, and social support/participation (Barber & Clow, 2013). The effect of poverty is exacerbated when multiple forms of oppression intersect in a single mother’s life such as when she is excluded on the basis of racialization, sexual identity, and/or class as well as gender (Murphy, Hunt, Zajicek, Norris, & Hamilton, 2009; Seccombe, 2011). Social isolation and exclusion are disproportionately experienced by more vulnerable citizens, including single mothers, indigenous peoples, and immigrants (Bradford, 2005).

At the time of this writing, Newfoundland and Labrador has a booming economy, with higher employment and associated higher costs of living. However, this economy booms more for men than women. With a recent ascent from a “have-not” province to “have” status, a well-established poverty reduction plan (Clarke, 2012; Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, 2009), and amidst much-touted reductions in the numbers of those receiving income support, single-mother-led families continue to struggle with economic and social deprivation. In 2010, the median income for women in St. John’s was CDN$8,700 less than that for men (St. John’s Profiles, 2014). Despite a slight increase, total welfare incomes for lone parent families have remained relatively stable in this province over the past quarter century (Tweddle, Battle, & Torjman, 2013). While the numbers of residents receiving income support have decreased significantly since the early 1990s, the average time spent on income support has increased to 9.9 months for St. John’s recipients (St. John’s Profiles, 2014). Unfortunately, these figures obscure the circumstances of lone mothers who often feel trapped into remaining on the system for the years their children are young. Single mothers in our study and elsewhere (Good Gingrich, 2008) have reported having to give up their jobs, finding that income support provides greater (if not always adequate) financial security to provide for their families.

Lone Mothers’ Voices: Challenging Social Exclusion

Janice/Diana: Despite a voluminous body of research literature concerning lone mothers and their families, the voices of these women are strikingly absent from the literature. With some notable exceptions (Mason, 2003; Neysmith, Bezanson, & O’Connell, 2005; Nicolas & Jean Baptiste, 2001; Seccombe, 2011), there has been limited effort to document the ways that social structure and policy are actually experienced, interpreted, and resisted by single mothers. Indeed, the exclusion of lone mothers’ voices from the literature mirrors their exclusion from many aspects of our culture and society (Parsons, Swan, Haines, Wideman, & Power, 2007a).

In this void, dominant public discourse fraught with neoliberal ideology constructs negative stories about single mothers receiving income support that distort their lived reality and contribute to social exclusion, marginalization, and poverty for single mothers and their families (Caragata, 2003; Parsons & Haines, 2006; Seccombe, 2011). Economic and political inequities are commonly disguised as personal deficit. In particular, lone mothers receiving income support are constructed as dependent and lazy, focusing the public gaze on individuals with problems, effectively obscuring structured inequities (Fraser & Gordon, 1994; Parsons, 2008; Thériault & Leski, 2005). Thus, inequitable power dynamics can be expressed through processes of social exclusion.

We reject the conservative tendency to equate social exclusion with individual deficit and, particularly, absence from the labor market. Instead, we undertake a more critical reading of social exclusion—one that acknowledges macro forces such as globalization and gendered neoliberal ideals that contribute to structural inequities. These inequities give rise to multidimensional (economic, spatial, sociopolitical, and subjective) disadvantage and the dramatic effects experienced by those who are socially excluded (Good Gingrich, 2003, 2010; Levitas et al., 2007). Cooper draws on the work of MacKinnon saying,

Social exclusion means the extent to which and ways that people can access resources and participate in society. This does not only mean financial poverty, but also includes access or barriers to “health, education, access to services, housing, debt, quality of life, dignity and autonomy.” (2012, p. 3, citing MacKinnon)

This definition provides conceptual space for recognizing that discrimination and exclusionary practices may play a causal role in poverty and is consistent with our feminist approach to better understanding lone mothers’ experiences of social exclusion taken up throughout the larger research study in which we were engaged.

This conceptualization also allows us to take up the affronts to personal dignity through processes of stigmatization and social exclusion that motivated lone mother RAs to create a theater performance (and later a video recording of that performance) as forms of resistance. Stigmatization is a formidable tool for enacting social exclusion because personal and social identities of women and their children are shaped by it (Bottrell, 2007). King defines stigmatization as both process (perceptual) and outcome (relational; 2008, p. 58). The perceptual definition of stigmatization focuses on the process of being socially devalued or discredited because the individual deviates from normative expectations. The relational definition focuses on the outcome of being stigmatized—being denied social acceptance, experiencing disrupted social relationships—in other words, being socially excluded (King, 2008). This process of stigmatization can occur when labels such as “welfare mother” are directed at lone mothers and by association, at their children. These labels are often experienced as a source of humiliation and shame (Gray, 2005; Legghio et al., 2010; Seccombe, 2011). Single mothers are all too aware of the devastating effects of stigma and the social exclusion it fosters. The Last Quarter was intended to draw the viewers’ attention to both the process (perceptual) and outcomes (relational) experience of stigmatization, all the while offering an alternate perspective on their lives.

The Newfoundland Project Within the Canadian Project

Janice/Diana:The Lone Mothers: Building Social Inclusion project was a 5-year Community/University Research Alliance funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A research alliance was established between lone mothers, academic researchers from five Canadian universities, and government and nonprofit community organizations. ⁵ The research was conducted in three urban regions: St. John’s (and area), Newfoundland and Labrador; Toronto, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia between 2006 and 2011. A feminist participatory action research (PAR) methodology was used to explore how labor markets and income support/social assistance systems affected lone mothers receiving income support. PAR is a collaborative approach to building understanding through research that promotes social action between academic and community partners (Gustafson & Brunger, 2014). Feminist PAR intends to subvert the inequitable power dynamics that characterize traditional research relationships. Critical reflection, engaged discussion, and reciprocity are key to successful collaboration and to valuing the voices and subjectivities of all partners (Gustafson, 2000).

The Newfoundland project was housed within the School of Social Work with three ⁶ academic researchers from that academic unit and a fourth from the Division of Community Health and Humanities at Memorial University. In total, 11 lone mothers who were receiving income support were hired to work on an occasional basis as RAs to conduct interviews with study participants who were also lone mothers in receipt of income support. Because provincial policy, unlike that in Ontario and British Columbia, permitted income support recipients to attend postsecondary institutions, we intentionally hired six lone mother RAs who were attending college or university and five who were not enrolled. We believe that participation in the research may have contributed to the decision of three of this latter group to begin postsecondary studies during the course of the 5-year study.

A unique characteristic and strength of the Building Social Inclusion study as it developed at the Newfoundland site was the depth of involvement of the lone mother RAs. Over the study’s 5 funded years, and in the years since then, nine RAs have remained involved to varying degrees as life demands permitted. Lone mother RAs contributed as active research team members, not just during data collection, but also during the shaping of the interview questions, data analysis, and dissemination as well as related advocacy work. The lone mother RAs at the Newfoundland site demonstrated remarkable and continuing insight and commitment to the work of understanding the needs of, and advocating for, lone mothers and their families. Their active involvement in this work far outstripped the larger project’s funded ability to reimburse them, and yet they continued to give generously of their time, energy, and expertise to advance this work, even when their lives and those of their children would have been made easier by being compensated.

The DVD Project

The Emergence of the DVD Project

Tracy/Brenda:Brenda was relating a story to the other lone mother RAs about going to the doctor with her son. Tracy, who had experience with popular theater, suggested creating a performance piece based on that day for presentation at a provincial social work conference in May 2008 in St. John’s. In January 2009, a video recording of the performance was created. Although the video recording was based on a day in Brenda’s life, she later describes it as “Our Story,” a platform for RAs to write, perform, and produce a story about mothering in poverty that challenged stigmatizing, stereotypical representations of lone mothers, and the lived context of their lives.

Individual lone mother RAs had different levels of involvement in the research project overall and the DVD Project, in particular. Some were active participants and copresenters in many, if not most, presentations where the video recording was shown. Some were involved with academic conferences. Some gave presentations to senior managers and/or frontline service providers in Human Resources Labor and Employment in St. John’s. The video recording was shared with community groups such as the Women Interested in Successful Employment program and the Trillium Group (a Toronto-based group for lone mothers). The video recording was also used as an educational tool in social work and women’s studies classrooms.

The DVD Project—My Story

Brenda:The story portrayed in the video recording, The Last Quarter, is a day in my life.

Overnight, I went from being a single woman to a mother of two children with complex needs when I assumed the care of my sister’s children. My life became an endless stream of professionals, pediatricians, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, audiologists, geneticists, teachers, tutors, early childhood educators, guidance counselors, and social workers. Navigating the services and services providers became a full time job. Later, I would add school and paid work.

When I first got involved in the theater production and development of the video recording, I did so with great reluctance. I felt I was dragged kicking and screaming front and center where I did not want to be. Who was I to even have the audacity to know or pretend to know what life is like for a lone mother on income support? My life, while far from perfect, in no way reflected the lived realities of so many single mothers. I wasn’t qualified to represent them. In truth, I didn’t want to represent them. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was one of them. I was me and I was not a part of them and us. I was just me, and my life, my circumstances, and my story were just that—mine. No one else knew what it was like to be me. No one walked in my shoes. No one had my certain set of circumstances. Their lives were better or worse but they weren’t my life.

It took a long time for me to come to terms with the fact that, just maybe, in the video recording, there was enough of a generic lived experience that could speak to people. Give them a snippet of what it was like to be a lone mother on income support. Just maybe somewhere in the video recording could be a nugget of truth for someone—be it a social worker, student, mother, or policy maker—that spoke to them and their lives. A little something that could change the way they see a single mother or someone on income support or a little something that could change the way they approach a single mother. I guess my goal for the video recording was to provide an aha moment for someone, however small that moment would be.

I hadn’t let the story go. I very much wanted to be part of the video recording because I didn’t want you [academic types] to be screwing up my life. I was attached to the story because it was my story and I wasn’t letting that baby go willingly. So I very much wanted to be involved. Life as a single mother interfered with me being present the day of shooting. So being part of the filming was taken away from me. I felt a real loss because I wasn’t there to watch my baby hit the big screen. It was hard not being involved in the final product like that. Creatively, I would have done some things differently, but in the end, I was pleased with the final result.

I’ve always been of two minds about becoming the poster child for poverty or single mothers because of the video recording. When I sat that day and talked about my horrible night/day, I didn’t even think it would go beyond the four walls of that conference room. As the theater piece developed, then the video recording, and then the use of the video recording in presentations, classes, and conferences in St. John’s and Toronto, dual reactions of pride and resentment took up residence in my psyche. I was proud that my idea, my day, my story, my concept, or whatever you want to call it was being used and appreciated in all these ways.

The resentment came when I realized all of these people were using me, my story, and my life. While there might not be monetary gain attached to the use of my story, there has certainly been professional gain.

My head was screaming this is MINE. This is how one side of my mind felt; then there was the other part of my mind that, after being angry for a little while, decided to sit back and take a hard look at what the whole project was about.

Today, I can totally identify with the woman in the video; however, I no longer view that woman as me. Sure the story is mine but that family isn’t my family. When I first saw the video, I remember feeling so bad for that woman. I remember thinking, “Wow, she is having one hell of a day.” I had to remind myself that that had been my crappy day. I think one of the things that helped separate me from the story was that while it was a hard day, it was by no means the hardest day of my life. It was a typical day for me—the kind of day that I have endured over and over for many years. It was a commonplace day. My days in general are so much harder than the one in the video. The real stresses of living in poverty can never be captured in totality. I think the video recording does a great job of giving a taste of it but there is no way an 11-minute video shot on a set can represent the true realities of poverty. For example, the couch in the video was a hell of a lot nicer than the one in my living room.

When we were interviewing other lone mothers who live in poverty, we were doing the same thing I did. We were asking these women to share their stories of poverty and we, as a group—meaning those involved in the larger study—were going to use these stories for presentations, classes, and conferences. We were going to use these stories to bring about change. That’s when it hit me. Change. That’s what this is about. I was naive to assume that people should know better. They don’t. Unless someone tells you—or shows you, in this case—they have no idea what someone else’s life is really like.

So after much soul searching, I gave up the story. I mean, I recognize that woman and those children in the story as me and my children. But I also came to recognize they represent so much more than that. This story is no longer mine. It is a story of a mother and how poverty, isolation, stigma, policy, and practice come together to make her life all that much harder. This is one small snippet of the reality of living in poverty. This small snippet is shared by so many and owned by none.

Do I feel differently about myself because of the DVD project? Wow, do I! I’ve never felt like I had the power to influence people. I know my actions and my decisions affect my children and I have the power to be either a positive or negative influence in their lives but beyond the lives of my children, I have never felt I had to the power to change anything else.

The video recording has been used in a number of classes and presentations, and in each of these exit slips and feedback forms have been filled out. Invariably there is an overwhelmingly positive reaction to it. People state time and again that their thinking has changed, their attitude has changed, their perspective and so on has changed. People note they will do things differently or state they are reminded of why they became involved in social work. People have come up to me after presentations or classes and expressed how moved they were by the video recording. Discussions have been generated and ideas exchanged.

Knowing that you have impacted someone and possibly brought about change is a great feeling. So instead of always being so down on myself for past mistakes, I felt proud of myself for being a positive force outside the four walls of my home. The DVD project video did that for me.

Our Story—Reflecting on Some Tough Lessons

Is Social Inclusion Possible?

Brenda:I didn’t want to be involved in an “us versus them” type of relationship with lone mothers on income support. In life, there is always a duality of power. The concepts of power and privilege take on new meanings depending on which side of the equation you are. There is an “us and them” and as much as we would like to erase the boundaries, it is virtually impossible to have an egalitarian relationship when one group has so much more than the other. The concept of sharing power is incredibly hard to grasp when you believe you don’t have any to share.

The DVD project was no different. Academic partners have so much more than the lone mothers involved in the project. They have more money. They have more nice stuff. They have more time. They have more education. They had more authority about how things were going to run. They had more POWER. As much as they may have wanted to share the power and be inclusive, in the end, I felt I had no real power in this project.

I had input into some things such as what questions to ask in the interview guide but essentially what was shared with me was the illusion of power. Ultimately, if the people running the project wanted to exclude or include questions or decided, “No, we can’t pay participants CDN$40 up front,” then that is what would have happened. Being respectful of childcare and schedules is common courtesy, not power sharing.

I don’t think there was anything anyone could have done to enhance my inclusion or participation. I participated because I wanted to. I felt the project goals were in line with my way of thinking but I didn’t in anyway delude myself in thinking that my participation was critical to the success of the project. I could have been easily exchanged for another lone mother on income support. Do I feel this way because of something the academic partners did or did not do? Frankly, no. Could they have done anything to make me feel any differently? Not unless they possess a magic wand that could erase years of poverty, deprivation, and internalized stigma.

In the many months since the video recording was created, I’ve come to realize that the Lone Mothers Building Social Inclusion Project was such a powerful influence in my life. The larger project and those involved have become my friends, confidantes, and advisers. There is a sisterhood that developed that goes beyond the project and our roles in it. There is a deepened understanding that no matter where we live, what we wear, or what the placard on our door states, we were all women facing life’s struggles and we were doing it together. The power struggles and/or imbalances meant very little in the face of what developed out of the project and that was what mattered. What I said mattered, what I didn’t say mattered, and what every other lone mother said mattered. We mattered. Isn’t that what PAR is all about? Making space for people’s voices, and in the case of the video recording, a stage for lone mothers who just wanted to be heard.

Tracy/Janice/Diana: Brenda’s words confirm many of the benefits of participation referred to in the literature on PAR—that involvement and investment in the larger study and the DVD project specifically—contributed to a sense of empowerment in a number of ways (Swan, Brothers, Parsons, & Haines, 2007b; Swan, Gillingham, Wilkes, Meaney, & MacDonald, 2010.) Brenda notes meaningful shifts in her self-perception. She sees herself as being strong, and as having a voice that deserves to be heard, and the power to effect change. She recognizes that she has important insights to share and unique contributions to make as an educator and an advocate. As she points out, the feedback we received about the video recording when it was presented at conferences, in university classrooms, and to community groups indicates that it served as a tool for challenging stigmatizing images associated with the social exclusion of lone mothers living in poverty.

Brenda’s words also clearly show that the DVD project was the site for negotiating power dynamics and as such served as a tool for educating academic partners about the thorny aspects of social exclusion/inclusion when conducting research with lone mothers. At the outset of the larger study, the academic partners believed that the roles assumed by the various team members were equally valuable in contributing the overall success of the research.

Despite concerted efforts to build meaningful alliances between lone mother RAs and academic researchers, the sad irony was that a meeting to develop a presentation about social inclusion provided one of the first openings for Brenda (and other lone mother RAs) to raise a number of concerns about the power imbalance between them and the academic members of the research team. The academic researchers learned that some lone mother RAs continued to believe there wasn’t space for them to raise their most heartfelt concerns, to share ideas, and propose initiatives.

Power and Praxis

Diana:One of the reviewers of our first draft of this manuscript asked us to dive a bit deeper into the “strained relationships and the unintended hurt” with a view to illustrating the messiness and difficulty of negotiating power relations. To me this means looking at power and praxis or the gaps between the theory of power relations and the work of enacting the principles of PAR. In our most recent meeting to discuss revisions to the manuscript, I was struck by the language each of us choose and the assumptions underpinning these linguistic choices. What does it mean when one of us talks about power sharing? Power as a resource?

As academic partners, we wanted to enact the principles of PAR in how we engaged in the research and knowledge dissemination with lone mothers. Yet even this statement about our intended process puts us in the position of power dictating how power is wielded and yielded. The same was true of our first draft of the manuscript in which we described our deep investment in genuine power sharing. By that the team meant that those who had greater access to power and resources were expected to create meaningful opportunities for those with less power to have a voice in as many aspects of the research as possible. This suggests that power sharing is both desirable and possible. However, the very concept of power sharing can be viewed as faulty, as it assumes that power is a possession that rests with some of us and is ours to share (or not) with those who have less access to power. It assumes that those located in more privileged positions can choose to wield power or yield power, words that might also be perceived as oppressive, without an understanding of the significance of context, subjectivity, and time.

Janice:Brenda’s words throughout this article underscore the complexities in how power and its implementation are experienced. Tensions are inherent in anti-oppressive work, which builds upon modernist conceptions of power as a commodity, but which has developed alongside the growing influence of postmodern understandings of power as a fluid and dynamic practice (Brown, 2012; Fook, 2012). The modernist binary view of power as something that one has or does not have would construct academics as having power and lone mother RAs as not having power. Such understandings may lead us to consider strategies for wielding, yielding, or sharing power, when perhaps none of these strategies is sufficient for engaging with the complexity of power. Fook advocates a reformulated view of power, drawing upon Foucault’s notion of power as exercised in social relationships:

Power is something people use and create rather than simply possess … [and] because it is not located with particular people, groups or structures, may be everywhere. What is important is not where it is located, but how it is used, in different settings and by different people. (p. 60)

However, Fook cautions us to contextualize our understandings of the practice of power, noting that it is expressed in both microlevel and macro-level structures and relations and that various structures and practices may “simultaneously empower and disempower.” (p. 61)

Academia as a macro-level structure where power is exercised in particular ways produced significant contextual influences on micro-level relationships in the project (Fook, 2012; Yee & Wagner, 2013). The academic context privileged the perspectives and positions of the academic team members. Regardless of our good intentions in exercising power, the structural source of academic power cannot easily be dismantled. Thus, active efforts to mitigate this power were necessary. Reconstructing stories about lone mothers in an academic research environment requires a multiplex understanding of power that accounts for the contexts from which it emerges as well as the ways it is exercised, and the diverse subjectivities with which it interacts, in order to recognize lone mothers as active agents in the exercise of power.

Brenda: That’s the thing with the project. Each person brought something unique to the table and each person got something unique from the experience. Participants appeared to have similar social location, but in reality, we were all in different personal locations and had different perspectives. Our experience of inclusion and power sharing would, of course then, be different for each of us.

Tracy: In other words, subjectivity must be understood as situated in context. Our subjective sense of self and worldview is constructed by all our experiences including those in the academy. These experiences are interpreted through our uniquely constructed lens and can have particular individual meaning for each of us. While our worldviews can modify and shift with new insights, the meanings we make constitute the essence of what we individually believe about who we are and how we understand the world. Accordingly, what we value and believe constitutes an integral part of our personal and professional relationships, such that our subjectivity and academic identities are intertwined.

Diana/Janice/Tracy: Brenda’s story about the DVD project conveys the significance of her experiences of disadvantage and oppression, associated with her identities as a lone mother who receives income support. Her response to becoming the “poster child” for single mothers readily conveys the strong and conflicting feelings that were evoked, feelings which required time for her to process. The complex experiences and feelings of academic partners also required time to process. When navigating power differences associated with our multiple identities, it is imperative to recognize the significance of allowing for time to reflexively process our experiences and feelings in order to come to new and evolving understandings.

Over time, project partners have developed a strong foundation of mutual trust and genuine respect for the unique gifts each person brings to the work. This foundation sustains us as we navigate the difficult times when actions fall short of ideals and we disappoint one another and sometimes ourselves. As academic partners, we acknowledge that we were often caught up in all the details associated with the larger study. These “details”—the contracts imposed by funders and the academy—were distracting constraints that became hurdles to meaningful inclusion. Not least among these was the difficulty in forecasting the budget at the outset of the study. There was funding allocated for lone mother RAs’ involvement in training and conducting of interviews. As the study unfolded, some lone mother RAs were desirous and capable of greater involvement in many aspects of the research for which there was no budget line. In retrospect, funding to better support their inclusion in all aspects of research would have lowered some of these hurdles.

While the lone mother RAs’ involvement and sense of inclusion increased over time, as did academic partners’ deepening insight into the complexity of power dynamics, all struggled with the uncomfortable realization that in research devoted to building social inclusion, achieving that lofty goal would only be partial. Institutionalized constraints are always present and openly discussing the implications with the RAs can be as important as discussing the power arrangements that are at play among team members. In future, making these elements transparent might provide an opportunity to collectively find ways to mitigate, to some degree, the impact that institutional constraints can create.

In a similar vein, it is important to attend to the creation of a context for safer discussion on an explicit and ongoing basis. Academic partners, because of our privileged position, have a special responsibility to take steps to create a safer environment where critical reflection, engaged discussion, and reciprocity can happen. That said, as the research unfolded and the DVD project came into being, the role of lone mother RAs evolved in ways that were quite different from the way they were set out in the proposal for the larger study. These changes, as welcome as they were, could not have been anticipated. As Janice said, “We could have done this better had we [academics] known at the beginning what they [lone mother RAs] had taught us by the end!”

Looking Back; Looking Forward

Diana/Janice/Tracy:How do we as individuals committed to feminist and social justice ideals avoid becoming paralyzed by fears of getting it wrong? We came together with a shared goal of taking a nonhierarchical, self-critical, and reflexive approach to deconstructing stigmatizing narratives about lone mothers receiving income support. Our personal and professional life experiences have taught us that being task aware means taking risks, facing challenges, and making missteps. Our experiences have also taught us that if we are open to listening and learning, responsive to intersectional identities, sensitive in our use of language, and appreciative in our praxis, we can face obstacles together. That is what has kept us going and going and going. Much time has passed since the official end of the money and the lone mothers project. We continue to work faithfully in honoring distinct voices and sharing our findings in an effort to effect positive change for lone mothers living in poverty. Sharing the video recording and writing this article illustrate well our public acts of collective courage as we celebrate our forward strides and expose our missteps.

Brenda:The quote used to open this article is a powerful one. So how did I move from that honest and justifiably critical place to the place I am today? Looking back … sometimes you don’t like what you see but there is no way you can change it. Looking forward … sometimes it looks bleak but you won’t know that until you get there. Blazing a trail is hard work. The reward is when you look back and see others on the trail that is clear of obstacles.

When I look back over my involvement with the lone mothers project, I find it difficult to reanimate the same emotions that governed my thoughts about my relative power within the project. The skin I wore back then has been sloughed away by time and perspective. From this vantage point, what I do see is a very strong, sincere relationship based on open dialogue, trust, and above all, respect. This project has a strong foundation because the people involved chose voluntarily to enter into a partnership where the parameters while clearly defined were never immovable. The organic nature of the group was imperative in order to meet project goals but we never lost sight of the human beings the data were based on. I was never just a number—a significant or insignificant variable or a correlation. I was always Brenda, that plucky lone mom working hard for herself, her children, and the project.

The lone mother project at its inception was a partnership between lone mothers on income support with academic investigators sharing a common goal of including lone mothers in the construction of their stories. In every relationship, the power element is present and this group was no different. Each person has a perception of their own power based on their worldview and lived experiences. Denying the existence of a power imbalance within the group was never an issue. It was there and we knew it was there and it was acknowledged. Keeping it at the forefront enabled the group to act on its common goal. At no time, did one individual possess all the power. There was a community pot to which we all added our skills and then the group as a whole could withdraw from it. No one in the group was immune from feeling the loss of their power but not once was I left feeling that I was bereft of mine. Working on the DVD project added to my own pot of personal power as it did for many of the lone mothers involved. In writing this article, I have discovered a stronger voice and deeper sense that my contribution to the project added a dimension to the discourse that would not have been there had I not been involved.

Final Thoughts (For Now)

All:The purpose of this article was to describe the DVD project that was based on one lone mother’s story and how it served as a tool for challenging stigmatizing images associated with the social exclusion of lone mothers living in poverty in Newfoundland. Our shared goal was to effect change. We wanted to communicate the daily challenges experienced by lone mothers receiving income support and to demonstrate their strengths as mothers and advocates for change. Our hope was that we could contribute to shifting public attitudes and influence how members of target audiences related to lone mothers in receipt of income support.

The DVD project also became the site for negotiating power between academic partners and lone mother RAs. This article provides clear evidence that a lone mother RA who engages in research where all team members are committed to critical reflection, engaged discussion, and reciprocity can experience positive changes in her self-perception and empowerment. At the same time, academic partners also learned important lessons: building meaningful alliances is fraught with emotional turmoil and unanticipated challenges. Academic partners learned anew that research projects can foster relationships grounded in complex, situated subjectivities that demand sensitivity to both context and timing. Negotiating power dynamics across social differences and in a hierarchical institutional context is an admirable goal but as Brenda notes, academic partners have no magic wand for erasing years of poverty, deprivation, and internalized stigma.

Researchers who engage in studies with lone mothers are implicated in the construction of those stories and must be ever mindful of the ways that these stories are reconstructed even (and perhaps, especially) when lone mothers are actively involved. The video recording and the process that produced it was characterized by tensions and setbacks as well as some significant gains. That process is documented in this coauthored article where distinct voices are heard and honored and the complexities of that shared story are revealed.