Qualities That Mexican, Dominican and African American US Mothers Attribute to ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Mothers and Fathers

Abstract

Women raise children within cultural ideologies that enforce gendered standards for caregiving. In market‐driven societies, working mothers face the ‘intensive mothering ideology’, which demands self‐sacrifice for children while promoting self‐interest at work. Fathers are primarily framed as breadwinners. We know little about how ethnically and racially diverse, low‐SES mothers construct ideas of good and bad parenting. In this study, we examined Dominican, African American and Mexican US‐based mothers' perspectives on ideal qualities of mothers and fathers (N = 193, daughters = 51.3%, MAge = 26.27). Using semantic and latent coding, we analysed the content and framing of mothers' responses, which fell into 28 themes, emphasising idealised parenting as providing basic needs, emotional support, education and embodying desired traits. Our latent analyses captured the frequencies of qualities mentioned by mothers, whether they centered children or parents, the presence or absence of qualities and performed actions or embodied characteristics. Our findings highlight the social constructions of mothering and fathering and offer a foundation for future mixed‐methods research.