Working-Poor Mothers and Middle-Class Others: Psychosocial Considerations in Home-School Relations and Research STEPHANIE JONES Teachers College, Columbia University This article draws from a three-year ethnographic study of girls and their mothers in a high-poverty, predominantly white community. Informed by critical and feminist theories of social class, I present four cases that highlight psychosocial tensions within the mother-daughter- teacher-researcher triangle and argue that white, middle-class female teachers and ethnographers need to be particularly reflexive when working with children across the social class divide. [gen- der, social class, mothers, psychosocial] On a spring day in 2002, I was routinely reading children’s writing samples and tak- ing note of already emerging themes, when a girl’s notebook entry demanded a reconsideration of data from the beginning of this three-year study forward. Faith (all names are pseudonyms), a second grader at the time, wrote the following in her writer’s notebook during an after-school “girls’ group” meeting that I facilitated as part of this research: Mom, I like girls group because Mrs. Jones is nice to me. I don’t know why she is, maybe she’s trying to be nice. But I care about you mom. Okay? I’m trying to be nice. —Faith [spring of second grade] In this short piece of writing, Faith forced me to think critically about the complica- tions investigated in this article: suspicion or fear of me as a teacher and researcher (“I don’t know why she is [nice]”) and tensions experienced by young girls as they negotiate loyalty to their mother (“but I care about you mom”) and a relationship with a teacher-researcher (“I’m trying to be nice”). The significance of this entry will be unpacked as I develop the argument that the construction of the white middle-class woman as ideal mother and the working-class or poor woman as less than ideal positions little girls living between two such women to negotiate complex social and psychological terrain. In addition to particular challenges faced by children, the psychosocial landscapes in which their working- class and poor mothers find themselves can be wrought with pain, fear, anger, and suspicion as they recognize the relations governing power and privilege in educa- tional institutions and society at large. Hegemonic ideals of “good mothering” are problematic in any fashion, but the fact that such ideals exist and are used against 159 Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 38, Issue 2, pp. 159–177, ISSN 0161-7761, online ISSN 1548-1492. © 2007 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/aeq.2007.38.2.159.