sector housing (39), others lived with family (13) and six of the families owned their
own home. The majority of families (52 out of 70) were in receipt of at least one
means-tested state benefit such as Housing or Council Tax Benefit or Working Tax
Credit1. We report elsewhere on the challenges of attempting to clarify the meaning
of ‘working class’ in relation to the families in our study (for more details, please see
Vincent et al. 2008a).
The majority of the initial interviews for this study were with mothers (61), three were
with fathers and six with couples. We also conducted repeat interviews with 20
families, of which eight included both partners. The focus of this paper is on
mothers’ experiences and it is the interviews with women that form the basis for the
analysis presented here. Interviewed mothers were aged between 16 and 40+, 41
were married or had live-in partners, whilst 29 were lone mothers. Half of the
mothers (35) worked outside the home (16 full-time and 19 part-time, i.e. less than 30
hours per week), 28 were not in paid employment and seven mothers were studying or
at school full-time. Families had diverse ethnic backgrounds, we classified 29
mothers as being White UK or White Other, 27 as having African/Caribbean origins
and ten as coming from an Asian background (see table 2). The White UK group of
interviewees included three ultra-Orthodox Jewish mothers. We interviewed a
number of Muslim respondents from both Asian and African backgrounds and several
of the other interviewees mentioned the importance in their lives of their Christian
faith. Families used a range of different childcare with just over a third of the sample
(26) having children at a daycare nursery full-time.
1 Working Tax Credit is a payment to top up the earnings of low paid working people (whether
employed or self-employed).
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