I Might Stay to Myself: Activation and Avoidance of Assistance from Kin

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I might stay to myself: activation and avoidance of assistance from kin.

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Mazelis, J. M., & Mykyta, L. (2020). I might stay to myself: activation and avoidance of assistance from kin. In Journal of Marriage and Family (Vol. 82, Issue 5). National Council on Family Relations. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12680 Document Version: Accepted Manuscript (AM)

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I Might Stay to Myself: Activation and Avoidance of Assistance from Kin

Joan Maya Mazelis and Laryssa Mykyta

Joan Maya Mazelis, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Sociology Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice Rutgers University-Camden 405-07 Cooper Street Camden, NJ 08102 [email protected]

Laryssa Mykyta, Ph.D. U.S. Census Bureau Health and Disability Statistics Branch Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division 4600 Silver Hill Road, Washington, DC 20233 [email protected]

Note: The authors thank Ryan Daly, Brendan Gaughan, Taylor Kates, and Isabella D’Anella- Mercanti for research assistance. Any views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. Census Bureau.

I Might Stay to Myself: Activation and Avoidance of Assistance from Kin

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study explores how low-income mothers and fathers who recently have had a child avoid and access financial and other instrumental support from kin and the statements they make about kin support.

Background: New parents without significant financial capital have a strong need for social support from family members. Yet some with access to assistance from family do not activate it, and avoiding support can leave them facing dire circumstances alone.

Method: This article uses data from all four waves of the Time, Love, and Cash among Couples with Children study (TLC3), a qualitative study embedded in the Fragile Families and Child

Wellbeing Study. Researchers used a stratified random sampling scheme to select 25 couples from each of three cities. Analysis used open and axial coding techniques on interview transcript data.

Results: Reports of kin support are widespread, but help is not universally activated. Parents often talk in contradictory ways about activating and avoiding support. Those who access help from family often employ the language of avoidance, particularly when it comes to asking for help. Those who avoid it or claim to avoid it say they do so because of individualistic pride, the pressure of reciprocity, and understandings of what it means to be an independent adult.

Conclusion: This study illustrates the complexity and contradictions in how participants think and talk about kin support, and demonstrates that asking for help presents a key barrier to support.

Keywords: Qualitative methodology, Support, Intergenerational relationships, Low-income families, Fragile families

Running head: I Might Stay to Myself

I Might Stay to Myself: Activation and Avoidance of Assistance from Kin

INTRODUCTION

Social support from family members is crucial for new parents. Financially disadvantaged people cannot always access such financial or in-kind assistance (Desmond,

2012), and those who are new parents are particularly vulnerable without it (Harknett, 2006).

Some vulnerable new parents who do have access to assistance from family members do not access, or activate, it (see Mazelis & Mykyta, 2011 on support activation). In the U.S., the individualistic focus on personal responsibility leads many people to believe they should conquer their challenges alone, even when confronting intense need for help (Nelson, 2002). Norms regarding reciprocity further complicates people’s attitudes regarding help; for those who struggle economically, they worry about their potential inability to repay any assistance they receive (Nelson, 2000; Offer, 2012). This work focuses on how those who activate or avoid kin support talk about their decisions regarding kin support. The research questions it addresses are:

How do disadvantaged new parents discuss financial and other instrumental support from kin?

Why do disadvantaged new parents activate or avoid available support?

How consistent are their stated decisions/desires and their actions?

This study contributes to the literature by addressing barriers to support activation. It explores participants’ willingness to accept help and motives for avoiding support. Finally, it engages with apparent contradictions between what people say they do and what they report doing. In doing so, this paper builds on prior work that found not all who perceive support to be available actually access it, and problematizes how researchers measure support. Therefore this analysis

sheds light on the processes by which vulnerable new parents cope with challenges, examining crucial barriers to activating support.

This paper relies on secondary analysis of data from the Time, Love, and Cash among

Couples with Children study (TLC3) to examine how mothers and fathers who recently have had a child discuss financial and other instrumental support from kin, including in-kind help with practical needs such as child care, food, clothing, and housing, and to explore how they discuss activating available support or avoiding it and their motives for doing so. Activating available support is accessing help, including taking assistance when offered or asking for and accepting help. Avoiding support is declining help that is offered or refusing to ask for help. People may activate support even if they desire to avoid it. TLC3 is a qualitative study embedded in the

Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) study, a nationally representative sample of nearly 5,000 nonmarital births in 20 cities conducted 1988-2000. The FFCWS and TLC3 samples represent a relatively disadvantaged population, which suggests they have a particular need for financial support.

This paper’s unique contributions to the literature on kin stem from several advantages in the data set and approach. First, TLC3 contains four waves of qualitative data, making it a rare dataset to explore kin financial and other instrumental support to new parents over time. While data regarding kin support do not exist to equivalent extents across waves or in each participant’s interview or interviews, the data do allow us to explore those instances when participants’ reports of what they did and how they felt about support change or conflict between waves.

Second, TLC3 includes both individual and couple interviews with mothers as well as fathers, whereas most data sets contain only interviews with mothers. Data on support is limited in the couple interviews and more prevalent in the interviews with mothers than with fathers, but again

the variety of data provides at least small windows into how mothers and fathers talk about support in different ways. Third, this paper explores how parents talk about activating or avoiding support from kin. Recognizing that not all who could activate support from kin do so, we focus our attention here on what we can ascertain regarding the reasons why people activate support that is available to them from their kin and why they choose not to, as well as the apparent contradictions in what people say they typically do and what they report having done.

Understanding these dynamics may redirect theoretical and empirical focus from what kin can provide or what people perceive is available to how struggling families think and feel about getting help from family members and why they may desire to avoid support even when they need it. Rather than only asking people if they have social network members who would provide help if they needed it, or only asking what support people receive, researchers must also ask if they would ask for help, if they would take help, and what has stopped them from taking help.

Exploring feelings about help and making sense of apparent contradictions between what people say and what they report doing are key contributions of this paper.

BACKGROUND AND RELEVANT LITERATURE

The Importance and Availability Of Kin Support For Financially Disadvantaged New Parents

Private safety nets—social network members who provide assistance—provide indispensable support to financially struggling families (Castillo & Sarver, 2012; Gottlieb,

Pilkauskas, & Garfinkel, 2014; Harknett, 2006; Henly et al., 2005; Matthews & Besemer, 2015;

Stack, 1974). The erosion of the U.S. public safety net by welfare reform (the Personal

Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), as well as other policy changes, has made this support more crucial in the years since (Harknett, 2006; Henly, 2002;

Ryan, Kalil, and Leininger, 2009).

Financially disadvantaged people—whether they live below the official U.S. poverty line or above it—often rely on financial or in-kind assistance from family members (such as childcare), emotional support, or help in finding a job, among other things. Parents of young children often need help in all of these areas (Harknett, 2006; Hogan, Eggebeen, & Clogg, 1993), and they are more likely to receive financial assistance than childless people, primarily from kin

(Bengtson, 2001; Harknett, 2006). Edin and Lein (1997) found that financial support from social networks greatly reduces material hardship for single mothers. Yet not all those who need support from social ties are able to get it (Desmond, 2012). Even when help is available, people may not access it (Mazelis, 2017; Raudenbush, 2016; Small, 2017); this study explores the reasons for this avoidance.

To engage with the questions surrounding why people avoid or claim to avoid assistance from others, we first have to consider whether there is support available to avoid. Prior research has found that kin support to new parents is positively associated with socioeconomic status and need (Henly, 2002). First-time parents receive more support than do parents of more than one child (Harknett & Knab, 2007). Financial support from social networks reduces material hardship for low-income single mothers (Harknett, 2006), and among the poor there is a great deal of social support (Mazelis, 2017).

Nevertheless, poor people’s networks tend to have few resources; with great need, members may quickly drain those resources (Edin, 2001). Social networks are often homogenous in terms of members’ socioeconomic status, so kin may have also difficulty providing financial support (Edin & Lein, 1997). Accordingly, poor people are less likely to perceive that they have access to support from others and receive significantly less support than wealthier people (Henly,

Danziger, & Offer, 2005; Hogan et al, 1993). By exploring variation in avoiding and accessing

support in a sample of people who are all economically disadvantaged (eligibility was limited to those families in which the mother’s household income was not higher than $75,000, though most were much poorer), we can look beyond lack of family resources as an explanation for why those in need may not get support. Many who have resource-deprived social networks do receive support from members of those networks, so we need to examine not just availability of support but how and why those who have it available may attempt to avoid it.

Avoidance Of Support: Individualism And Reciprocity

Sometimes people who need help do not receive it; even if they perceive it to be available, some do not access this support. Silva (2013) found that people in the United States want to be self-reliant and avoid seeing themselves as dependent, so they try to refrain from asking others for help; yet, her study focused on working-class young adults, not specifically economically disadvantaged new parents as we do here. As Nelson (2005) argued, poor people often want to be self-sufficient and pride themselves on their independence: “The need to demonstrate self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and independence, however, runs counter to the very real needs single mothers have” (2005: 56; see also Levine, 2013; Mazelis, 2017; Nelson, 2002).

This desire for independence and self-reliance can lead mothers to avoid support from kin. But daily lived realities often mean relying on others: on the government for available assistance, on social service agencies for programs targeted to the poor, and on family members, friends, and neighbors to aid survival (Nelson, 2005). The way in which poor people discuss independence and social ties indicates how they want to see themselves and how they want others to see them: as capable, self-reliant persons with no need to depend on anyone else. This focus on individualism is a thread woven deeply in the fabric of U.S. society. As Hacker and Pierson write: “More than most societies, Americans believe that people rise or fall as a result of their

own efforts, and therefore get what they deserve. . . . We distribute blame and praise to individuals because we believe that it is their individual actions, for better or worse, that matter.

People get what they deserve” (2010: 103).

Reciprocity obligations may also discourage people from activating support (Gouldner

1960; Hansen, 2004; Mazelis, 2015; Nelson, 2000; Offer, 2012), especially given the importance of reciprocity among low-income families (Edin & Lein, 1997; Hansen, 2004; Harknett, 2006;

Mazelis, 2015; Nelson, 2000; Offer, 2012). Those uncertain about their ability to reciprocate may avoid accessing needed support to avoid violating reciprocity norms (Hansen, 2004;

Mazelis, 2015; Nelson, 2000). On the other hand, reciprocity can resolve the tension between getting help from others and maintaining a sense of independence through the repayment process and lead people to be more willing to activate support (Mazelis, 2017; Nelson, 2005). But the pressure to reciprocate can also lead poor people to withdraw from social relationships (Edin &

Lein, 1997; Hansen, 2004; Nelson, 2005; Offer, 2012), and some members of social networks may refuse to offer support for fear that it will not be reciprocated (Mazelis, 2017).

Pride, desire for self-sufficiency, and the complications of reciprocity all work to lead those in need to avoid assistance from others, yet some activate support even in the face of these obstacles, even while claiming otherwise. The current study examines all of these factors, documents the fact that participants’ reaction to these factors can change over time, and demonstrates the complexity in participants’ notions of what they do, want to do, and have done with regard to kin support. Thus, it provides crucial clues as to how individuals choose whether to activate support and illuminates the contradictions in participants’ narratives to help us understand the complicated ways in which they think about support, independence, and need.

Contradictions Between Ideas And Realities

One issue in considering narratives and notions about support in longitudinal studies is that people may discuss how they feel about support in ways that do not align with what they do regarding support, and what they think and do may change over time; this does not mean participants do not tell interviewers the truth. Rather, repeated interviews increase rapport, and participants may become more comfortable providing contradictory, nuanced, and complicated answers to interviews the longer they are involved in a research project. Research on other subjects has revealed such inconsistencies but also demonstrate trust and rapport. For example,

Edin and Lein (1997) discovered that asking participants about their expenses before their income yielded more comprehensive and accurate budget information; individuals unintentionally try to fit their expenses to the income they know they have, so if they report income first they tend to inadvertently underreport expenses. This suggests that if a different interviewer asked the question in a different order—for example, in a different wave of a longitudinal study—participants might provide different information.

Edin and Kefalas (2005) uncovered another way in which participants’ values do not predict their actions: they found that low-income women highly valued marriage even though they often did not get married. Outside observers sometimes assume unmarried mothers do not marry because they do not value marriage, but the researchers discovered that in fact, the women they studied often did not marry because the value they placed on marriage was so high.

In addition, participants’ reported perceptions vary over time and sometimes even within single interviews. As Nicoll noted, “interpretations are unlikely to be static” (2017: 133).

Participants have changing circumstances and multiple roles that affect their perspectives. In her study of low-income individuals’ interpretations of their needs, contradictions highlight the complexity of need.

Finally, Small (2017) found that people often think they typically do one thing but in reality often do something else. In his study, participants reported they would go to strong ties to discuss important matters, but when asked who they talked to the last time they discussed important matters, the answer was weak ties far more often than existing theory predicted, demonstrating that what people think they generally do doesn’t always match what they report having done. His findings were intriguing in relationship to confidants, and may point the way to significant insight into how vulnerable parents access needed support even when they think they avoid it. It is possible people claim to avoid support or believe they avoid support but in fact access it. In particular, it is important to recognize that how researchers ask questions of study participants can affect answers.

DATA AND ANALYSIS

We conduct secondary analysis using data from the Time, Love and Cash in Couples with Children Study (TLC3) to examine how parents discuss kin financial and other instrumental support. TLC3 is a stratified random subsample of 75 couples (150 parents) from a larger study, the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). FFCWS sampled 4,898 births occurring between 1998 and 2000 at 75 hospitals in 20 U.S. cities with populations greater than

200,000 (Reichman, Teitler, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 2001) and is representative of births in large U.S. metropolitan areas. Parents in the FFCWS completed a survey after the birth of their child and researchers conducted follow-up surveys at multiple time points as the focal child aged. TLC3 is a qualitative supplement to this larger quantitative data set; it involved up to four waves of detailed interviews with 25 couples (50 parents) who experienced a birth in the year

2000 in each of three FFCWS cities between 2000 and 2005: Chicago, Milwaukee, and New

York.

Researchers used a stratified random sampling scheme to select respondents for the TLC3 supplement. Probability sampling is rare in qualitative studies, as is the fact that these data are embedded in a large national quantitative dataset. While we must still exercise caution in generalizing findings from these data, the dataset’s rare strengths can increase our confidence in our findings. Like FFCWS, TLC3 oversampled unmarried couples (and nonmarital births), so that married couples comprised about one-third of the TLC3 sample. TLC3 used one hospital in each of the three cities. In each city, FFCWS couples were eligible to participate in TLC3 only: if they were romantically involved at the time of the focal child’s birth, if the mother’s household income was not higher than $75,000 (though most were considerably poorer), if both parents were geographically accessible to interviewers), if the father was not incarcerated, if the child was living with at least one biological parent, and if both parents spoke English (England &

Edin, 2008b). Interview questions included questions about couples’ relationship to each other and their thoughts on the future of their relationships, as well as their views on parenthood and marriage, and about household income and expenditures, among other topics (England and Edin,

2008a). Mothers and fathers participated in semi-structured in-depth interviews individually and as a couple in each of the four waves starting in the year 2000. Wave 2 data are from when the child was 12-18 months old, Wave 3 data 24-30 months old, and Wave 4 when the child was 3-4 years old (England & Edin, 2008b). A total of 756 interviews were completed over the course of the four waves. We did not conduct the interviews ourselves, but conducted analysis of transcript data made available to us by the researchers. Participants address topics of kin support to varying extents. Some participants discuss kin support very little, some discuss it a great deal at some waves but not others, and so on.

One obvious strength of longitudinal qualitative data is that researchers can build on what they learn from one wave to the next as they design interview guides for follow-up interviews.

Because we were not the researchers, this apparent benefit of longitudinal data does not apply.

As Deterding (2015) stated, “… the researcher cannot elaborate or clarify his or her theoretical hunches by modifying the interview protocol” (2015: 289). Yet, repeated interviews over time does help establish trust and rapport between researchers and participants, improving the quality of the data collected, so even as secondary analysts, we benefit from this advantage of the longitudinal aspect of the dataset. Finally, although participants do not consistently discuss the themes of interest over time for us to be able to explore changes for all participants, multiple interviews with the same people at different time periods do allow us to explore these changes in perspective when they appear, contextualized by participants’ life circumstances. The FFCWB surveys tell us whether subjects report kin support, but not how they feel about it. The TLC3 data allow us to capture nuances in complicated and sometimes contradictory sentiments participants have about support (Nicoll, 2017). As Roy stated, “Qualitative studies are attuned to capturing nuances of context; to noting subtle processes in relationships, families, and communities; and to tapping into the personal and social meanings that are foundations of family life” (2012: 662).

Therefore, we are able to capture important personal and social meanings regarding how subjects feel about asking for, accessing or avoiding support.

We conducted secondary analysis of TLC3 data from all four waves to explore how participants in the study answered questions about kin support and their understandings of why they activate or avoid available support. We explored themes of kin support where they existed in individual and couple interviews. We coded interview transcript data for how participants felt about getting and asking for kin support, reciprocity, and desires to avoid support, paying special

attention to transcript portions the initial coding team on the original TLC3 project coded as about kin support. We examined participant responses to questions that varied slightly depending on interview but yielded relevant answers, such as “Are there people you could ask for help?” which elicited answers regarding both financial and in-kind instrumental support, “Do you have people who can sort of take your child off your hands for a while, so that you can get a break?”,

“In the past month, have you gotten any money from relatives or anybody else to kind of help pay expenses?”, “Do you get any help with expenses?”, and “At the end of the month if you don’t have enough money to pay bills, what do you usually do?” Most of these interview questions focused on help from people, leading participants to differentiate between assistance from kin and informal networks and more formal assistance such as from government programs.

However, it is certainly possible that participants might have conflated these forms of support, such as when they described the desire to be independent. Further, subjects may have sometimes combined in-kind and financial support as they though about help from family, even though they may have thought of the types of help in different ways.

We selected all transcript portions on kin support for each wave of individual and couple interviews for all participants, creating an electronic document for each wave of individual interviews and each wave of couple interviews, and printed these to hard copies, placing them in eight binders (one for each wave of individual and one for each wave of couple) for paper copy coding. Four advanced undergraduates (who one of us trained to code) successively coded all printed material, looking in particular for sentiments about support and welcoming or avoiding support. We then reviewed carefully all the coded text, both in cases of intercoder agreement and disagreement, to discern patterns, and wrote memos about what we learned to guide us as we analyzed our findings.

We developed concepts through analysis (Roy, 2012; Small, 2008). We read interview text carefully, exploring the data that addressed our research questions, examining transcript text for patterns in a process of open coding, noting where and how participants discussed activating available kin support or avoiding it. We then used techniques of grounded theory to explore patterns we found, allowing themes to emerge inductively as we proceeded from open to axial coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). All qualitative participants have FFCWS identification numbers that allowed us to link to their survey data, and so we also supplemented our analysis by using their survey data to help contextualize our TLC3 findings.

We do not report Ns per themes in the findings section below. As Small stated, “The strengths of qualitative work come from understanding how and why, not understanding how many…” (2008: 170; emphasis in original; see also Collett, 2010). Rather than aiming to present a representative account, this study explores how these new parents talk about avoiding support, activating support, and how they feel about support.

FINDINGS

In line with prior research, findings clearly demonstrated that financial and other instrumental support can be helpful and welcome and make a real difference in well-being of parents of young children. Most FFCWS respondents reported they perceived help to be available (Mazelis & Mykyta, 2011), and this pattern exists in the TLC3 data as well. TLC3 participants often experienced the help they receive from kin in a positive way, whether they perceived it as a gift or part of an exchange in a mutually reciprocal relationship. At the same time, kin support was not universally available to those in the study, and people reported a variety of reasons for not getting help or not asking for help. In this section we present findings regarding how TLC3 parents discussed financial support from kin as well as their perspectives

on activating or avoiding available support, relying mainly on the TLC3 data, contextualized where needed with additional insights on the participants provided from the FFCWS survey through linked identification numbers that allowed us to examine survey information for participants. Findings demonstrated the contradictions in many participant accounts of how they avoided or used kin support. “Focal child” refers to the child that made the parents eligible to join the study; the focal parents are the parents of this child.

Activating Support: They’re Always Right There To Help

In this section we describe the ways some participants discussed getting help from kin without even having to ask. We did not see any patterns in attitudes about receiving or asking for help—positive or negative—by race, ethnicity, or city of residence. We also found no patterns by relationship status.

From some participants’ reports, it seemed family members understood they had important needs for assistance, and they often provided it to participants in anticipation of their unexpressed needs. In New York, Corrine, a 20-year-old Puerto Rican mother cohabiting with

Joel, the father of her first child (and the focal father), who was 24 and also Puerto Rican, reported that she had enough money to cover expenses because Joel’s parents had given her money. She did not ask them for money, but they provided it without her asking, She said,

“Thank God for that. Yeah, because his mother, [his] father gave me money too…. His father gave me $200. So I paid rent, I finished paying [for] my furniture, you know?” Corinne was typical of those who expressed only positive feelings about activating support. Her account suggests she did not have to ask for the help she received, and thus that Joel’s parents had removed one of the potential barriers to activating support from the equation. They made it easier for Corinne to take the help than it might have been had she had to ask directly for it. Neither

Corinne nor Joel held a high school diploma, and survey data reflected substantial hardship despite public safety net support—including an eviction—over the course of their child’s first years. Strikingly, in the survey data, Corinne reported financial support was available, but also reported not activating it, demonstrating the insights qualitative data gathered in a context of trust and rapport can provide.

Brandon, age 25, an African American father in Chicago, married to April, age 27, also

African American and the mother of his focal child, described activating support during his

Wave 1 individual interview:

Financially my parents have helped us a lot…. Then, my father has pitched in on a lot of

things. Just in terms of us living. This is my natural father, as well as my mother and my

stepfather. They purchased the beds for my child, my sister purchased the bassinet thing.

They put a lot of financial help, a lot, a lot.

Brandon described his extended family’s support in the year after the birth of the focal child, consistent with his (and April’s) survey responses. By Wave 3 of the survey, Brandon and April no longer reported activating support although they both reported additional hardship, including working more to make ends meet. As time wore on and the focal child aged, the couple received less help from kin, even though their reported hardship suggests they could have benefited from such assistance.

During their Wave 2 couple interview, Carmen, 22, a Puerto Rican married mother in

Milwaukee, said that her father-in-law “helps a lot” even though they don’t ask, and that he had in the recent past given the money for their car payment and taken her and her husband, Pedro,

24 and also Puerto Rican, shopping and paid all or part of the bill. She reported that this had stopped, however: “In a way we couldn’t afford [those things in the past], but now we have a

little more extra money.” Carmen’s comment suggests that, intentionally or not, her father-in-law responded to the financial need in her household. Like the other participants mentioned above,

Carmen was comfortable receiving money from the focal father’s kin. Much like Corinne,

Brandon, and William, Carmen reported receiving help from family without asking. In the survey data, Carmen reported receiving this help from kin in Waves 1 and 2 to help cover monthly expenses, including utility bills, but not at Wave 3. In Waves 2 and 3 she reported welfare receipt; it is possible her use of the public safety net obviated the need for kin support as time wore on.

Samera, a 22-year-old white mother, was married to Hassan, 33 years old and also white, the father of the focal child. They lived with her father, and it may have been easier to accept additional support or activate support without asking for those participants living with kin, itself a form of support. Samera noted that her father bought furniture, appliances, and other things for the house they shared: “If we need anything my dad just go buys it.” In other words, she didn’t even have to ask her father to purchase things. Samera’s account of family support was similar to those described by other participants above. The fact that kin seemed to provide the assistance without the study participants ever having to broach the sometimes-difficult subject with their family members may explain in part why they all felt relatively positive about the help they get.

In discussing current assistance she was getting from her family, Wendy, a 38-year-old unmarried white New York mother, who reported poor health in survey waves 1 and 2, mentioned not directly asking for help and said, “I never pay them back, they never say anything.

They’re always right there to help. We try to pay them back; they never accept it. They would turn around and put it right back into our bank account.” Beyond not having to ask for help,

Wendy even found her offers to repay her family for their help were declined. Her kin made sure

she knew she should consider the help they’ve provided her to be a gift not to be repaid. Wendy, her partner, and their child lived with her father at the time of the baseline FFCWS survey.

Although they later moved to their own residence, Wendy reported struggling with paying housing costs in survey waves 2 and 3. Although she did not report receiving support in the survey, it may be that established patterns of support continued.

Interviews make clear that many participants activated help and that they appreciated and depended on it. They perceived help to be available from their family members, and they told interviewers about specific occasions when they activated such support. Yet it is clear from these accounts that a main characteristic these instances shared was that the help was freely given, and almost passively activated. None of these participants who reported feeling so positive about the help they received from family members reported having to ask for help.

Reciprocity In The Context Of Activating Support:

You Can’t Do It By Yourself/I Don’t Want To Owe Nobody Nothing

In this section we discuss the importance of reciprocity. The cases described below are not mutually exclusive from the ones above. The prior section focuses on participants’ positive feelings about getting help for which they did not need to ask, and this section focuses on the role of reciprocity in fostering or hindering support activation. There are varied reasons participants often did not want to ask for or receive help from others, even from close kin. Rather than activate support, they avoided it, or reported wishing they could avoid it. While reciprocity enabled support activation for some participants, it led others to avoid support. Norms of reciprocity mean those who got assistance would have had to repay it, and worried parents with meager resources wanted to avoid such obligation.

While help can be welcomed and positive and reciprocity can play an advantageous role in relationships, reciprocity is also a double-edged sword. Help received also means help owed, and the pressure to fulfill obligations of reciprocity can be too great for some, leading them to shy away from getting help. For example, Joel, 24, an unmarried Puerto Rican father in New

York, cited reciprocity as a reason to avoid asking for help. As he described it, he experienced social isolation as a result: “I’m usually home. I don’t see nobody. I like it that way. Nobody give me nothing, so nobody can later on, in the future, say they need something from me…. I don’t want to owe nobody nothing.” Pablo, 28, was also an unmarried Puerto Rican father in

New York living with his partner Yaneiry. He said, “I don’t like to borrow money… because then you got to be paying [back] and all, you know?” Pablo reported receiving support at all waves, but that does not mean he felt positive about taking such assistance. Tamaris, 26, an unmarried African American mother in Milwaukee, expressed the same perspective as Joel and

Pablo. She said,

I don’t like to ask relatives for stuff or borrow money. If I don’t got no money. I don’t

like going “can you borrow me $20.” I don’t like doing that. No no. [If] you do get

money, that ain’t your money because you owe everybody. I can’t do it.

All three of these participants feared future obligations to repay support they might have received, and that is a key reason they reported avoiding asking for financial help or asking to borrow money. As described above, it seems that directly asking for help is the thing participants most desired to avoid. Joel, Pablo and Tamaris each reported receiving public safety net support, and may have internalized the rhetoric of personal responsibility that accompanies these programs, applying it even to relations between relatives, making them feel they should not rely on family because of their sense of personal responsibility.

And yet, the way many participants talked about reciprocity suggests that it can make it more comfortable to activate support. Rhonda and Adam were an African American couple in

Chicago, unmarried at the beginning of the study, but married by the end. Adam described a mutual, reciprocal understanding he had with his mother, cousin, and sisters when it came time to get needed items: “I’ll go get it. She’ll go get it. My cousin. My mom. If my mom’s going out, she’ll go get` it or whatever. ‘Mom, if you’re going out, get some Pampers. Here’s a few dollars.’…If I need it and I don’t have it, I call one of them, and they’ll give it to me, or vice versa. If they need something.... If somebody need help, ’cause you can’t do it by yourself.”

Adam described an unwavering support system that ensured that he and Rhonda had what they needed, and confidently reported reliance on his kin. He felt free asking them to get something relatively small for him but also was prepared to help them out as need arose.

Chanell also described monetary reciprocity. She (25) and Roy (23) are a married African

American couple in Chicago. In an individual interview, Chanell said, “I borrow some off my mama, and then she turn around and borrow some for me…. And I say, ‘You can’t borrow from me, ’cause I got nothing!’ But I give it to her, but I know she’s gonna give it back.” This couple received support from public safety net programs, and Chanell reported multiple hardships making ends meet in survey responses. By survey Wave 3, the couple had moved in with kin and this proximity may have facilitated the reciprocity she reported in the interviews and in the survey. Chanell described a reciprocity in which she had strong confidence and trust. It allowed her to engage in mutual support with her mother with the knowledge that she could rely on it consistently. This is an example of reciprocity working in a way in which all parties involved could feel its benefit. Chanell borrowed from her mother, knowing that her mother would also

borrow from her in the future. And she was comfortable providing help to her mother because she knew her mother would reciprocate.

Dinorah, a white 28-year-old mother, was married to Edward, 30 years old and Puerto

Rican, the father of the focal child in the study. They lived in New York. Edward’s mother lived downstairs from him and Dinorah and their kids, and she watched the children after school.

Though not financial support, this child care did have financial benefits as it saved them money in expensive after-school care. Edward also reported that he and his cousin took turns watching each other’s children and helped each other out, and Dinorah’s survey responses suggested she also provided financial support to family and friends. Edward described an informal situation that permitted them to be spontaneous in their plans because his cousin lived upstairs. Having kin close by who are in a network of reciprocity can provide valuable benefits that are hard to quantify. Edward and Dinorah undoubtedly saved money on child care they might have had to pay for; they also had more freedom and relaxation and flexibility as a result of this support.

Ester and José, both age 24, were a Mexican American married couple in Milwaukee.

Ester emphasized reciprocity in relation to the help José’s parents provided:

We clean. You know once in a while we help out his mom and his dad. I cook. Right now

I just finished cooking before you got here so that he [her father-in-law] can have

something when he gets home…. I was washing clothes. Usually it’s mostly her, mostly

his mom that does the cleaning, the cooking, the straightening up.

FFCWS survey questions asked respondents to report financial reciprocity, but did not include questions related to in-kind reciprocity, though in-kind reciprocity may be a way to repay kin for other forms of support, including financial support. This couple lived with parents so

reciprocal support may have been easier to provide. The reciprocity Ester described was unequal.

She acknowledged:

Everyone wants their own house, but if I had my house, I’m not going to have it like I

have it here…. My mother-in-law cooks for me, cleans for me, watches my kids when I

need her to. She feeds my kids and I got it made. I got it made, man, I ain’t afraid to say

it.

Ester described doing a fair amount around the house but was quite clear in her interview that she felt she benefitted substantially from their arrangement; it was reciprocal, but uneven in that she felt she received more than she provided. Rather than feeling concerned about the disparity,

Ester was clear she felt she had “it made,” and she knew if she lived independently she would have received far less of this instrumental support. While not direct financial support, instrumental support such as child care and cooking meals also brings financial benefits, in saving on costs of food and child care. It is often just as necessary as financial support for parents managing daily challenges. José described a more evenly reciprocal relationship with

Ester’s sister, noting, “when she goes out, Ester takes care of the kids right here. You know, so they’ve talked about it. You know, like if you take care of the kids today, you know I take care of them tomorrow so you can go out or something like that.”

Wendy, who tried to pay her family back for financial assistance but found they refused to take her money, recalled an even closer reciprocal relationship with her sister a few years earlier. Before the birth of her focal child, when they were both widowed, they moved in together. Wendy recalled:

My sister [and I]…took care of each other’s children. We never had a babysitter, it was

always family…. I had the three kids, and she had her one. I worked nights, two jobs, and

then she worked during the day. And we took turns doing everything. And we never said

anything to each other anyway. If I didn’t see milk in the refrigerator, I went and bought

milk. I didn’t wait for nobody to ask. And she would do the same thing…. Why would

you have to ask? If it’s not there, buy it. So, that’s why me and my sister got along so

well, we lived together for so many years. So, well over 16 years we lived together.

Wendy’s sister later remarried and lived with her new husband, but not far away. The sisters continued to talk on the phone frequently even though their reciprocal aid was no longer as constant as it once was. They remained close, both geographically and emotionally, and continued to share child care, if not to the former extent.

These participants typically experienced reciprocity positively, in that they felt confident that they were embedded in mutually supportive relationships with their kin, and welcomed the help they saw themselves repaying in a communal, cooperative way. Reciprocity served as a mechanism to encourage them to activate support. As the experiences of Ester, José, and Wendy suggest, proximity has an important role in reciprocal relationships, especially when it comes to sharing childcare. Physical distance can be an insurmountable barrier for day-to-day support, particularly with child care, but needn’t present the same obstacle for financial reciprocity. In the cases described here, activating support was a smooth and comfortable process in part because reciprocity removed worries about dependence and wounded pride.

Avoiding Support: Gender Norms and Personal Responsibility

The case of Jennifer, 21, and Duane, 23, an unmarried white couple in Milwaukee, illustrates that couples don’t always agree about asking for help, even during couple interviews.

Jennifer stated that, “Well I can call my dad [for a loan]; he helps me [but Duane says] ‘You ain’t calling your dad, I ain’t borrowing money from you.’” Duane agreed, saying, “I don’t

borrow money.” Even with the knowledge that Jennifer’s father helped and would have helped more if he could have, Duane tried as best as he could to keep Jennifer from asking for that help, desiring to meet their needs independently. The same dynamic existed in the relationship between Linda, 26, and Robert, 24. They are a married Puerto Rican couple living in New York.

Robert said, “she’s asked her dad for a couple of dollars when she went away to Tennessee.

Which I was against. I hate taking money. From anybody. I’m really like, ‘No!’ I mean…. I’d rather be hungry.” As Robert demonstrated, for some TLC3 study participants, asking for help or taking help seemed beyond even a last resort, even if their partners disagreed. The experiences of participants reported in this section demonstrated some of the reasons that people who perceived support to be available from kin wanted to avoid this support. In particular, they were loath to directly ask for help, a phenomenon noted above. They reported a sense of pride and a desire to be independent that would have been threatened if they asked for help. Robert said he’d rather be hungry than ask for help, a vivid example of how deep the reluctance to ask for help was for some people.

These two examples of Jennifer and Duane and Linda and Robert are gendered; in both cases she was willing to ask for and accept help; he was not. This may tie into ideas about masculinity and the provider role, particularly once a couple transitions to marriage. Men may feel more pressure to not accept help and fulfill the “provider” role when married. Both of these couples shared many other relevant characteristics: both started out as cohabiting, but later married. In the survey data both reported perceiving support to be available, but reported receiving it only in one wave, and both couples also reported providing reciprocal financial support.

Some participants explicitly mentioned their pride as standing in the way of kin support.

Linda and Robert, who as we described have conflicted over family help, both referenced pride in an early couple interview, and Linda said, “No, we don’t ask for any money from anybody.”

In dialogue that hinted at their later disagreement over the issue, Robert added, “I’m too proud to take it. I don’t take it. I got this huge pride thing so I don’t take it.” Linda agreed, “He won’t accept it.” This rhetoric about pride ran through many of the interviews, with participants expressing an ideal of self-reliance and an implied sense of shame at dependence on others for support. The sense that independent survival is a normal adult responsibility kept many from welcoming support from kin, even as their fragile economic status may have made such support necessary and valuable. Men in TLC3 were particularly likely to directly cite pride as a reason they avoided asking for help. Implicit in these statements was a sense that getting help is a stigmatized action, and a notion that getting help would have reflected poorly on participants’ ability to take care of themselves. Omar, 26, an unmarried African American father in Chicago, stated, “I don’t pretty much ask for no handouts.” And indeed, while his survey responses indicated the couple received no support, his partner Darline reported receiving support from both his and her kin.

Pride is connected to notions of what it means to be responsible and independent, for both mothers and fathers. Many participants invoked the notion that adults should not ask for help and should be able to care for themselves and their children independently. Once again, this perspective crossed lines of race/ethnicity, relationship status, and city. Digna, 30, an unmarried

Puerto Rican New York mother, reported asking for help from her parents but reluctantly: “I ask them, and sometimes I get tired of asking them ’cause I’m already a grown woman. You don’t need to be supported. But if I don’t have it, then I’ll ask them.” Many participants had a strong

notion of what it meant to be an adult, that it included independence from aid from family members, even the closest of kin. Digna hinted that if need was severe enough, she would have compromised her ideals to survive independently, but it would come at a cost. Instead, if she had been able to view adulthood and help from family as compatible rather than mutually exclusive, she might have been able to increase her comfort level with getting needed support from her parents.

Some participants invoked their status as parents rather than as adults. Closely related to the notion that freedom from reliance on family support defines adulthood was the sense that expenses related to parenthood are the parents’ responsibility—more specifically, the mothers’ responsibility. Lanetta, 27, a married African American Chicago mother, said during a couple interview with her husband Jerry, 32 and also African American, that she got no help for expenses from family, and “I try to take care of that by myself. My motto is, ‘I don’t take money for nothing’…. Basically, I figure, [my son is] my responsibility or if don’t want to take care of him or I couldn’t take care of him, what’s the sense of me open my legs to have them? So basically I’ve been doing everything for him, by myself.” Lanetta was married to the man sitting beside her, but she almost spoke as if she were single. The coarse description of conception, which suggests she chose to have sex but her husband didn’t, suggests internalized stigma that attaches to poor mothers, single mothers, and African American mothers. Melissa, who expressed negative feelings about help, also said during a couple interview with Mike that she avoided asking for help from kin “Because it’s my responsibility, nobody else,” even while the father of the focal child sat beside her. Rosa, a 22-year-old unmarried Puerto Rican mother, also from New York, said, “Like my kids are my responsibility, so for me to actually ask for something, for anything, for my kids, it has to be that I really have nowhere else to get it, and it’s

my only choice. It’s hard to ask.” Rosa’s comment suggested that if her need had been great enough, she would have gotten help from someone else, but only as a last resort, and again spoke about the responsibility for her children being hers alone. All of these mothers described sole responsibility for their children, even when married to the fathers of those children, and even when the children’s fathers sat next to them in the couple interviews.

As described above, gendered expectations played out in striking ways: fathers sometimes wished to avoid help because they thought they should have fulfilled a masculine role as providing for their children, while mothers sometimes described reluctance to access support because they saw themselves as solely responsible for having their children.

Complexity And Contradiction: I Might Stay To Myself

Longitudinal data allowed us to note that across waves of the study, participants sometimes seemed to directly contradict themselves. Here we include examples of Chanell,

Adam, and Linda. Chanell is the woman above who described exchanging mutual financial support with her mother; this was at Wave 2. And the survey indicated she reported receiving help from kin as well as accessing the public safety net in all Waves, and had moved in with her mother by Wave 3. Yet Chanell said during her Wave 1 couple interview with her partner, Roy,

“I don’t really like asking people for stuff. I might stay to myself.” Nor was this strictly because

Roy was listening. During her individual interview at Wave 1, she said, “I don’t even ask my momma for nothing.” In other words, she specifically reported receiving support at Wave 2 but at Wave 1 said she never would ask for help.

Adam is the man above who described an easy exchange in which he, his sisters, and his cousin make purchases for one another according to need and ability. That was in Wave 1. But by his Wave 4 individual interview, by which time he was married to Rhonda, Adam sounded

very different: “Sometimes [we] just do without until we can get it, what else what we do, mainly do, we try, I try not to ask people for, I try, I try to get it myself first, you know. And if I can’t get it most of the time I just do without.”

Linda is the woman whose partner, Robert, described at Wave 3 that she asked her father for “a couple of dollars.” Yet Linda said at her Wave 1 interview, of herself and her partner

Robert, that, “we don’t ask for any money from anybody.” The survey data confirm that they reported receiving support at Wave 2 but not beforehand.

The apparent contradictions Chanell, Adam, and Linda expressed suggest that the factors that determine the activation of support may change over time. All three couples were cohabiting at the beginning of the study, but ultimately married. Their relationship status change may have altered their feelings about support, but if that was a determining factor, it didn’t operate consistently, as Linda and Chanell went from wanting to avoid help at Wave 1 and getting help at Wave 2 or 3 while Adam’s feelings seemed to change in the other direction. Chanell moved in with kin later in the study, so she might have not wanted to ask for help early on, but it became easier when proximity facilitated reciprocal support. Gender might be a contributing factor, as

Adam grew to want to avoid asking others for help once he married, and Linda and Chanell seemed more willing to engage in asking for help or exchanging support after marriage. By this time Adam said he’d “just do without” and not ask people for help, he was married to Rhonda, and he may have internalized the social expectation that as a husband he must provide for family, an issue among fathers we described in the prior section.

It is also possible that some people may have had difficulty reconciling their views of themselves as independent persons able to take care of themselves with asking for or receiving help from family members. Adam described a strong support system and confidently reported

relying on family members as a routine matter, but later said he did without instead of relying on others. Chanell acknowledged that she did ask for loans two years after saying she’d never ask for help. Linda took a loan that she once said she wouldn’t. It is certainly possible that something changed for these participants over time to change their perspective on support—that the reciprocity Adam had once found comfortable soured, that the self-reliance Chanell and Linda once trumpeted proved unsustainable. Linda also may have been presenting a point of view she did not entirely feel when she said she would never take a loan, given Robert’s feelings on the subject, and his presence at the time. It is also possible that a number of other factors influenced participants’ apparent contradictions. It is even possible that the complexity their responses demonstrated stemmed from how they felt about the issues on the particular days of the interviews. It also appears that receiving assistance is qualitatively different for people than is asking for help. That is, the dynamics of kin support are not only about feeling positive about

“receiving” help but feeling negative about “asking for help,” and so the nuances of how the interviewers approached the questions may have had effects on responses.

It is also possible that Chanell, Adam, and Linda distinguished the support they described in one interview from the “help” they wished to avoid in another. They may not have considered strongly supportive relationships with family members who provided them a great deal of help as

“help.” It’s possible that in Adam’s case, the question about asking “people” for help made him think of asking people outside his kin network. Family members, after all, are not simply

“others,” and it would be unsurprising if participants made exceptions for them. And Chanell and

Linda may not have thought of loans as help, either because they planned to pay them back or because, in Chanell’s case at least, of the reciprocity between herself and her mother. These participants’ seemingly contradictory statements also point to the way in which people do often

contradict themselves, particularly when it comes to reporting what can be a stigmatized practice.

In addition, although individual effort is not usually sufficient to ensure the survival of people who struggle financially, reciprocity can become quite complicated. Both Adam and

Chanell were African American Chicagoans, and Linda was a Puerto Rican New Yorker; willingness to participate in reciprocal arrangements while also stigmatizing help does not have geographic or racial boundaries. A wide variety of participants did stigmatize help, although they may have simultaneously participated in reciprocal exchange systems. Given the extent to which some participants discussed avoiding support as important to maintain a sense of independence, self-reliance, and responsible adulthood, it makes sense that they might have at times minimized the extent to which they relied on others. It also makes sense that they might have emphasized this avoidance to interviewers, and that they may have answered questions about asking for help one way and perceived questions about support they received in another way.

DISCUSSION

In this paper we asked, how do disadvantaged new parents discuss financial and other instrumental support from kin, why do they activate or avoid available support, and how consistent are their stated decisions/desires and their actions? Findings indicated the range of experiences of TLC3 participant families with respect to support. Some activated available kin support and experienced that assistance positively, and described relationships of mutual trust and support in which norms of reciprocity had a positive role. Others wished to avoid asking others for help for a variety of reasons, including individualistic pride, the pressure of obligations of reciprocity, and their understandings of what it means to be an independent adult. Some mothers expressed a sense of sole responsibility for providing for their children, even when

fathers were involved. Still others experienced the assistance they receive positively, yet shrank from seeking more. Some participants described feelings about kin support in complex and even contradictory ways, at times expressing gratitude at being embedded in family networks of generous support and at other times reflecting on their desire to avoid seeking help from anyone.

Thus, the study shows that even activating support at one time is no guarantee that a participant will activate it in the future, should it be available, leading us to recognize that attitudes and actions regarding support are not static or consistent over time. Just as Raudenbush (2016) demonstrated that individuals were not always cohesive or always individualistic, findings of this study show that participants did not always avoid help or always enthusiastically activate it. Edin and Lein (1997) and Small (2017) have demonstrated that the order and the way in which researchers pose questions to participants yield different answers. Study findings clearly demonstrated that questions about asking for help usually yielded narratives characterized by far more reluctance and desire to avoid support than questions about receiving support did, and that having had to ask represented a barrier to receiving support.

In the TLC3 dataset participants widely reported they perceived help was available to them if they needed it. Most reported getting assistance in a variety of ways from family members. We did not find differences by race, ethnicity, relationship/marital status, or city of residence. Need seems to be one factor in accessing available support, as we saw in the experience of Carmen and Pedro discussed above; assistance from Pedro’s father to the married couple decreased as their economic situation improved. It seems paternal kin in the TLC3 study were far more likely to provide support when the focal parents were married, mirroring what

Mazelis and Mykyta (2011) found in the Fragile Families dataset, and some married fathers in the sample reported a great deal of assistance from their families.

There are some limitations to this study. We were not the interviewers, and analysis of data others have collected is complicated. We never met the study participants. We did not design the study, and it was not designed to address the particular questions we sought to answer.

Inconsistency in the salience of kin support across participants and over time means that there are more data of interest in some interviews than in others; this limits one strength of the longitudinal aspect of the data. Many participants spoke of these issues at some waves but not others, making comparisons between their notions about support over time less possible than we would have liked them to be. In addition, some couples expressed disagreement about kin support, but many did not; they either appear to agree or one has some to say on the matter while the other does not. We do not know the sources or therefore the full implications of any disagreement for their interactions with their kin. This limits the strength provided by the dataset’s inclusion of interviews with both mothers and fathers. Finally, TLC3 data do not allow us to probe kin’s reasons for providing or withholding assistance, but only study participants’ feelings and ideas about activating available help. Because TLC3 interviews were with the focal parents and not their kin, we can only remark on the experiences of the focal parents—in activating and avoiding help—as they reported them.

Perception of available support demonstrates people’s confidence in what their ties were able to provide, but not only could these perceptions have been mistaken (Harknett, 2006), we don’t know whether people would have asked for help even when they reported they believed it be available. Existing research showed that many in the Fragile Families study (in which the

TLC3 study used in this paper is embedded) activated support from kin (Mazelis & Mykyta,

2011); present findings demonstrated why some did not activate perceived support—in line with

prior research, we find that it is very challenging to ask for help, and participants were reluctant to do so (Nelson, 2005; Silva, 2013). Therefore, difficulty asking for help is a barrier to support.

An individualistic perspective is one reason focal parents seemed to refuse to ask for help even when they were fairly confident it was available. This individualism is a widespread social norm in U.S. society, and a big part of how Americans define responsible adulthood and parenthood. Others have documented that the rhetoric of welfare reform, for example, focuses on personal responsibility and self-sufficiency (Levine, 2013; Mazelis, 2017; Nelson, 2002).

Americans want to believe they can survive and succeed independently. Participants may have seen accessing support as stigmatizing, something they hinted at when they said their pride wouldn’t allow them to reach out for help, even from the closest of kin. In particular, some fathers seemed to believe they should fulfill masculine provider roles, and some mothers described themselves as solely responsible for their children, even to the exclusion of the children’s fathers. Finally, norms of reciprocity have a dual, conflicting role: some TLC3 parents reported rewarding relationships based on mutual support and trust with kin, but others pointed to the burden of reciprocity as what kept them from asking for help from others. They worried they would not be able to reciprocate help offered and therefore they wouldn’t be able to fulfill obligations to repay. The biggest obstacle appeared to be the actual requesting of help.

Participants positively experienced help that was freely offered or given, but generally felt negative about the prospect of asking for help.

This study explored kin support from the perspective of potential recipients of that support. Rather than limiting the discussion of support as what kin can provide or what struggling families have access to, we focused on the ways in which potential recipients of support discussed the issues involved as way to understand the mechanisms by which parents

activate or avoid support. In particular, our findings indicate various reasons some wished not to activate available support. This suggests researchers would do well to use measures of kin support that rely on potential recipients’ perceptions of the availability of support with caution. It is advisable to consider that perceptions can be inaccurate, but that even if support is available, those in need might wish to avoid activating kin support for a variety of reasons, including pride, fear of dependence, and the complications of reciprocity obligations. It is also advisable to recognize that recipients’ evaluations of these costs may change over time, and that asking for help is far different from receiving help.

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