Still a Mother: Noncustodial Mothers, Gendered Institutions, and Social Change

Jackie Krasas traces the trajectories of mothers who have lost or ceded custody to an ex-partner. She argues that these noncustodial mothers' experiences should be understood within a greater web of gendered social institutions such as employment, education, health care, and legal systems that shapes the meanings of contemporary motherhood in the United States. If motherhood means "being there," then noncustodial mothers, through their absence, are seen as nonmothers. They are anti-mothers ...