Introduction

Kinship care refers to contexts where family members take on the primary parental role and responsibilities for bringing up a child in situations where the child’s parent(s) is unable to do so. Research suggests that kinship care offers more favourable outcomes for children than other types of placements (Selwyn et al., 2013), with indications that emotional closeness to grandparents can safeguard against negative family conditions (Akhtar et al., 2017). In England and Wales, the Children Act (1989) states that kinship care should be used wherever possible for the long-term placement of children and estimates suggest that 1 in 74 children in the UK are placed in kinship care (Wijedasa, 2015). However, the support offered to kinship carers is patchy, especially when compared with the support offered to other kinds of carers such as adoptive parents and foster carers (Holt & Birchall, 2020; Tarrant et al., 2017). The process of becoming a kinship carer is complex; it is sometimes arranged informally between parent(s) and kinship carer, but it can also be arranged through a formal order issued by the family court, such as a Special Guardianship Order or Child Arrangements Order. While it is often presented as a ‘choice’, in practice kinship carers often feel coerced into taking on this responsibility, a process which social workers are often complicit (Holt & Birchall, 2022).

Notwithstanding the economic challenges faced by kinship carers arising from reducing or giving up paid work to undertake kinship care (Birchall & Holt, 2022; Kinship, 2023), kinship carers also face a number of psychosocial challenges. These include social isolation, challenging family dynamics and child behaviour problems, all of which can impact on carers’ wellbeing (Bell et al., 2022; Sharda et al., 2019; Strozier, 2012). As a result, when compared to other types of carer, kinship carers experience high levels of stress (Harnett et al., 2014; Lee et al., 2016; Sprang et al., 2015) and report low availability of support and advice (Sharda et al., 2019; Valentine et al., 2013).

Grandparents represent just over half of all kinship carers (Wijedasa, 2015) and studies have demonstrated the range of emotions that grandparent kinship carers experience, from joy and satisfaction to loss, grief, anger, resentment, anxiety, self-doubt and shame (Backhouse & Graham, 2013; Dunne & Kettler, 2008). This stems from the fact that while grandparents look after children for a range of reasons, they often involve a complex set of issues including parental illness or death, domestic abuse, parental maltreatment or abandonment, substance misuse and/or mental health problems (Ashley & Braun, 2019; Selwyn et al., 2013; Kinship, 2021; Lanyado, 2019; Raikes, 2016). Some grandparent carers report feeling a personal responsibility to make up for what their grandchild has missed (Bell et al., 2022). Research in England and Wales also shows that children in kinship care have higher than average levels of additional needs: for example, Kinship (2021) reported that 36 per cent of children in kinship care have special educational needs, compared to a national average of 12 per cent.

Many grandparents who become kinship carers face huge changes in their roles. Tarrant et al. (2017) describe the change this entails from ‘leisure/pleasure’ grand-parenting to ‘rescue and repair’ grand-parenting. In becoming kinship carers, many grandparents find themselves on a steep learning curve, as they navigate parenting styles and values that are different from those they practised with their own children (Campbell & Gilmore, 2007; Lock-Lewis, 2019; Sanson & Wise, 2001). In one study of 54 Spanish grandparent kinship carers, just under 40 per cent reported being more affectionate and communicative with their grandchildren than they had been with their own children (Fuentes et al., 2008). The circumstances in which they become kinship carers means that grandparent carers often need to adapt their parenting to explore trauma-informed or therapeutic parenting approaches, with a focus on providing a safe and nurturing environment and building emotional security (Milot et al., 2015). They also find themselves attempting to engage with education and health systems that are often under-resourced and unable to provide the support that their grandchild needs (Lee, 2017). Grandparent kinship carers also face the possibility of the grandchildren they are caring for being re-united with their parent(s) at some point and must cope with the uncertainties, and potential loss, that this brings (Dolbin-McNab, 2021). The huge impact of kinship caring on grandparents also means that partner relationships, as well as relationships with other family members, can be disrupted by the changes that grandchild kinship placements bring (Birchall & Holt, 2022; Campbell & Handy, 2011; Chinnery & Worrall, 2017; Climo et al., 2002; Martin et al., 2021).

Kinship care, gender and identity

Both UK-based and international research suggests that there is a large gender disparity in grandparent kinship caring, with grandmothers making up a significant majority (eg, Dolbin-MacNab & Yancura, 2018; Martin et al., 2021; McCarthy, 2021; McGrath & Ashley, 2021; Purcal et al., 2014). Furthermore, while all grandparent kinship carers are likely to be impacted by the economic, practical and emotional challenges described above, experiences of kinship caring are likely to be affected by gendered norms and expectations and the ways that these intersect with age, race/ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status and other structural axes of power.

When grandparent kinship care is examined through a gender lens, it becomes possible to uncover how grandmother kinship carers are impacted by a range of gendered inequalities, assumptions, stereotypes and norms. In addition to the gendered economic impacts of kinship caring that we have discussed elsewhere (Birchall & Holt, 2022), grandmothers experience complex emotional responses and reactions to their role as kinship carers. As grandmothers and as women they are positioned within popular discourse in a way that many grandfathers and men are not. That is, as ‘natural’ carers, who are both responsible for family breakdown and expected to instinctively step in to repair it (Campbell & Handy, 2011; Climo et al., 2002; Horsfall & Dempsey, 2015; McCarthy, 2021).

Grandmother kinship carers must negotiate new identities that do not fit with the dominant discourses that construct the role of either ‘mother’ or ‘grandmother’. These dominant discourses centre on the assumption of the nuclear family and are both gender and generation specific, prioritizing mother–child relationships rather than wider family bonds (Tarrant et al., 2017). Grandmother kinship carers can therefore experience a complex, ambiguous and fluid process of ‘identity duality’ (Freeman & Stoldt, 2019) in their inhabitation of, and movement between, the roles of grandmother and mother. This results ‘a paradox of contrasting feelings – grief and opportunity’ (Freeman & Stoldt, 2019, p. 422).

Mother blame in a kinship care context

Research has highlighted the conflicted feelings experienced by grandmothers around blame and self-blame. For example, in their study of 65 grandparents raising grandchildren in Michigan, US, Backhouse and Graham (2013) found that while some grandmothers reported that raising their grandchildren improved their physical and emotional health, others experienced a sense of shame about the circumstances surrounding the grandchildren who came into their care. Grandmothers either judged themselves, and/or felt they would be judged by others, for the circumstances that had led to their own adult child having to relinquish parenting responsibilities.

Exploring why grandmothers might feel this way requires looking back at the development of ideas around motherhood and mother blame. Mother blame has a long history and found particular legitimacy in mainstream ideas about child development during the early twentieth century as the science of psychology began to take hold. In particular, theories about the importance of maternal attachment in the child’s early years and the construction of mothers as uniquely capable of fulfilling all of their child’s needs led to the fetishization of motherhood as both the primary cause of, and the solution to, society’s ills (Azzopardi et al., 2018; Everingham & Bowers, 2006; Jackson & Mannix, 2004). Jackson and Mannix (2004) define mother blame as a concept that involves ‘ … mothers being held responsible for the actions, behaviour, health and wellbeing of their (even adult) children. It also describes situations where women are blamed for their own predicaments, such as being abandoned or living in poverty’ (Jackson & Mannix, 2004, p. 150). Mother blame relies on the trope of the ‘bad mother’, which includes mothers who are either ‘negligent or overprotective, too cold or too loving, too strict or too permissive, too lenient or too authoritarian’ (Courcy & des Rivieres, 2017, p. 233).

Mothers are commonly blamed for preventing fathers from actively engaging in children’s care (Everingham & Bowers, 2006) or for ‘alienating’ children from their fathers (Birchall & Choudhry, 2022). They are also commonly blamed for ‘failure to protect’ their children against a range of harms such as child sexual abuse (Azzopardi et al., 2018) and domestic abuse (Lapierre & Cote, 2011; Maher et al., 2021; Moulding et al., 2015; Radford & Hester, 2006; Singh, 2021). This is despite the fact that for many mothers experiencing domestic abuse, particularly where coercive and controlling behaviour is involved, any scope or ability to protect the children by taking preventative or evasive actions is severely limited (Katz, 2022). Mothers are also more likely than fathers to be blamed for ‘causing’ health conditions in their children, such as obesity (Jackson & Mannix, 2004). Mothers of neurodivergent children frequently feel blamed by professionals for the difficulties and distress faced by their children due to a lack of understanding about neurodiversity in education, health and social care (Clements & Aiello, 2023; Courcy & des Rivieres, 2017; Laurin, 2023; Running & Jata-Hall, 2023).

The gender bias of mother blame places a burden on mothers that fathers do not experience (Jackson & Mannix, 2004). The best interests of the child are often pitted against those of the mother, while the accountability and responsibilities of fathers remain absent from the picture (Azzopardi, 2022). As a result, Jackson and Mannix argue that ‘many women carry the burden of societal (and professional) disapproval, either because they do not fit society’s idealised view of motherhood or because they behave in ways that are not considered appropriate for mothers’ (2004:, p. 151). Single mothers, mothers in same-sex relationships, mothers on low incomes, ethnically minoritized mothers, and mothers with disabilities are among those disproportionately targeted for blame. Discourses of mother blame are evident in political speeches, family court judgments, and in social care, welfare, health, and education policy and practice (Azzopardi et al., 2018, p. 261).

The deeply embedded gendered discourse of mother blame shifts attention away from the complex range of factors behind family breakdown and obscures the structural and systemic factors behind inequalities, discrimination and abuse. As Nussey (2021) explains, when structural inequalities are not recognized or understood, ‘deficit discourses’ arise to explain their consequences. As Jackson and Mannix point out: ‘It is easier to blame individual women for family problems […] than it is to look at the ways social policy and community services can be reconfigured to support women and families’ (2004:, p. 156). Thus, mother blame ensures that perpetrators of violence and abuse are not held accountable for their actions (Azzopardi et al., 2018; Moulding et al., 2015) and that children are positioned as passive and without agency (Katz, 2015). Furthermore, it restricts mothers’ access to assistance and support, and seeps deep into mother–child relationships by undermining them (Maher et al., 2021).

In this article, we develop the concept of mother blame to consider how it applies to those who take on a primary maternal role. In particular, we apply it to the context of grandmothers who are acting as kinship carers to their grandchildren and who may be caught within not only the dominant, gendered discourses around caring roles and responsibilities, but also within processes of maternal scapegoating. We explore their accounts of their family relationships and examine how they navigate these complex relationships and the discourses of mother blame that shape them.

Methods

In this article, we draw on data from in-depth interviews with 24 grandmothers from across England, Scotland and Wales who were kinship carers for one or more grandchildren. The data derives from a broader study that examined the experiences of grandparent kinship carers who had experienced violent, difficult or distressed behaviour from a grandchild (see Holt & Birchall, 2020). The interviews took place either in grandmothers’ homes or remotely (via telephone or video-conference) and each interview lasted 60–90 minutes. We asked open-ended questions about the grandmothers’ family relationships, the nature of the behaviour they were experiencing, its impacts and their responses to these challenges.

Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Each author read each of the transcripts several times and together they discussed and agreed the key categories for organizing the data. Each author then independently coded each of the interview transcripts line-by-line, using NVivo software to manage the data. The overarching coding framework was guided by the project’s key research questions, which was to explore and understand experiences of kinship care in the context of a grandchild’s difficult or distressed behaviours. Once the authors completed the coding, the codes were compared and discussed, and the coding framework was refined to ensure both analytic consensus and methodological rigour. During analysis, ‘mother blame’ was identified as a particularly significant concept upon which the grandmothers’ complex emotional experiences appeared to make sense: indeed, the authors found it difficult to understand this complexity without invoking this concept.

We recruited participants through national and local kinship care support services, as well as other organizations such as child to parent violence (CPV) support groups and services, and family and adolescent support services. The grandmothers ranged from 40 to 72 years (modal age = 60 years); two-thirds were married or co-habiting, with the other third either divorced, separated or widowed. Two thirds of the grandmothers were retired or unemployed, with the remainder in employment, and the majority of participants were White British. Prior to fieldwork, ethical approval was obtained from the host institution. Grandmothers’ names in the extracts below have been changed to pseudonyms.

Findings

We present findings which focus on grandmothers’ experiences of kinship care and the changes to family relationships and dynamics this can bring and, in particular, the ways that discourses of mother blame are mobilized within these processes. We begin by exploring how grandmother kinship carers negotiate their atypical roles and identities as mother-grandmother-kinship carer and how these new roles involve adapting to new parenting practices. We then examine how grandmothers navigate internalized feelings of maternal blame and guilt, and how discourses of mother blame are mobilized in their own family interactions. Finally, we examine how grandmothers manage their competing familial roles which, while sometimes producing loss, in other ways can produce profound feelings of maternal pride.

Negotiating atypical roles and identities

The grandmothers described the challenges they faced in adapting to and understanding their new roles as kinship carers. No longer a ‘grandmother’ or a ‘mother’ in commonly understood terms, they had to construct new relationships with both their adult children and their grandchildren. This ‘identity duality’ led to a complex mixture of feelings related to their continually shifting identities:

I went through a very traumatic time because I couldn’t be Mum, Grandma and surrogate Mum, kind of thing, kinship carer to [grandson’s name]. So I went through a lot because I had to stop being a Mum to my daughter and become a Carer. I had to stop being Grandma to [grandson’s name] because I had to become Mum, in the kinship carer role, which was a very traumatic time. (Naomi)

I feel very out of it lately at school because … I’m Grandma, but I’m not in the fold with the young Mums […] I feel a bit out of it now. But luckily enough he’s in year six [ie. 10–11 years] now so I tend not to go in the yard so much. So I meet him at the gate, and if I need to come in and see the teacher, so he comes in himself so I don’t have to deal with that carry-on. (Naomi)

Most of my friends say ‘I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know why you did it. You should just get her taken away.’ You know, ‘I’m a Grandparent and I wouldn’t put up with it’. And I think, well, maybe you would. But I don’t know, I think there are other Grandparents that don’t, and wouldn’t put up with it. I don’t even know why you do, I suppose it is just that emotional bond that carries you along and that makes you do it. (Libby)

Negotiating new parenting values and styles

Some grandmothers described how different the practice of parenting felt to them this time around, especially as parenting strategies had moved on in the intervening years since they were a parent. This meant that they needed to take a different approach than they had with their own children:

When my two children were at school, you had more energy, you didn’t have the technology like you have now, and you could – the girls, when they were younger, were able to go out and play in the streets and outside a lot more. But now you can’t let the kids out because the amount of traffic on the roads, people haven’t got the inkling of what you’re going through when they see them having their temper tantrums in the street. ‘They need a good walloping’ – no, they don’t – they need to be taught how to do it and be treated as though … how can I say it … they’re an individual. (Olive)

If you’re going back 30 years it was common to smack children then. I’m not talking about now, things are different now, but 30 years ago, if your child got out of hand, you made sure they knew about it, and I’m not saying you hurt them, but you gave them a sharp slap, you know […] You knew that you didn’t cross your mum and dad. And my three [children] knew that too, you know. (Judith)

I’ve gone from being a loving Grandma to being [grandson’s name]’s carer and having to implement all these rules for his own safety […] My two youngest boys, I dealt with them much differently […] When I said ‘Stay in your room for a week after school’ that’s what they did. They might have got out of windows, but as far as I was concerned, they were in their bedrooms. I can’t do that with [grandson’s name]. I have to try and sit and explain why I’m doing something. ‘But you’re only my Nana’. I say ‘I am your Nana, but I’ve also taken on a caring role, we can’t do things like we used to do’. (Caitlin)

Negotiating complex feelings of blame and guilt

In addition to the challenges of adapting to new atypical roles and new parenting practices, the grandmothers described how their experiences of caring for their grandchildren were shaped by their own conflicting feelings of blame and guilt. Some grandmothers carried a profound sense of maternal guilt about what had happened to their own adult children, and the circumstances in which their grandchildren came to be in their care:

There’s this guilt thing. Because I always worry, even though everyone says to me ‘Look at your other two daughters, they’re both successful women, professional women. You didn’t cause [daughter’s name]’s problems’ because I always beat myself up. Did I do something wrong? (Libby)

He [her son] is not being a Dad to [granddaughter’s name], you see. It makes me feel a bit of a failure actually. A bit of a failure that my son is like that, is doing that. (Alex)

That’s how she [her daughter] ended up having children early, if you know what I mean. Not by any fault of mine, because, you know, my other daughter was brought up exactly the same. (Gillian)

She [her daughter] takes no onus, no responsibility for it whatsoever. And that’s really annoying, ‘cos she certainly wasn’t brought up like it at all. Her childhood was marvellous. I just don’t know where she went wrong really, and I’m not blaming us because it’s not the parents’ fault. I know a lot of people say ‘Oh, it’s the parents’, but it’s not always. She had the same upbringing as my five other children. So where she got it from I haven’t got a clue. (Sarah)

She just sits there, looking at the photos on the wall and gets herself drunk. And it’s very very annoying and frustrating and she’ll say ‘I want my kids back’, but you’re not doing anything to prove that you want them back. I would have been walking on broken glass to get my kids back. (Catherine)

He didn’t want to give up work. His current girlfriend at the time had two other children a very similar age […] In one way, he did well to say ‘I can’t do it’. I think I do give him a little bit of credit for that, the fact he did admit ‘I can’t do it’, and to come to us. It took him a long time to be able to knock on our door again. But it still annoys me a bit that he couldn’t do it. But I think he was quite good to be able to say ‘I can’t do this’. (Corinne)

Negotiating fractured relationships with their own adult children

Several of the grandmothers’ accounts highlighted specific challenges around mother-daughter relationships. In particular, a key challenge for grandmothers involved their daughter no longer being able to care for her children and having to step in to help with, or take over, the care of their grandchildren. This can bring resentment into the mother-daughter relationship:

My other daughter was a drug addict, she was off her trolley. I’ll be honest, she was a very bad addict. And now over the last few years, with support, she’s come off it. Yes, there’s mental damage, but she’s a nice person now, she’s back to what she was. She’s lovely and she’s kind and caring, and in her own way she’s trying to make up for the fact that she wasn’t there for her children. And in that way, there is a bit of a little barrier there between us. I can understand that and I don’t take that much notice of it. Because I always said to her ‘If you can’t, I will’. And I think she’s taken umbrage to that statement. But I don’t think it’s a bad statement to make – I think it’s an honest statement. And her children didn’t go into care. And I think that we get on quite well considering. (Rosie)

I said ‘Why are you not listening to what [grandson’s name] is telling you, or what he’s asking you?’ She said ‘Oh, so I’m a bad mother’. I said ‘I didn’t say that’. Because that’s her answer to everything – if you criticise anything it’s ‘Oh you think I’m a bad mother’. There was one day I did lose my temper and I said ‘Well, yes, I do actually think you’re a bad mother ‘cos you don’t listen to what your son is asking or telling you’. I said ‘You need to spend a little bit more time and a little bit more attention on what he wants’. […] So she shut up then, she didn’t say it anymore, and she doesn’t say ‘Oh you think I’m a bad mother’ anymore, in case I say ‘Yes’. (Estelle)

Ellie: It’s difficult because she [her daughter] is so needy herself. She’s supposed to have a social worker and a support worker and all the rest of it, but a lot of it seems to land on me. I get a lot of calls, you know, ‘Can you lend me money, can you do this, can you … ?’ whatever. So she’s had a lot of issues, a lot of problems because she’s so vulnerable, and I’ve had to sort of restock her flat for her basically recently.

I: And how old is she?

Ellie: She is … thirty six. (Ellie)

I used to have people say to me ‘You need to put [daughter’s name] out your life. You can’t help her as she can only help herself. You’ve done everything’. But I couldn’t do that. It’s not in me as a person, as a mother, to be able to do that […] For me, it’s so hard because I can’t have her here. I’ve got the children, but she’s still my daughter. (Libby)

Negotiating the loss of other family relationships

Some grandmothers struggled so much with their conflicting roles as mother-grandmother-kinship carer that they were forced to make the difficult decision to prioritize the needs of their grandchild over those of their own child, because they found the conflicting maternal responsibilities they faced incompatible:

I’ve decided, with the advice of a psychologist and other professionals I know and trust, to actually break permanent contact with [daughter’s name]. Which you know for her has been a grieving … well … and for me. I mean I’ve been her major carer and fighter for her rights for thirty years. So I’ve been through a deep period of grieving. It is pretty clear now but actually when I hear about [daughter’s name], I grieve for her again. You know it’s … there’s no alternative. You know, I can’t mentally do both. (Pat)

My daughter isn’t really well enough. I was trying to help her but I’ve had to back off which she doesn’t like. She feels like I’ve abandoned her but I had to put so much input into the Grand-daughter and it was having a big impact on my health and wellbeing with all the stress and everything and all the sleepless nights and things. So I had to back off helping my daughter. (Jackie)

I was doing all the caring for my parents but when [granddaughter’s name] came it wasn’t working out cause a few times she behaved badly and upset everybody so we swapped roles. My son does it now. We come over but I’m not so involved. Which is hard because my Dad is 98 and I do feel as though I’ve been wrenched from him and my Mum. I mean, they’re not going to be here for much longer but that’s another thing you have to weigh up – what do I do? (Alex)

Negotiating feelings of love, pride and protectiveness

Amid the loss, blame and sacrifice that arose from becoming a kinship carer, many grandmothers also spoke about the overriding love they felt for the grandchildren in their care, and the strong relationships they had built with them:

Now my youngest child is 18, we could have been off doing whatever we want. There are times you think about it, but then I look at [grandchild’s name], and I know why we’re doing it. I know we’re the right people, and you just know when you look at her when she’s nice and asleep. One day, she caught me in her bedroom at night: ‘Nanny, why do you always put my blanket on me when I’m asleep?’ I said, ‘I come and check you every night. I like to make sure you’re nice and snuggly and cuddly.’ And she gave me a lovely cuddle and said ‘You are the best Nanny’, and then she went back to sleep. (Corinne)

I: How would you describe your relationship with him [her grandson] now?

Denise: Extremely close, absolutely. It’s not a normal – I don’t think it’s a normal grandparent relationship, that has been taken away from us in a way. It is more that’s he’s very much more like a son now. I’d say we’re extremely close and it’s a very good relationship. It’s been very, very difficult to get to that point, because he hasn’t been able to really talk about things for an awful long time. But he is starting to be able to do that. He’s just an amazing young man and I’m really proud of the way that he’s turned out to be honest. (Denise)

Discussion

The findings presented in this article demonstrate some of the complex ways in which discourses of mother blame are mobilized and reinforced within the kinship care context. This is not just within the broader structures and institutions of our society, but within family interactions and, most specifically, within mother-daughter relationships. Such is the dominance of discourses of mother blame that they appear to be transferable in their shaping of the experiences of grandmother kinship carers. This article has highlighted how, in addition to the economic and social challenges that the research literature shows are faced by grandmother kinship carers, these grandmothers also experience a complicated relationship with blame in relation to themselves and to their adult children. While in some cases, the grandmothers could take credit for the caring role they had taken on, this credit was usually at the expense of another woman’s ‘failings’ – usually the grandchild’s birth mother. In other cases, the grandmothers had accepted mother blaming narratives and were battling unanswered questions about ‘what went wrong’ with their own children. In either case, the harmful consequences of mother blame were felt emotionally (with resultant feelings of guilt), and they played out relationally (producing resentment and conflict within their own family relationships).

Mother blame is interpreted and experienced in different ways, but it remains a constant feature of our society, regularly reproduced and accepted, yet rarely challenged (Jackson & Mannix, 2004). As a result, unequal gender norms and expectations around care and the family, and underlying structural inequalities faced by those families with the least resources, remain obscured (Azzopardi et al., 2018; Jackson & Mannix, 2004). Meanwhile grandmother kinship carers, despite their undeniable determination and commitment to love, nurture and care for their grandchildren in very difficult circumstances, continue to be undervalued, unrewarded and unsupported.

Theoretically, this article makes an important contribution to the concept of mother blame and illustrates its endurance or ‘stickiness’ in contexts beyond the biological mother within the nuclear family.¹ This has important implications for understanding the emotional landscape of kinship care, where contradictory feelings need to be managed through complex and gendered ‘emotion work’ (Hochschild, 1979). Future research should explore further applications of mother blame to other contexts where adult carers may be acting in loco parentis.

Practically, this article has important implications in terms of how we work with kinship carers. First, practitioners should be made aware of how mother blame shapes the context of kinship care, in terms of the psychological and social impacts (e.g. guilt, stress, social isolation) that shape the kinship care experience, and how these impacts are gendered and are felt particularly acutely by minoritized grandmothers. It would be helpful if practitioners acknowledge these impacts with the families they are working with and offer support in this capacity to lessen its emotional burden. Second, practitioners should ensure that they do not reproduce the mother blame discourse in their own practice by making gendered assumptions about how kinship care should be distributed within families and by reinforcing stereotypes that serve to judge rather than empower. Broader social policies that promote kinship care equality would help with this by enabling more equitable distribution of caring responsibilities across multiple family members and by reducing the societal expectations placed on grandmothers. Third, emphasis should always be on support over scrutiny, with the provision of resources (e.g. childcare, financial aid, counselling) to alleviate the strain that disproportionately falls on grandmothers. This emphasis should be embedded within a wider approach that recognizes how improving outcomes for families requires structural change rather than individual blame. Broader social policies that address housing, healthcare, income, and food insecurity can also help to reduce the undue pressure on grandmother kinship carers living in disadvantaged circumstances.

Strengths and limitations and directions for future research

This study examined the emotional and relational dynamics experienced by grandmother kinship carers by drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 24 grandmother kinship carers in the UK. The findings illustrate the ways in which gendered discourses of mother blame are mobilized and reproduced within the family setting. This serves to obscure the impact of structural inequalities, as well as the role of unequal gender norms and expectations around care. This obscuration is an important consideration for policymakers and practitioners in the fields of social care, children and families because it is likely to shape the barriers to kinship carers seeking and accessing support and resources. It also negatively impacts on the relationships within the family, particularly those between kinship carer and their own adult children and, in particular, their daughters.

Our study presents new and important insights around kinship care, but it has some limitations. The participants were self-selecting, which limits opportunities for generalization. While the study demonstrates the importance of intersectional analysis on kinship care in terms of gender, age and socioeconomic status, it does not consider other characteristics and identities, such as race/ethnicity, religion or belief, disability or sexual orientation. Further intersectional research taking these factors into account would enable greater understanding of the ways that narratives of blame are articulated in, and impact upon, different groups within our society, the inequalities these groups experience, and how kinship caring experiences differ and concur across groups.