In Search of a ‘Good Mix’: ‘Race’, Class, Gender and Practices of Mothering

Drawing on interviews with white middle-class mothers, this article examines the ways in which mothering involves practices and identities which are classed, raced and gendered. In particular, it focuses on the construction and articulation of middle-classness with whiteness. The article examines the women’s descriptions of how they constructed social networks as mothers, chose schools for their children and planned their after-school activities. It argues that these activities involved in being mothers and bringing up children can be understood as performative of race, class and gender.That is, practices of mothering are implicated in repeating and re-inscribing classed and raced discourses