Recent Publications

Papers In Progress

1. Garrett-Peters, R., & Burton, L.M., Poverty and the production of household chaos: findings from an ethnographic study of low-income rural mothers (2011)
   (last updated on 2011/12/29)

   Abstract:
   Household chaos has been a recent construct of interest for developmental and psychological researchers concerned with specifying the impact of conditions of family poverty on child and family functioning (see Bronfenbrenner and Evans 2000; Corapci and Wachs 2002; Evans 2003, 2004; Valiente et al. 2007; Vernon-Feagans et al., in press). This body of research has emphasized elements of micro-environmental chaos (e.g., household crowding; ambient background noise; physical disorder; frenetic activity), and linked these to a host of negative behavioral and health outcomes for children, either directly or through the mediation of parenting. While adding valuable knowledge, this approach has focused largely on factors external to the individual, and has not fully considered the contributions that individual household actors make – in response to constraining conditions of poverty – as negotiators of household chaos. The present paper examines the role of the individual actor as an active agent in the management of chaotic household conditions. Using longitudinal ethnographic data from the Family Life Project study of low-income rural mothers of young children, we take a negotiated order perspective (Fine 1984; Maines 1977, 1982) to demonstrate ways in which features of household chaos are negotiated and sometimes reinforced by mothers’ as they attempt to parent, partner, and manage households under conditions of economic and social uncertainty. Our analysis reveals that household chaos exists in multiple domains, including spatial (e.g., clutter; crowding), behavioral (e.g., relationship discord; lack of routine), and temporal (e.g., incessant time demands; frenetic activity) dimensions. Likewise, our findings show that low-income mothers’ efforts to minimize household chaos at times unintentionally reproduce these conditions as these women seek to maintain a sense of personal control within households threatening constantly toward entropy. The data indicate that some mothers may intentionally reject strategies that could reduce chaos in their lives (e.g., by planning; adhering to a schedule), because attempts to implement these strategies are often unsuccessful, leading to diminished feelings of self-efficacy. The current study makes a unique contribution to understandings of how and why household chaos exists, and illuminates its various behavioral, spatial, and temporal dimensions in greater detail.