Introduction

Denaturalizing mothering and socializing childcare require vocabularies that grasp both the implications of stratification and potential solidarity between childcare workers. The maternal worker framework uniquely centres waged and unwaged maternal labour. The fight for socialized childcare is constrained not only by its construction as a private responsibility that families must resolve on the marketplace, but also by our limited capacities to grasp these social relations through the labour lens. The model I develop modifies McAlevey's (2016) definition of ‘worker power’ and her argument that social relations in the workplace and the community can act as a strategic wedge against capital. First, I lay out how maternal worker power challenges the ways in which the sociology of mothering continues to separate mothers from waged caregivers. I then outline how Susan Ferguson's theorization of social reproduction struggles on dual terrains can best inform this project so that it does not put either waged or unwaged workers above the other. I develop a typology of maternal worker power as praxis, solidarity and threat and show how it can inform a new sociological research agenda. Finally, I develop a set of criteria for evaluating when childcare social movements can work as a threat by foregrounding how they prioritize claims on state resources, organize on dual terrains and hold states accountable for harm done through depletion. Grounded in my empirical case studies, the concept of maternal worker power extends the theoretical connections between labour, mothering and solidarity, and offers a roadmap for studying postpandemic Global North childcare struggles.

Towards a theory of maternal worker power

Maternal worker power refuses to see the maternal as a site of either division or solidarity. This means making the target of critique the twinned cultural idealization of middle-class mothering as an identitarian politics and the invisibilization of childcare workers. To this end, we need frames that enable us to grasp the connections between waged and unwaged workers. The concept of maternal worker power can both spearhead this critique and bring forth a renewed feminist sociology of social reproduction.

Most sociologists continue to internalize the logic of mothering as a private responsibility. Maternal studies need to foreground mothers’ relationships with and reliance on waged childcare workers more thoroughly.