Maternal Solidarity: Unconditional Cash Prescriptions and a Moral Economy of Motherhood in Flint, Michigan

Caroline Doenmez, Jenny LaChance, Mallory Goldsworthy and Mona Hanna

No 9x2wm_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: How do mothers make meaning out of the experience of being “prescribed” no-strings-attached cash to improve their family’s health and life chances? This paper explores the impact of Rx Kids, the first community-wide cash transfer program for mothers and newborns in the United States. Launched in Flint, Michigan, in January 2024, the program seeks to “prescribe away” child poverty by providing cash transfers to mothers during and after their pregnancies. The program design stands apart from other cash transfer programs due to its universal and unconditional features: it ensures that all pregnant mothers in a participating community can receive the cash and does not impose any spending restrictions or reporting requirements on them. This paper is interested in Rx Kids’ cultural impact as ascertained through mothers’ narratives of their involvement with the program. Drawing on 46 interviews conducted with mothers in Flint, we ask: What did the unconditionality and universality of the program mean to them? Through their narratives, we identify how the transfer of monetary resources to the mothers elicited profound moral considerations. As mothers moved through the process of encountering, applying to, participating in, and advocating for the program, they narrated grappling continuously with the question of maternal worth and worthiness. Through their affective experiences of disbelief, astonishment, mistrust, anxiety, gratitude, and compassion for other mothers, we argue that the participants give voice to a moral economy of motherhood in Flint, circulating and contesting cultural values regarding reproductive labor and maternal worth. Ultimately, we show how through participating in the program, the mothers were actualized as both the recipients and providers of what we term “maternal solidarity,” an unconditional mode of care premised on a shared understanding of the pronounced and ubiquitous challenges of contemporary motherhood.

Date: 2026-10-01
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:9x2wm_v1

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/9x2wm_v1

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