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Objective: This study examined how lower‐income mothers engage in emotion work in order to feel like good mothers within broader contexts of stigmatization, economic insecurity, and precarity. Background: Despite the pervasiveness of the intensive mothering ideology, research shows that lower‐income mothers in the United States also routinely diverge from the ideology's norms due to structural and cultural factors. In doing so, these mothers simultaneously work to reframe and negotiate what it means to be a good mother. While scholarship reveals how mothers cognitively and behaviorally carry out this work, less attention has been paid to how mothers perform this work on an emotional level. Method: Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 33 lower‐income mothers in the San Francisco Bay Area, this study investigated, through the lens of maternal foodwork, how mothers work on their emotions to feel like good mothers. Data were analyzed abductively. Results: Mothers worked on their emotions as part of an effort to negotiate what good mothering looks like and to feel like good mothers as they performed maternal foodwork. To do so, mothers engaged in the gendered and classed emotion work strategy of downscaling. Downscaling involved working to inhibit negative emotions and evoke positive ones. Downscaling was facilitated by three key approaches: reflecting on harder times, redefining good foodwork, and leveraging social comparison. Conclusion: Downscaling serves as a rational, effective emotion work strategy to help mothers navigate ongoing hardships, cultivate a positive maternal identity, and feel like good mothers within contexts of stigmatization, economic insecurity, and precarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examined how college‐educated mothers emotionally manage the guilt they experience as they perform maternal foodwork. Background: Maternal guilt is prevalent in the United States, as most mothers report feeling guilty about their inability to live up to the high standards set by intensive mothering. While research has shown that guilt pervades mothers' experiences, less focus has been paid to what mothers do about the guilt they feel. With a focus on maternal foodwork, this study investigated how college‐educated mothers emotionally manage the recurring feelings of guilt that arise due the pressures and expectations around feeding children. Method: Using in‐depth interviews with 35 college‐educated mothers in the San Francisco Bay Area, this article examined mothers' emotional management of guilt. Data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: Mothers experienced guilt as they perceived themselves to be falling short of intensive mothering's ideals around maternal foodwork. In an effort to manage this guilt, mothers employed the gendered and classed emotional management strategy of upscaling, whereby they actively worked on their emotions in ways that paradoxically served to amplify their feelings of guilt and fuel additional physical and cognitive labor. Three approaches were central to upscaling: raising the bar, seeking control, and leveraging social comparison. All of these approaches relied on mothers' ongoing surveillance of themselves and others. Conclusion: The findings show how mothers' emotional management strategies are key to the maintenance of intensive mothering ideals over time, with consequences for the reproduction of gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]