Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway.

America's practice of family separation did not end with the abolition of slavery. Back in 2018, the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy for unauthorized entry at our southern border separated more than 2,000 minor children from their parents in the weeks immediately before and following Mother's Day. Even though the policy of border separation has ended, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Biden administration policies of detention and deportation still separate families.

Perhaps, no border runs more harshly through the lives of migrant mothers than that of economic need. Gabrielle Oliveira is an Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She's also the author of Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and Their Children in Mexico and New York City.

Gabrielle Oliveira: For the women that I worked with, it was really important for them to care for their children even if they were not there in person. There is this aspect that is very US-centric and Western-centric of being present physically. For these women, to migrate was to care, to migrate was to be able to offer a better life for their children that stayed in Mexico. That care never really stopped.

That was enacted through investments in education, making sure that the child was well taken care of, that had food on the table, that had enough money. All of these things meant that they were in their children's lives, even if they were not there bathing, feeding, doing the more physical aspects of mothering.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As you're talking about these tangible, physical, present aspects of motherhood, those do seem to take up an enormous part of our definition of what constitutes good mothering. How might we learn something new about what constitutes good mothering from the families that you study?

Gabrielle Oliveira: For these women being able to be a sole provider in many ways meant that they were able to establish these different bonds with their children. For these women, being a good mother comes with a lot of guilt of having to be away from their children physically. Sometimes, the families I worked with, the women had not seen their children for 10 years, 15 years, but they talked to them almost every day through different mediums. Those really represented this closeness.

There were discussions that helped with homework, for example, that happened weekly. There were mothers in the US who called the schools that their children were attending in Mexico and made sure that their children were taken care of and used their cultural capital to establish that, "You better take care of my children because I know people in the town." They were very resourceful and they continued to be resourceful in order to stay in the lives of their children.

Their children reciprocate that and they understand how their mothers are central and important in different ways that maybe are not the ways that we think about when we close our eyes and think about what a good mother is.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, are there mothers mothering across borders who are bringing their children with them?

Gabrielle Oliveira: Yes. They're taking care of three different groups of children, really. They're taking care of children who stayed in Mexico. They left children there and they couldn't bring them for a number of reasons because it was expensive, dangerous, because of their age. Sometimes, they're able to bring an older child with them after they settle. Then they also have the children who are born in the United States, those who have citizenship.

They're in constant negotiation about, "Who am I a good mother to? What are my efforts to send remittances home or to be sure that the US citizen children are going to school? What about the undocumented youth here? Can they go to school? Can they go to college?" They're under an enormous amount of stress to figure out these caring arrangements for these groups of children.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I think about the righteous moral outrage that emerged during the Trump administration's policy of family separation at the border, and I wonder if hearing this conversation between us, if reading your book, will make some folks think, "Oh, well, these are people who leave their kids anyway."

Gabrielle Oliveira: Women and mothers are not leaving their children because they would've anyway. This is part of a much larger structure that they're part of where they've experienced domestic violence, where there's poverty, where there's unemployment, where they're really trying to figure out what's the best way that they can provide for their children. For me, in my analysis, that's the ultimate good mothering.

When a mother migrates, the probability that these families are going to get a financial support back home is way higher because they keep at it. That never stops. It's really disheartening sometimes to see these portrayals of thinking about parents as putting children in harm's way and saying, "How dare they do that when it's driven by care? It's driven by this self-sacrificial love of understanding that that's the best possible scenario under an enormous amount of constraints."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Share with us a story that is maybe representative or one that is particularly stuck with you, a family that would help us to understand in human terms what this looks and feels like.

Gabrielle Oliveira: One of the stories that I always think about is a teenager who was in Mexico and had not seen his mother for eight years. He asked permission from his grandmother to go out at night, and the grandmother said, "Have you asked your mother?" Again, this mother is in Harlem, New York, and the grandmother is right there in front of him. He texts his mother, and I'm sitting in the kitchen with her.

She receives a text. She shows me the text and she says, "Look, he's asking me for permission to go out." She says to him, "Did you ask your own grandmother?" He says, "Yes, I did, but she told me to ask you." Then she then says, "Okay, you are allowed to go, but you have to be back by 9:00 PM." He goes. He's not back by 9:00 PM. She calls the house. Then she starts calling other people in the village to locate him and to have him call her back. Again, this is a closeness that somebody wouldn't imagine could exist in that way after not seeing your child for eight years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I always feel as scholars, both, we're always writing about ourselves, whether we mean to be or not. Even when it seems that we're doing something quite different or if we're not writing about ourselves, we end up being affected by what we're writing. Say one more beat on this Mother's Day show about how this work has affected how you mother.

Gabrielle Oliveira: It's always so hard for me honestly not to be emotional about it. When I first started doing this research, I wasn't a parent, so I was really in a position where I learned. When I became a mother, I was just thinking how my level of compassion has only tripled to what they have to do in order to be a good parent. Sometimes, I think to myself, "Would I be able to do it? Do I have that strength that these women have?" And I'm always in awe.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Gabrielle Oliveira is Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thank you so much for speaking with us and sharing with us today.

Gabrielle Oliveira: Thank you for having me.

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