This article reports the findings of an investigation into how low-income families construct childhoods amid the growing marketization of services for children. Based on data from ethnographic work and interviews in low- and middle-income communities in Oakland, California, I found that income instability was as important as income scarcity in influencing how families consumed on behalf of children. For low-income families, the unpredictability of resources gave rise to a set of behaviors and outcomes that I term‘windfall child rearing’. I explore the origins of resource instability for these families and consider the impact of windfall child rearing on children’s lives, including their worldviews, their behavior and their relationships with caregiving adults.
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