‘She will know that her mother’s doing something for her’: women with intellectual disabilities assuming the mother identity

This article explores the experiences of women with intellectual disabilities in becoming a mother. The presented findings are from a grounded theory research study with 19 women with intellectual disabilities from the Czech Republic. The findings are organised around external and internal factors affecting the women’s assumption of the mother identity, with the most prominent being poverty of the participating mothers, negative attitudes towards their motherhood, and a lack of preparation for motherhood. There is a need for systemic support for mothers with intellectual disabilities, starting in adolescence with sexual education, and continued throughout adulthood, including programmes focused on skills development.     

No right time: the significance of reproductive timing for younger and older mothers' moralities

Drawing on a small qualitative study of younger and older mothers, this article argues that the timing of motherhood is significant for the construction of classed maternal moralities. It is based on qualitative data generated during a year of fieldwork, with a group of mothers who had their first child when particularly younger or older than average. My discussion of mothers' accounts highlights the multitude of different ‘right’ times mothers evoked and their struggles to reconcile them. In particular I identify there were two normative and conflicting discourses about the ‘right’ time for motherhood the narrative of appropriately timed motherhood and the discourse of generational right time. This article highlights the classed dimensions of normative discourses about the timing of motherhood and draws attention to the lifecourse dis‐synchronicities which these two groups of women faced around becoming a mother, especially the older group for whom this had important intergenerational consequences.     

The Experience of Academic Non‐Mothers in the Gendered University

In this article we report on data from an empirical study concerned to explore the experience of women academics managing non‐motherhood and work in the gendered university. Although there is a growing body of work on the gendered experience of higher education in general and the experience of mothers as academics in particular, as yet there is little on non‐mothers and work. Drawing on our data we suggest that non‐mothers as well as mothers are affected by the ideology of motherhood and this has consequences for non‐mothers as workers within the academy. In addition to being perceived by students and other staff as ‘natural’ carers because they are women, academic non‐mothers are expected to put in the time and energy that mothers can not. However, as our data demonstrate, non‐mothers often have caring responsibilities outside the institution too. Overall, we argue that non‐motherhood needs to be recognized for the complex identity that it is.     

Online product research as a labor of love: motherhood and the social construction of the baby registry

This article examines how women engage in online product research as a means to negotiate their transition into motherhood. Drawing upon data from in-depth interviews with 32 expectant mothers, we demonstrate how the process of constructing baby registries is mediated by intensive online product research. By exploring the role of online resources in consumer decision-making and the different strategies that women employ to meet the perceived challenges of consumption, we show how expectant mothers work to gain entry into the social world of motherhood in an age of intensive mothering and risk society.     

Lone motherhood as a category of practice

This paper offers a critical examination of the category ‘lone mother’, which tends to be viewed as an identity category by both ‘lay’ people and social scientists. This in turn leads to the category ‘lone mother’ becoming reified, while the socially constructed nature of it remains hidden. The aim of this paper is to find a way of analyzing the lives of lone mothers without making totalizing claims about these women as individuals, but at the same time without depoliticizing the category ‘lone mother’. I argue that adopting Young's (1995 ), concept of ‘serial collectivity’ in the study of lone motherhood would enable social scientists to avoid positing that ‘lone motherhood’ is a unified category or the basis of self‐understanding, while at the same time being able to make pragmatic political claims regarding the inequalities that lone mothers face. Furthermore, this paper argues for studying ‘lone motherhood’ as a category of practice, focusing on how the category is defined, by whom, and to what ends, and the effects this has on the lives of ‘lone mothers’.     

Ambivalent subjectivities: experiences of mothers with disabilities in Russia

Women with disabilities are still rarely imagined in the role of a mother. Narratives about motherhood that promote traditional gender roles and the primary role of motherhood in women’s lives (pronatalism) in countries like Russia emphasize the value of non-disabled and heteronormative bodies and minds. The lived experiences and the lived citizenship of mothers with disabilities disrupt societal assumptions about motherhood. However, the structural environment of pronatalism inevitably influences the ways in which mothers with disabilities understand motherhood and construct their sense of selves (subjectivities). Drawing on the framework of citizenship and the feminist disability studies literature, this article analyzes how the personal and the political are intertwined. The analysis is based on empirical data obtained from qualitative interviews with 14 mothers with disabilities in a provincial city of Russia.     

Work,Family, and Accounts of Mothers’ Lives Using Discourse to Navigate Intensive Mothering Ideals

Despite the dramatic increase in women’s employment since the 1970s, mothers’ decisions about work remain closely scrutinized. The intensive mothering ethos in which “good” mothers are highly involved in the minutiae of their children’s lives, continues to be the prevailing parenting paradigm in the United States. This article asks: How do women use discourse to navigate the demands of intensive motherhood? First, this article reviews literature on ideologies of intensive mothering. The article then considers research on how accounts are used to navigate the moral dilemmas surrounding women’s work and motherhood. This article provides us with a better understanding of how traditional gender divides remain culturally relevant, how people use discourse to expand cultural schemas to fit their own social location, and how the process of expanding the framework of a schema through this negotiation process can allow traditional gender schemas to remain salient even while different actions are incorporated.     

Support programmes for Roma children: do they help or promote exclusion?

This article critically examines current education programmes for Roma primary school students in the Czech Republic and the impact of these programmes. The research described here, based on in‐depth case studies, challenges popular beliefs in the ‘success’ of Roma oriented programmes, as well as the stereotypical negative images of Roma parents. The studies also explore the dilemmas experienced by teaching staff and their views of both Roma and the majority ‘non‐Roma’ children.     

Palestinian-Israeli single mothers accord motherhood a new meaning ‘I would like to teach my children a new way of life … I'm responsible for them now’

Over the last three decades, Palestinian society in Israel has undergone numerous changes, reflected in the rising numbers of families headed by single mothers. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 among 24 divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. I analyze this emerging family configuration, focusing on these women’s experiences as mothers and on how they accord new meaning to motherhood. My analysis will deal with the diverse ways these women ‘do motherhood’ and negotiate with different familial players. It will extend beyond the discourse on motherhood to shed light on the current changes in power and gender relations taking place in Palestinian-Israeli society.     

Transnational families and their children's education: China's ‘study mothers’ in Singapore

Abstract For many middle‐income Asian families from the region's less developed countries, the education of children in a more developed country has become a major ‘project’ requiring the transnational relocation of one or more members of the family. As an aspiring global education hub, Singapore has been a recipient of many international students. In our article we examine the case of ‘study mothers’ from the People's Republic of China who accompany their children to Singapore during the course of the latter's study, while leaving their spouses at home. In the analysis we demonstrate that the transnational ‘project of education’ for these young Asian children hinges crucially on the notion and realization of the ‘sacrificial mother’. Unlike the women in elite Chinese transnational families who enter western countries as potential citizens and are able to regain their relatively privileged lifestyles after a period of transition, the study mothers are admitted to, and remain in, Singapore as transient sojourners whose lives are characterized by continuing challenges and fluidity.     

Only one pair of hands: Ways that single mothers stretch work and family resources

Based on in-depth interviews with 50 women in the eastern part of Massachusetts in the United States between the ages of 22 and 50 who have chosen to be single mothers, this article presents a typology demonstrating the factors leading to, and consequences of, differing combinations of economic and social support for childrearing marshaled by the mothers. Ensuring middle class lives for their children is a central goal for the mothers. This goal determines how and why the mothers construct specific strategies to complement their ‘one pair of hands’ based on resources they develop: some have both financial resources and a deep network of support (‘good jobs/good friends’), others have either one or the other (‘tapping the networks’ and ‘looking to the market’), and a fourth group have neither (‘going it alone’). Despite variation in resources all the women seek ways to tip the balance of work and family in favor of mother-time, and in the process of developing individual solutions activate broad kin and community networks.     

Neoliberal motherhood during the pandemic: Some reflections

In this article, I argue that there are at least three essential elements that inform the idealized mother figure today and I reflect upon the effects the COVID‐19 pandemic has on each of these elements. The three essential elements in the contemporary understanding of motherhood reflect neoliberal concerns and are related to mothers’ unpaid work, the female body and mothers’ participation in the labour market. These three elements have been distilled with the help of secondary literature and are based on initial observations and interview results that had been conducted as part of an ongoing research project on contemporary motherhood practices of upper‐middle‐class mothers from Switzerland, Turkey and Germany. Consequently, the focus in this article lies on upper‐class and upper‐middle‐class women. In contrast to optimistic visions that envision the end of neoliberalism, I argue that the neoliberal understanding of motherhood is likely to persist and to re‐emerge as the dominant model of motherhood in the wake of the pandemic.     

Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the ‘effects’ of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio‐economic, physical health, emotional well‐being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further rein‐forced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.     

Mother Tongues

SUMMARY

As women make their first journeys into motherhood, their relationships and discussions with other women, especially other mothers, can be of vital importance. I argue that as women journey into motherhood, they also journey into what might be called a culture of motherhood-a discursive and symbolic realm shared by all mothers. Through interactions among mothers, information, resources, and advice are shared; hierarchies of authority within the community of mothers are established; and women are given opportunities to discursively explore and construct their maternal identities, for example, through the sharing of birth stories. These symbolic, ritualistic, and communicative dimensions of the journey into motherhood can differ between lesbian-identified and heterosexual-identified women. Lesbian mothers can be suspect or marginalized and, at times, feel the need to be circumspect in their interactions. On the other hand, coupled lesbians make the journey into motherhood, into maternal identity, and into the community of mothers, together as a couple. This is not the same for heterosexual women whose most intimate female companions on the journey tend to be friends, sisters, and mothers. Based on research with 53 Canadian mothers, I compare the journeys into motherhood of lesbian and heterosexual women.     

Exercising Agency,Becoming a Single Mother

Abstract

Single motherhood is on the rise and an increasing number of single mothers are never married. This has contributed to the crisis rhetoric surrounding the decline of the traditional family. A plethora of research has been conducted with a variety of subgroups of single mothers, but virtually no research has examined the lives of never married, single mothers, who are neither poor nor middle class, but economically fall in between. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with this subgroup, the article examines their decision-making processes. The findings of this study reveal various factors that helped the women make decisions showing how the process is more complex than previously suggested in the literature. Interestingly, the women articulate a comfort zone of single motherhood that is unparallel to other groups of single mothers. Concepts of agency, autonomy, pride, and self-reliance are crucial to understanding their process of decision making.     

Migration and the accentuated ambivalence of motherhood: the role of ICTs in Filipino transnational families

This article is concerned with the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on Filipina transnational mothers' experience of motherhood, their practices of mothering and, ultimately, their identities as mothers. Drawing on ethnographic research with Filipina migrants in the UK as part of a wider study of Filipino transnational families, this article observes that, despite the digital divide and other structural inequalities, new communication technologies, such as the internet and mobile phones, allow for an empowered experience of distant mothering. Apart from a change in the practice and intensity of mothering at a distance, ICTs also have consequences for women's maternal identities and the ways in which they negotiate their ambivalence towards work and family life. In this sense, ICTs can also be seen as solutions (even though difficult ones) to the cultural contradictions of migration and motherhood and the ‘accentuated ambivalence’ they engender. This, in turn, has consequences for the whole experience of migration, sometimes even affecting decisions about settlement and return.     

Meanings of lone motherhood within a broader family context

In this paper, the theoretical approach to the concept of lone motherhood is adopted from ‘new’ family sociology where families are understood to be dynamic processes constituted by webs of relationships. I analyse life stories written by lone mothers in order to examine the meanings that they give to their lone motherhood in relation to their larger family context. This approach reveals that, along with the concept ‘family’, the category ‘lone motherhood’ can be questioned. The life stories show that as with all families, the representations of ‘the lone mother family’ vary. Lone motherhood emerges less as a distinct family form and more as an experience coloured by the lone mother's position in a web of family relationships, as well as her place in her broader personal, social and historical context.     

Transitions to motherhood: young women’s desire for respectability,responsibility and moral worth

ABSTRACT

In the UK, teenage motherhood is depicted in the media and government policy as highly negative and problematic. Pregnant and mothering young women are constructed as socially excluded members of society who belong to an assumed underclass who lack responsibility and respectability. This article draws on the views and perspectives of pregnant and mothering young women in the east of England to examine how positive and successful subjects are defined and understood. It is illustrated how this group of working-class young women negotiated and resisted their positioning as ‘unfit’ mothers and ‘bad’ citizens. Central to their narratives was a desire to reassert themselves as respectable and responsible individuals through engaging in education and employment in order to achieve financial independence. It is argued that this notion of respectability provides a limited and limiting understanding of inclusion and moral worth for working-class young women.     

‘A Place of Our Own'? Teenage Mothers’ Views on Housing Needs and Support Models

Since 2003, government policy has required local authorities to provide support when they house lone teenage parents seeking accommodation. This qualitative study addresses young mothers’ routes into housing need and their experiences of housing access and support, drawing on interview and focus group data collected in 2003. The findings emphasise mothers’ preferences for forms of support which facilitate moves towards increased choice and independence. Reinforcing messages from other research, these findings also show a gap between concepts of ‘support’ embodied in government policy and those which inform practice, within agencies and among young people. © 2006 The Author(s). Journal compilation Copyright © 2006 National Children's Bureau.