Making Milk and Money: Contemporary Mothers' Orientations to Breastfeeding and Work

In most Western industrial nations, gains have been made in women's educational and occupational opportunities as part of a larger gender revolution. At the same time, contemporary mothering expectations have expanded and intensified, especially the renewed focus on breastfeeding as the “optimal” choice for infant feeding. How do women perceive the simultaneous pursuit of these activities? Prior scholarship has identified tensions in cultural models of breastfeeding as well as in women's subjective experiences, emphasizing how breastfeeding is shaped and encountered through sociocultural context, especially ideologies that position work and mothering as incompatible. Building on this, I examine how the current generation of working mothers view working and breastfeeding. Through in‐depth interviews with 32 U.S. women, I show how women espouse distinctly different orientations to breastfeeding: instrumentalist, quasi‐maternalist, and pragmatist. I argue that these different orientations both reflect and reframe existing cultural models and discourses about contemporary women's relationships to work, mothering, and breastfeeding.     

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.     

民族文化精神的延展与维系——台湾文学中的母亲意象和母爱情感的书写

台湾作为中国的一个重要组成部分,有着特殊的历史境遇,深爱中华文明并深受中华民族文化精神熏陶的台湾作家满怀深情地塑造着祖国母亲的文学意象,尽情地讴歌和赞美母爱情感,展示母亲在抚育儿童的过程中传递着中华民族的传统美德和优秀文化,维系和延展着中华民族的文化精神。     

The Role of Migration and Single Motherhood in Upper Secondary Education in Mexico

We investigated the link between migration, family structure, and the risk of dropping out of upper secondary school in Mexico. Using two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey, which includes 1,080 upper secondary students, we longitudinally modeled the role of family structure in the subsequent risk of dropping out, focusing on the role of migration in single motherhood. We found that children living without a father because of international migration or divorce or separation are at a greater risk relative to children in 2‐parent households. Economic characteristics of the household provide a partial explanation for children living in single‐mother households because of divorce or separation but do not explain the greater risk of dropping out for children with fathers in the United States.     

论高校教师本性的流失成因及对策

该文通过对新形势下教师流失成因、高校本性与高校教师本性流失的互动关系进行分析 ,进而提出了高校教师本性流失的对策 ,即应当重视教师的师德教育 ;加强宏观调控 ,建立健全管理机制 ;不断创造和优化青年教师成长的环境等     

中国失去独生子女群体社会保障研究综述

迄今为止,对于失去独生子女群体社会保障问题,学术界已经做了多方面比较深入的研究。已有的研究分别从失独者、失独家庭和失独群体三个角度界定了“失独”概念;分析了失独群体产生的原因,其中,计划生育政策是其最深层的原因,社会和自然风险的日益增加则是其产生的潜在的原因。研究还发现,失独群体在社会中处于弱势地位,失独不仅损害了家庭的经济功能,导致家庭子女赡养功能的缺失,而且部分失独家庭还存在着瓦解的隐患。因此,从社会保障的角度,有必要提出保障失独群体的对策与方案。     

运动减肥需要注意的几个问题

本文详细阐述了在运动减肥过程中存在的主要问题及其影响减肥效果的原因,同时阐述了如何解决这些问题的方法,内容可为指导运动减肥工作者及减肥对象作参考。     

试论我国的信用缺失及其治理

在我国向市场经济转轨的过程中 ,由于信用制度的滞后形成信用缺失。我国经济健康稳定发展和国际竞争格局的变化 ,迫切要求我们必须从现在开始 ,加快信用体系建设 ,强化国家对社会信用活动的管理     

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.     

Oral History: Snapshots from a Family Album

This piece presents six short scenes from the conception of twins by alternative insemination through gender determination and birth, to the first vaccination. It shows that the question “Who is the real mother?” is just as important as the question “Is your baby a boy or a girl?”