‘Since Having a Child, I Finally Feel Like an Adult’: Exploring Intersections of Contemporary Transitions-To-Motherhood and Transitions-To-Adulthood

Abstract

The paper investigates intersections between two biographical processes, namely the transitions-to-motherhood and transitions-to-adulthood. Considering the research focused on transitions in the modern world, the paper looks at how transitions-to-motherhood are narrated in relation to both the general life situation and ‘objective’ adulthood markers, and the subjective understandings of whether one feels ‘like an adult’. Drawing on a qualitative longitudinal study (QLS) of becoming a mother in contemporary Poland, the paper explores three types of transitional sequences. The typology includes scheduled, detoured and accidental transitions-to-motherhood, conceptualized through the lens of broader chronologies of reaching adulthood. By leveraging a temporal lens enabled by QLS, the paper offers a new perspective on the marker of parenthood as the feature of contemporary transitions-to-adulthood.