Social Construction Of Motherhood Research Articles

“Being a mom = having all the feels”: social support in a postpartum depression online support group

ABSTRACTPostpartum depression represents one of the most common complications associated with childbirth, with current estimates placing its prevalence between 13% and 19% among recent mothers. Literature suggests severe implications for both mothers and children, and identifies stressful life events, poor marital relationships, lower socioeconomic status, and lack of social support as major predictors of a PPD diagnosis. This study sought to investigate types of social support sought and received by women with PPD. In contrast with previous research, informational support was found to be the most frequently used type of support, followed by emotional support and network/community support. Selective coding revealed two overarching themes in the PPD support group: social construction of motherhood, and social barriers to treatment. The study makes policy recommendations, including suggestions to facilitate women’s access to health care and support both in offline and online settings.

Postpartum Depression and the Social Construction of Motherhood: A Gendered Perspective

Postpartum Depression and the Social Construction of Motherhood: A Gendered Perspective

Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine.

Cultures around the world are replete with images of women as the epitome of love, kindness, patience, and similar virtues, owing to their ability to give birth. Consequently, those who cannot give birth due to medical conditions are stigmatized and made to feel inadequate and deviant. Although infertility is a gender-neutral health predicament, it is women who encounter severe abjuration. Cultural scripts that glorify childbearing and stigmatize infertility impact the afflicted adversely as they destabilize their identity and aggravate their suffering as a patient. Graphic medical narratives on infertility, such as Paula Knight's The Facts of Life (2017), Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs (2014), and Phoebe Potts's Good Eggs (2010), reflect on these issues and, in the process, illuminate how infertility fractures women's identity in a pronatalist society. This essay explores three graphic pathographies on infertility through three major themes: pronatalism and the social construction of motherhood, the absolutism of science, and alternatives to motherhood. The essay argues that the use of comics and graphic medicine, by combining visual and conceptual modes, presents the social, personal, and medical features of infertility with new force and urgency.

Reproductive policy and the social construction of motherhood.

Reproductive technologies allow women to embrace or forgo motherhood, but a woman's ability to make autonomous reproductive choices depends on access to these technologies. In the United States, public policies — laws, regulations, appropriations, and rulings — have either broadened or narrowed this access. Have U.S. public policies affecting reproductive choices conformed to attitudinal distinctions about motherhood itself? I identified policies covering infertility, contraception, and abortion and examined them contextually within the Ingram-Schneider social construction framework. Women's choices fell within social construction quadrants as being positively portrayed and powerful; negatively portrayed but powerful; positively portrayed but powerless; and negatively portrayed and powerless. Married heterosexual women embracing motherhood were likely to be viewed positively and to reap benefits. Women forgoing motherhood, poor women, and women seeking to form nontraditional families were likely to be viewed negatively and to bear burdens; critical among these burdens was restriction of access to technologies that could be used to support a decision to avoid motherhood or to achieve motherhood through nontraditional methods. Yes, U.S. public policies affecting reproductive choices have conformed to attitudinal distinctions about motherhood itself. These policies may also have altered those choices.

For My Own Pleasure and Delight

For My Own Pleasure and Delight

Meaningful Performances: Considering the Contributions of the Dramaturgical Approach to Studying Family

AbstractThis article highlights the contributions of Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to both understanding and researching family. With its interest in the performative nature of human interaction and the active construction of social reality, the dramaturgical perspective is particularly well‐suited to study a dynamic social institution like the family. This article offers a brief introduction to the dramaturgical study of family by addressing important components of dramaturgy and contrasting it with other approaches to the sociology of family. The authors then demonstrate this approach in action by introducing two research areas that currently employ dramaturgical analyses – work on ‘doing family’ and the social construction of motherhood – and another that might benefit from such analyses, research on blended families. The article closes with further suggestions for future research attending to the performative aspects of family life.

Motherhood in the 21st Century: Implications for Counselors

Although mental health professionals frequently work with mothers, the social construction of motherhood is rarely discussed in the counseling field. In this article, the literature on motherhood is reviewed. Intensive mothering expectations are critiqued, and the impact of these expectations on employed mothers, mothers on welfare, and stay‐at‐home mothers is discussed. Suggestions for mental health professionals are provided.

Motherhood, choice and the British media: a time to reflect

In this paper we ask: How is motherhood being represented in the British media, especially in relation to choice, age and fertility? Do media discourses reflect a redefinition or transformation of ‘motherhood’ in the twenty‐first century, and what implications do they have for feminist research into maternal identity and motherhood? As three Ph.D. students from The Open University, all working on different aspects of motherhood, we examine and discuss the significant debates around motherhood, fertility and choice taking place recently in the British media. In the context of increasing divergence from traditional family forms, advances in medical technology such as assisted reproductive techniques, and changing attitudes to sexual behaviour and marriage over the past few decades, motherhood and parenting remain contested sites in the public domain. The availability of contraception and of abortion has given rise to increased choice, and yet women’s fertility choices are increasingly subject to scrutiny and criticism. In particular, media debate in the UK has focused on challenges to traditional motherhood and the implication that the family is ‘in crisis’. This is particularly evident in the coverage of teenage mothers, older mothers and women who delay motherhood. Such media representations of older and younger mothers and those women who ‘leave it too late’ reveal significant insights into the social construction of motherhood.

Women in the Kibbutz: The “Mixed Blessing” of Neo-Liberalism

The first kibbutz, founded in 1910 as a modern Jewish egalitarian community, strove to fulfill democratic and egalitarian principles. Though gender equality was never fully implemented in the kibbutzim, from the 1920s on it nevertheless became a central principle of this classless society—largely as a result of kibbutz women's collective action. Since the 1980s, however, the kibbutz as an institution has been in the throes of a dramatic crisis as it adapts to neo-liberalism, a process that can be seen as one of de-institutionalization of social equality. In this paper, I shall examine what is happening to women in light of these dramatic changes. In the first section, I shall describe the impact of neo-liberalism on the kibbutz. My assumption is that here, as elsewhere, neo-liberalism is a mixed blessing for men and women alike, in that it creates new regimes of social inclusion and exclusion, institutionalizing new avenues to prestige and/or power and/or economic resources while weakening traditional ones. Next, I describe the mixed blessing brought specifically to women by this process. As far as economic rewards, power and prestige are concerned, men are overrepresented among the winners in the neo-liberal process, while women are overrepresented among the losers. In the last section, I discuss why kibbutz women nowadays do not mobilize for collective action and largely take a pragmatic, individualistic attitude toward managing their lives. This analysis refers to three interrelated factors: (1) The community's historical gendered division of labor; (2) its social construction of motherhood and masculinity; and (3) the long fight of kibbutz women for autonomy in the private sphere. In conclusion, I argue that for those who still dream of living in an alternative community in the global era, the issue of gender equality needs to be re-invented on the path to Utopia.

Social Constructions of Motherhood and Mothers on Drugs

The theoretical lens of feminist family therapy is used in this critical review of the literature concerning mothers who are in recovery from addiction and their ongoing stigmatization by society. The author's goal is to look at the issue of ‘motherhood’ as it has been constructed historically; how mothers on drugs are viewed by society, and the current policies and practices that result.

What Kind of Mother Am I? Impression Management and the Social Construction of Motherhood

Previous research has examined the use of others as props for impression management (e.g., presidents' use of first ladies), but has left many areas underexplored, including the role of nonadults as important associates. This article focuses on the unacknowledged role of children's appearances in the maintenance of identities and management of impressions for their mothers. Using both participant observation of a playgroup and interviews with mothers of young children, the research described here investigates what these mothers think about children's clothing, mothers' concerns about when—and with whom—to manage impressions, and the impressions these women hope they portray through the physical appearance of their children. In addition to providing insight about these phenomena, the article also discusses responses surrounding the importance of first impressions, differences in meanings attached to children's spoiled appearances, and the sacrifices made in motherhood. Results show that women do use well-dressed and groomed children to enact and confirm identities as “good mothers” and to protect and enhance their own self-concepts during the course of everyday social interaction.

The voices of older women in a disadvantaged community: Issues of health and social capital

The voices of older women are rarely heard in debates about the health of disadvantaged groups. Despite growing interest in health in old age, the health experiences of older women as gendered social beings have yet to be fully explored. Their potential to contribute positively to family and community health is seldom acknowledged. The aim of this article is to present findings from a qualitative British Health Development Agency funded project on the relationship between social capital, health and gender, focusing on the health and social networks of older women in a socially disadvantaged community in the north of England. Seventy-seven community members were interviewed, of these 19 were older women aged 55–78 years. Their accounts of ill health in the context of ageing were analysed to explore the intricate ways in which social capital was created, maintained and linked to health. Findings suggest that social constructions of motherhood and caring underpinned responsibility for their own and others’ health. Their experiences of dealing with health matters, together with frequent health talk, gave the women confidence as lay health experts, enabling them to contest medical advice. Drawing on personal experiences of trust and reciprocity, they recognised the importance of social networking in alleviating the problems of loneliness and isolation. At stressful times in their lives they were able to draw on existing support networks and, in spite of occasional personal conflicts, some benefited from the empowering and health-enhancing role of formal and informal participation in community life. These findings indicate that older women can operate autonomously in health matters and can substantially influence the development of healthy communities, although this can sometimes be at a personal cost.

A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle

A Social History of Wet Nursing in the United States: From Breast to Bottle examines the intersection of medical science, social theory and cultural practices as they shaped relations among wet nurses, physicians and families from the colonial period through the twentieth century. It explores how Americans used wet nursing to solve infant feeding problems, shows why wet nursing became controversial as motherhood slowly became medicalised, and elaborates how the development of scientific infant feeding eliminated wet nursing by the beginning of the twentieth century. Janet Golden's study contributes to our understanding of the cultural authority of medical science, the role of physicians in shaping child rearing practices, the social construction of motherhood, and the profound dilemmas of class and culture that played out in the private space of the nursery.

Mothers who kill their children: understanding the acts of moms from Susan Smith to the "Prom Mom"

A special kind of horror is reserved for mothers who kill their children. Cases such as those of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by driving her car into a lake, and Melissa Drexler, who disposed of her newborn baby in a restroom at her prom, become media sensations. Unfortunately, in addition to these high-profile cases, hundreds of mothers kill their children in the United States each year. The question most often asked is, why? What would drive a mother to kill her own child? Those who work with such cases, whether in clinical psychology, social services, law enforcement or academia, often lack basic understandings about the types of circumstances and patterns which might lead to these tragic deaths, and the social constructions of motherhood which may affect women's actions. These mothers oftentimes defy the myths and media exploitation of them as evil, insane, or lacking moral principles, and they are not a homogenous group. In obvious ways, intervention strategies should differ for a teenager who denies her pregnancy and then kills her newborn and a mother who kills her two toddlers out of mental illness or to further a relationship. A typology is needed to help us to understand the different cases that commonly occur and the patterns they follow in order to make possible more effective prevention plans. Mothers Who Kill Their Children draws on extensive research to identify clear patterns among the cases of women who kill their children, shedding light on why some women commit these acts. The characteristics the authors establish will be helpful in creating more meaningful policies, more targeted intervention strategies, and more knowledgeable evaluations of these cases when they arise.

Mothers and Children: Feminist Analyses and Personal Narratives

This feminist exploration of mothers, mothering, and motherhood combines evaluations of empirical and theoretical work with personal narratives by mothers or caregivers. While the authors' analyses yield suggestions for new approaches to motherhood, the narratives vividly demonstrate the relevance of these issues to women's lives. The result is a nuanced picture of the complex realities mothers face, as well as their struggles, joys, and hopes for their children. In the book's first part, Social Constructions of Motherhood, Chase and Rogers argue that dominant western views of motherhood have been and continue to be detrimental to most mothers and children. In the second part, Maternal Bodies, the authors attend to the ways that American society and women themselves have regarded the physical aspects of motherhood. Mothers' bodies, the authors contend, have long been objects of cultural and political struggle. The final part, Mothering in Everyday Life, suggests that only an understanding of the daily realities of mothering will lead to social and political changes promoting the welfare of mothers and children.

Book: Review/Commentary: Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending the Myths

Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending Myths, by Susan C. Boyd (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 243 pp., $50 US (cloth), $20 US (paper). Susan C. Boyd's Mothers and Illicit Drugs: Transcending Myths intends to bring balance to traditional research that is by men, about men, and focused on problematic and poor users. Boyd interviews 28 Canadian women from diverse backgrounds and uses their responses as well as relevant research to demonstrate that experiences of users-- particularly women and mothers-are mediated by class, race, and gender. Her work challenges prevailing assumptions regarding women who have used narcotics and questions socially constructed label drug user, illuminating ways in which it positions women as objects of regulation and control. But Boyd's work occasionally makes claims that it cannot support. In end, methodological decisions are its Achilles' heel. Even so, fact that readers are left wanting to know more-about Boyd's assertions and about women she interviews-is in part a testament to book's worth. Boyd approaches her research from a critical feminist perspective, aiming to create social change and help transform lives (pp. 36-37). While Boyd reviews ethnographic literature, she opts for a more circumscribed methodology, choosing a semistructured interview format to facilitate the airing of opinion and revelation of (p. 37). Boyd explains that her choice of method is justified by failure of other researchers to ask users their opinions regarding use and policies. This choice-- and its coupling with brief but dense reviews of relevant literature-proves problematic. In first chapter, Boyd sets an ambitious agenda. She introduces constructs that drive her analysis (the social construction of motherhood, ideology of mothering, and maternal use, to name a few) and critically assesses literature from which they emerge. The remainder of her book is arranged by topic: drugs and mothering; neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and Sunny Hill Hospital for Children; social services' assistance and regulation; treatment; and effects of criminalization of narcotics. Boyd's professional life clearly informed her research, shaping her commitment to a broad agenda. With a 15-year background in human services to women, Boyd is interested in how women from different backgrounds experience these services differently. The keystone of Boyd's expansive framework is her argument that women's experience of use is mediated by their race, class, and gender, in conjunction with legal and socio-economic environment (p. 36). More specifically, her central interest is experience of mothers who are (falsely) assumed to be bad mothers because they use-or have used-illicit drugs. Both Boyd and women she interviews have much to say about assumptions surrounding illicit use, pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering. Challenging stereotype of passive street user afflicted with a disease (addiction), women in Boyd's sample describe both positive and negative experiences that are mediated by type of drug, route of administration, duration of effect, cost of drug, race, class, gender, and legislation. Boyd contests ideas that planned, healthy pregnancies are inconsistent with illicit use and that drug-using mothers underestimate seriousness and significance of childbirth. She reports that women in her sample were initially willing to make and capable of making decisions about their pregnancies, and perceived childbirth as life-affecting and significant. Attempts to act in ways that were congruent with these perceptions, however, were often frustrated by service providers. The women were treated poorly by medical community, offered little support by human service agencies, and provided with inaccurate information about effects of illicit drugs on maternal health by health professionals. …

Nursing and motherhood constructions: implications for practice.

The present paper addresses the relationship between community based child health nursing services and social constructions of motherhood within Australia during the 1920s. Following the First World War, child health nursing services (then generally known as infant welfare or child welfare services) were established in all Australian states. The focus of the paper is mainly upon the development of the Tasmanian child health service, with some reference to similar services in other states. Within two decades of their establishment, most child-bearing women in Tasmania were in contact with child health services and this apparent success meant that, thereafter, women in Tasmania cared for their children under the 'expert' guidance of nurses. As the 1920s progressed, child health nurses increasingly promoted one particular, and ultimately extremely influential, construction of motherhood, 'scientific motherhood', based upon the philosophy of Dr Truby King. I argue that an understanding of how nursing services have historically reinforced and promoted ideological constructions of motherhood enhances the practice of present day nurses working with women. This argument is supported by reference to present day nursing practice in relation to postnatal depression.

Psychological tasks for women and men in the postpartum

Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of the transition to parenthood, four psychological tasks for women and men in the post-partum were identified: recovery from and making sense of childbirth, feelings about/relations with child, feelings about self, and changing relationships. These were examined using a mix of questionnaires and interviews. Women's responses and ways of coping with these four tasks indicated a greater variety and complexity of feelings and experiences (both positive and negative) than might be expected given the predominant clinical and research interest in depression inthe post-partum. In many respects women's feelings and experiences were similar to those of their male partners, but there were also differences, pointing to the ways in which experiences of the post-partum are gendered. These differences are related to social constructions of motherhood and fatherhood, and, in spite of notions of equity and sharing of child care in the post-partum, to the different impact of parenting on men and women's lives. Measures of the couple relationship indicate satisfactions with the parental role but also tensions and reduced levels of satisfaction.

Women's Decisions about Breastfeeding and Maternal Employment

The last two decades have seen rapid increases in incidence of breastfeeding in United States. While fewer than 30% of women breastfed their infants during 1960s, by 1980s this figure was more than 50% (Ryan, Pratt, et al., 1991). Breastfeeding has been encouraged because it is believed to provide superior nutrition and immunological and psychological benefits to infant, and for mother, reduced risk of breast cancer, faster weight loss following delivery, and improved mother-child bonding (Lawrence, 1989). The recommended duration of breastfeeding is now 6 months, and national health goals call for increases in breastfeeding and duration of breastfeeding (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1989). In recent decades there also have been sharp increases in labor force participation of mothers with young children. Currently, more than half of women with children less than 1 year old are in labor market, compared to fewer than 20% percent of mothers with 1-year-olds in early 1960s (O'Connell, 1990). Since it is widely assumed that employment and breastfeeding are relatively incompatible, breastfeeding proponents have expressed concern about potentially negative health consequences of increased postpartum employment (Barber-Madden, 1990; La Leche League, 1981; U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 1984). Evidence from past studies suggests a negative association between women's employment and breastfeeding behaviors in U.S. In this study, I use data from 1988 National Survey of Family Growth to clarify these relationships, and I test hypothesis that breastfeeding and postpartum employment conflict. Ultimately, this research addresses how women determine their work and family roles. While breastfeeding is not a role per se, it involves an individual decision about appropriate way of engaging in maternal role. As Van Esterik (1992, p. 3) has argued, the conflict between women's productive and reproductive lives is most acute and visible for breastfeeding, working mothers. By considering relationship between breastfeeding and maternal employment, this study adds to a broader literature about conflicts between women's work and maternal roles. Theoretical Perspective Role Incompatibility: Employee Versus Breastfeeding Mother The concept of role conflict (or role incompatibility) has been widely used in studying relationships between women's work and family roles (Moen, 1992; Myrdal & Klein, 1956; Voyandoff, 1984). Women may face role incompatibility if their efforts to fulfill demands of work conflict with their ability to fulfill family demands, and vice versa (Goode, 1960; Merton, 1957). This concept suggests that a woman may face role conflict when she tries to be both an employee and a mother who breastfeeds her child (Blum, 1993; Blum & Vanderwater, 1993; Van Esterik, 1989, 1992). I theorize that women may find these roles incompatible because of both structural and attitudinal conflicts. Women may face attitudinal conflicts between breastfeeding and postpartum employment because each role makes different normative and social demands. The public discourse on motherhood increasingly considers breastfeeding as something that good mothers do for their infants. At same time, as more women work outside home, growing acceptance of maternal employment has led to changes in social construction of motherhood. For instance, increased reliance on nonmaternal child care implies, to some degree, that mother is not unique in her ability to care for her infant (Mason & Kuhlthau, 1989). This potentially conflicts with breastfeeding, which is time-intensive and emphasizes a woman's unique ability to meet her infant's needs. When women make their decisions about postpartum behaviors, they face challenge of balancing these social expectations. Breastfeeding as a visible embodiment of motherhood further conflicts with attitudes at work. …

“The tender mother”: The social construction of motherhood and thelady's magazine

My aim in this essay is to explore the politics of one of the seemingly least political forms of literature, the woman's magazine. Specifically, I will analyze the ideological content of the Lady's Magazine, one of the most popular and profitable of British monthly miscellanies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth‐centuries.1 In this essay I will explore the role the Lady's Magazine played in the development of the idea of the “tender mother,” a concept which was key in the formation of the cult of domesticity and in the development of the ideology of “woman's sphere” as a realm distinct and separate from the man's world of work.2An underlying assumption informing this essay is that the concept of motherhood was (and still is) culturally constituted,3 and that literature, including popular literature found in magazines, has played an important role in this process.4 In the Lady's Magazine's portrayal of motherhood we can see one of the means by which the ideology of motherhood, in particular, the concept of the tender mother, was created, legitimated, and perpetuated.5