Women Mothers Research Articles

Tradeoffs and sexual conflict over women's fertility preferences in Mpimbwe

There are two principle evolutionary models for why women reduce their fertility, which can be used to explain the modern demographic transition. The first derives from optimality theory (specifically the "quantity-quality" tradeoff hypothesis), and the second from models of biased cultural transmission ("prestige bias" and "kin influence" hypotheses). Data on family planning preferences collected in 1996 and 1998 in a rural African village (in Mpimbwe, Tanzania) are used to test predictions derived from each hypothesis and show that both "quantity-quality" tradeoffs and biased cultural transmission underlie Pimbwe women's decisions. Reproductive decisions, however, are not made in a vacuum. Men and women's ideal family sizes often differ, and sexual conflict is particularly likely to affect a woman's success in limiting her family size. Pimbwe women's reproductive output between the initial family planning survey in 1996 and the most recent demographic survey (2006) is analyzed in relation to both the woman's preferences to limit her family and her exposure to husbands and husbands' kin. Despite wide differences in desired family sizes between men and women the extent of sexual conflict in this population is restricted to husbands and wives, and affects not a woman's use or planned use of modern contraception but her success in employing such methods effectively. There is also some evidence that a woman's mother and her kin assist in the use and effective use of modern methods, offering a prevailing force to the high-fertility objectives of the husband.

Le immigrate e il lavoro marginale nel Piemonte del boom economico

- Takes into consideration the topic of women's irregular and not recorded by the statistics jobs in the 50's, 60's and 70's in Piedmont. The attention is directed on the women immigrated, who seem to have more difficulties than the native ones in keeping a regular and full-time job through family life. One of the main obstacles is the absence on the place of these women's mothers, the ones who can look after their grandchildren. Many women with children fall back on more flexible and unqualified jobs, or on family business and handicraft started by their husbands. Keywords: Italy, Piedmont, Women, Immigration, Family, History. Parole chiave: Italia, Piemonte, Donne, Immigrazione, Famiglia, Storia.

Motivation for motherhood in women with hypertensive diseases in pregnancy

Objective. To investigate the motivation for motherhood in women with hypertensive diseases in pregnancy.Methods. A questionnaire was sent to 2600 women with hypertensive diseases in pregnancy and 1233 controls. Diagnoses from medical records were differentiated according to the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy criteria. After matching, data from 739 patients and 623 controls were evaluated with Student's-t, Chi square tests and multiple logistic regression models.Results. Women with hypertensive diseases in pregnancy longed more often for children (85.3%/70.3%, p < 0.0001), considered children more often as the sense of their life (33.6%/29.7%, p < 0.005) and used pregnancy more often to stop a disliked professional activity (9.7%/2.3%, p < 0.0001). Controls reported more often to give birth to avoid termination of pregnancy (5.3%/10.4%, p = 0.0005).Conclusions. Women with hypertensive diseases in pregnancy concentrate more extensively on motherhood in their life. If this attitude is already present before pregnancy it may augment the risk for disease and might be used for prophylaxis.

E‐communication among mothers of infants and toddlers in a community‐based cohort: a content analysis

This paper is a report of a study to explain how mothers used a community based, cohort-based electronic communication system. Early psychosocial support for families is regarded as inadequate. Employed women with young children can feel isolated from other families. Most parent e-mail lists are in a read-only format, with parents receiving informative e-mails from a corporation or a commercially motivated initiative. In an increasingly virtual age, it is important to examine parents' use of online support groups initiated by parents. We used a qualitative descriptive design to conduct an inductive content analysis of archived threads of e-mail from 40 middle class Canadian mothers involved in a grass-roots online support cohort that shared birth year and geographical community. Two hundred and ninety-two pages of single-spaced mother-based communication that occurred from June 2004 to May 2005 were analysed. Mothers used cohort-based electronic communication to build a local community, request and provide emotional support, share information and facilitate learning, and provide validation for the 'normalcy' of other women's mothering experiences. They shared stories and feelings, expressed sympathy, offered accolades, expressed appreciation for shared experiences, conveyed gratitude for support, and shared beliefs and expectations. Mothers anticipated childrearing difficulties shared strategies, exchanged advice, confirmed others' strategies and shared information. Women in particular geographical areas can use asynchronous mail systems to share information with and obtain support from other mothers. Cohort-based electronic communication could be particularly important in rural areas where travel is restricted for women and access to professional support is limited.

Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Mothers of Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome

To assess the prevalence of cardiovascular events in an older population of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). We took advantage of the high heritability of PCOS and determined the probable PCOS status of mothers of women with PCOS. The prevalence of cardiovascular events was then determined in these mothers with and without PCOS. In a single endocrine clinic, 308 women with PCOS were interviewed about their mothers' medical history, and the mothers themselves were interviewed if available. The interview addressed menstrual history, fertility, clinical signs of hyperandrogenism, age at incident cardiovascular event, and age at death as reported by daughters. Presence of PCOS in the mothers was defined as a history of infertility, irregular menses, or clinical signs of hyperandrogenism. A cardiovascular event was defined as fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, any coronary intervention, angina necessitating emergency department visits, or a cerebrovascular event. The mothers were predominantly post-menopausal. Among 182 interviewed (n = 157) or deceased (n = 25) mothers, 59 had probable PCOS. Cardiovascular events were more common (P = .011) among mothers with PCOS (11 of 59 or 18.6%) than among non-PCOS mothers (5 of 123 or 4.1%). After adjustments were made for age and race, probable PCOS was an independent predictor of cardiovascular events (odds ratio, 5.41; 95% confidence interval, 1.78 to 16.40). Cardiovascular events occurred at an early age in mothers of women with PCOS, particularly mothers with probable PCOS themselves. PCOS-affected mothers of women with PCOS have a higher risk for cardiovascular events in comparison with non-PCOS mothers, and cardiovascular events appear to occur at an earlier than expected age in mothers with PCOS.

Women's Motherhood from the Perspective of Feminist Ethics

Women's Motherhood from the Perspective of Feminist Ethics

Mothering in the context of domestic violence: the pervasiveness of a deficit model of mothering

ABSTRACTDespite growing concerns with the situation of children exposed to domestic violence, and although women have been seen as central in the welfare of their children, limited attention has been paid to the issue of mothering in this context. This paper examines how concerns regarding abused women's mothering have been articulated in the academic literature on children's exposure to domestic violence, and argues that the dominant discourse in this area has been characterized by a deficit model of mothering. Implications of the pervasiveness of a deficit model for child welfare policies and practices are highlighted. Finally, this paper identifies key elements that should be considered in the development of a feminist perspective on mothering in the context of domestic violence, which could lead to less blaming and more supportive practices.

Increased mortality among women who drank alcohol during pregnancy

Women giving birth to children with fetal alcohol syndrome have a higher risk of early mortality. However, the risk of increased mortality associated with drinking at lower levels during pregnancy has not been evaluated previously. Accordingly, mortality at 20 years post recruitment was examined in a sample ( N = 570) of women recruited between 1980 and 1986, who drank more than 1 ounce of absolute alcohol per week (oz AA/wk) during pregnancy and compared to that in abstainers from the same low socioeconomic, African-American population. Using data from archival information and state mortality records, Cox proportional hazards survival models were constructed to determine whether alcohol use, cigarette use, infant birth weight, infant dysmorphia, and alcohol use and abuse by the woman's own mother (family history positive) were associated with increased risk for mortality. At follow-up (in 2003), 9.5% of the sample had died, with the rate for controls being 3.6%, for those alcohol users who stopped during pregnancy, 12.7%, and for the alcohol users who continued drinking throughout pregnancy, 12.5%. Thus, women using alcohol in pregnancy, whether they stopped or continued to use, were significantly ( χ 2 (2) = 12.1, P < .01) more likely than abstainers to have died before follow-up. Nondrinkers' mortality rate was lower than that of other women from this low-income, high-risk population, whereas the drinkers' rate was 2.7 times higher. In a multivariate analysis, factors contributing to mortality risk included alcohol use and cigarette smoking, but not infant birth weight. Drinking at any level during pregnancy should be regarded as a risk factor for the mother as well as for offspring. Health care professionals working with such women should provide counseling and support for abstinence.

The Dynamics of Motherhood Performance: Hong Kong's Middle Class Working Mothers On- and Off-Line

This paper examines the on- and off-line identity performance of a group of Hong Kong middle-class working mothers who are users of an internet based community. The development of my involvement in this community from lurker to participant and then to virtual ethnographer provides a unique opportunity to compare the on- and off-line interactions of an Internet based community. By examining the relationship between the dominant discourse of motherhood and these women's motherhood performances on- and off-line, three modes of performativity are identified and discussed. I argue that although there is considerable pressure within this community to uphold the dominant motherhood discourse, users’ reflexivity and subversion regarding this performance are evident in both on-line and off-line contexts. In particular, users’ performativity in what I call the ‘Si Nais behaving badly’ mode can be read as a reaction towards, though not necessarily subversive of, society's prevailing conception of motherhood. My findings throw light on how the structure of internet chat frames these women's presentation of self, and how internet chat exposes aspects of their self-hood, which portray a much more varied identity than the literature on motherhood currently suggests.

Ethnic differences in preterm birth and its subtypes: the effect of a cumulative risk profile

To explore the effect of potentially explanatory risk factors on ethnic differences in the prevalence of preterm birth (PTB) and its subtypes. Prospective population-based cohort study. Pregnant women from Amsterdam attending their first antenatal visit for obstetric care. A total of 8266 women participated (response rate 67%). Ethnicity was based on the country of birth of the pregnant woman's mother: the Netherlands, Surinam, the Antilles, Turkey, Morocco, Ghana and other non-Dutch countries. Exclusion criteria were multiple births and gestational age at delivery less than 24 weeks. Risk factors were obtained using a multilingual questionnaire and from the Dutch Perinatal Registration. Risk factors were summed into a cumulative risk score. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed. Odds ratios with 95% CIs were calculated for total, spontaneous and iatrogenic (medically indicated) preterm births for the ethnic minority groups versus the Dutch reference group. After adjustment for all risk factors, the Surinamese (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.2-2.4), Ghanaian (OR 2.0, 95% CI 1.1-3.6) and Antillean (OR 1.6, 95% CI 0.8-3.3) women had a higher risk of PTB compared with the Dutch women, in particular for iatrogenic preterm birth (OR 2.1, 95% CI 1.0-4.4; OR 3.2, 95% CI 1.0-10.4; OR 3.6, 95% CI 1.1-11.2, respectively). The ethnic minority groups had a higher cumulative risk score (ranging from 2.1 to 3.7) compared with the Dutch group (1.8). Adjustment for the cumulative risk score considerably decreased the risk of PTB among the Surinamese (OR 1.2, 95% CI 0.9-1.7), Ghanaian (OR 1.3, 95% CI 0.8-2.3) and Antillean (OR 1.2, 95% CI 0.6-2.4) women. A cumulation of risk factors, mainly observed among the ethnic minority groups, contributes to the explanation of ethnic differences in PTB prevalence.

American Indian Breastfeeding Attitudes and Practices in Minnesota

We examined the breastfeeding attitudes and practices in an American Indian population in Minnesota. We interviewed women prenatally (n = 380), at 2-weeks (n = 342) and at 6-months postpartum (n = 256). We conducted multivariable analyses to examine the demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal correlates of breastfeeding initiation and duration. Factors positively associated with breastfeeding initiation included positive breastfeeding attitudes and social support for breastfeeding from the woman's husband/boyfriend and her mother. Factors positively associated with breastfeeding at 2-weeks postpartum were support from the woman's mother and positive attitudes about breastfeeding. The prenatal use of traditional American Indian medicines and cigarette smoking were both significantly associated with breastfeeding at 6-months postpartum. Programs to encourage breastfeeding in American Indian communities may be strengthened with protocols to encourage social support, recognition of the perceived health, developmental, and practical benefits of breastfeeding, and a focus on traditional American Indian health practices.

“Getting Gut-Level”

Using ethnographic data gathered at a mandated, community-based drug treatment program for women offenders, this article analyzes how gendered notions of the self and of autonomy shape penal governance. This study examines how psychological models of women's deviance, racialized visions of motherhood, and therapeutic techniques of the self come into tension with expectations of responsible, autonomous citizenship. The program prioritized therapeutic ways of governing its clients over those that emphasized economic self-reliance, rational decision making, and normalizing gender. This is because staff attributed criminal and addictive behaviors to women's inadequate self-understanding and lack of emotional autonomy in personal relations. Staff discouraged women's motherhood and paid labor because they saw these external obligations as a threat to women's autonomous selfhood. This research complicates claims that contemporary forms of penal treatment manage offenders through rational incentives and personal responsibility by pointing to the ways that subject formation is a gendered process.

Women's Voices: The Lived Experience of Pregnancy and Motherhood After Diagnosis With HIV

The objective of this study was to explore the meaning of pregnancy after diagnosis with HIV. Study design was a qualitative analysis of individual informant interviews conducted in two academic health centers in metropolitan New York. Participants were a purposive sampling of 9 women, 34 to 53 years old, who had been diagnosed with HIV and were currently pregnant or who had become mothers postdiagnosis. The result of the study included themes of extreme emotional distress after HIV diagnosis, feeling stigmatized, emotions related to the pregnancy and baby, experiences with health care providers, and motherhood for women with a diagnosis of HIV. The author concluded that the experience of pregnancy for a woman with HIV is one fraught with isolation, anxiety, and distrust, but it is also one of hope for the normalcy that motherhood may bring. Further research is needed to determine best practice for care delivery as women with HIV enter the health care system, especially for perinatal services.

Republican Motherhood Redux?: Women as Contingent Citizens in 21st Century America

ABSTRACT This article examines the re-emergence of republican motherhood, once used to define the unique and conditional relationship between women and the state in the nineteenth century. By examining recent developments in federal and state abortion policy, I reveal the current trend toward “devolving” women's social and political citizenship rights to the states, where they will once again be highly variable and often contingent upon women's mothering status. Alternatively, these same policy developments demonstrate the simultaneous nationalization of fetal rights and a language of fetal citizenship or patriotic natalism. While women's citizenship becomes contingent upon the caprices of local power structures, fetal citizenship emerges as a uniform, national concept.

In‐law Conflict

Human behavioral ecologists have shown that the reproductive lives of women are affected by both their husbands and the grandmothers of their children. Study of the combined effect of the roles of the husbands and mothers of 650 Khasi women aged 16–50 years supports the ideas that the reproductive agendas of husbands may require more than women want to invest and that mothers provide support and protective services to their daughters and grandchildren. In the absence of the woman’s mother, the husband’s agenda appears to have more influence on her reproductive career. In a cooperative vein, women's mothers may contribute to good marital choices. A view of reproductive pursuits that incorporates in‐laws enhances behavioral ecology approaches to the evolutionary comprehension of human reproductive behavior. This view also more readily interfaces with the cultural systems that set up the ecologies of reproductive life.

Social Support for First-Time Mothers

To identify support needs, formal and informal support networks, and types of support provided to first-time mothers for infant care practices at 6 weeks after delivery in Ireland. This was a quantitative descriptive design that used a 28-item questionnaire to measure social support needs and formal and informal support networks in the context of infant care practices. A convenience sample of 135 first-time mothers was recruited; 74% (n = 99) completed questionnaires at 6 weeks after birth. Most of the women reported informal social networks as their primary source of support in caring for their infants. Husbands/partners and the women's mothers were the persons identified most frequently as having provided them with each type of social support. From professional social networks, public health nurses and midwives were identified as having provided informational, instrumental, and appraisal support. Findings from this study have differentiated between informal and formal social support sources and the functional types of support they provide. Nurses who work with first-time mothers should remember that social support is not a uniform phenomenon but rather a support provided by various sources, both from a woman's social network and from healthcare professionals.

Caesarean birth: Consumption, safety, order, and good mothering

This article draws on qualitative data to explore the beliefs through which decisions about caesarean birth are made and to consider how these might contribute to the increasing rate of caesarean birth. A total of 36 interviews were conducted in Australia, including 12 hospital-based midwives, 6 obstetricians, and 18 women who had experienced caesarean birth within the 2 years prior to the research interview. Data reveal a belief derived from the pervasive discourse of neo-liberalism that women are self-governing autonomous subjects in their birth experience, with entitlement to the consumption of birthing information and services, as guided by obstetricians. Feeding into this belief are coexisting discourses that serve to organise ‘free choice’ in terms of safe/unsafe, order/disorder, life/death; and with ontological meanings, by structuring women's mothering identities as good/bad. The neo-liberal obligation to manage risk and pursue success for both mothers and babies means that women (and others) are obliged to choose what is set up as the most obvious and sensible option: safe, ordered caesareans. The structuring of discourses in this way shows how caesareans can be positioned as a preferential means of birth.

Race, Class, and the Pressure to Pass in American Maternal Melodrama: The Case of Stella Dallas

THE SUBSTANTIAL BODY OF SCHOLARSHIP concerning King Victor's Stella (1937) attests to the richness of the film and to its capacity to illuminate the complex representations of motherhood in American culture. Stella tells the story of a working-class woman who aspires that her daughter Laurel might gain acceptance in her father's upper-class milieu, only to discover that her own lack of pedigree threatens her child's social future. Stella chooses, therefore, to sever her relationship with her child so that Laurel might live as a member of the upper class-a decision that raises questions about the nature of class hierarchies and the possibilities of class mobility in American society. Scholarly analyses of Stella struggle with these questions, particularly when it comes to Stella's capacity to make choices and follow her own desire, for while Stella demonstrates that she can behave in an upper-class manner when she must, she apparently chooses not to and thereby estranges herself from her beloved daughter, an act that seems incompatible with Stella's maternal devotion. My contribution to the discourse on Stella's ostensibly paradoxical acts of selfactualization and self-sacrifice is to contend that much of the film's narrative logic emerges from the tradition of racial passing narratives, specifically scenarios where a person with black parentage is able to pass for white. Stella employs the logical structure of passing scenarios and associates Stella's character with stereotypes of black womanhood in order to present Stella's class status as a physical and inherited trait-a conceit that allows audiences to accept Stella's self-exclusion from the promise of the American dream. drama of self-sacrifice and maternal disappearance in Stella corresponds to larger patterns in American maternal melodrama. Christian Viviani outlines this trend in Who Is Without Sin?: Maternal Melodrama in American RIm, 1930-39, where he explains that in the 19305 the pressures of the Depression made Americans less interested in melodramas set in a romanticized European milieu and more determined to address domestic issues, either by representing Americans' economic and social problems or by offering escapism to a beleaguered population (85). Thus began the Americanization of the maternal melodrama, where maternal sacrifice became a high priority: The maternal melo in its American vein is an apologia for total renunciation, total sacrifice, total self-abnegation (96). Stella's sacrifice of her maternal bonds corresponds to this American model; unlike the mothers in European melodrama, who have their children confiscated, American mothers give up their children in order to protect them from their damaging social influence. I argue that American melodrama's substantial variations from the European model are founded on the unique racial dynamics of American society, where one's racial identity, both actual and perceived, has a central role in kinship structures and social relations. My analysis of Stella will Illustrate how the emphasis on maternal sacrifice in the Americanized maternal melodrama emerges from America's racial history and its corresponding narrative tradition of the child whose social capital rests on the mother's disappearance and anonymity. Typically, the melodrama scholarship on race focuses on films featuring multiple nonwhite characters and directly addressing racial conflicts. Stella may seem like an unusual choice to extend the discourse on race, for although are black characters in the film, their appearances are brief and scattered, to the extent that some viewers might not even notice their presence. Indeed, E. Ann Kaplan, In her seminal article Mothering, Feminism and Representation: Maternal Melodrama and the Women's RIm 1910-40, asserts that there is no race issue in Stella Dallas (133). However, if we closely examine the narrative functions of the black characters, each playing a mammy or Aunt Jemima role, while reevaluating the complexities of Stella's motherhood within the parameters of race drama, It becomes clear that American traditions of racial passing narratives, representations of black women's motherhood and sexuality, and the peculiar relationship between race and class In American society together account for the unique characteristics of American maternal melodrama, and not only in instances where race Is clearly at issue. …

An exploratory, descriptive study of women's experiences of hospital admission during pre‐term labor

Rarely have women's experiences of admission to hospital during pre-term labor (PTL) been described from their own perspective. This study aimed to address this issue using qualitative methods. The views of 8 women admitted to hospital with PTL were obtained through semi-structured interviews. Issues explored included understanding of their condition, expectations concerning delivery, and their views about hospital admission. A key aspect of women's experiences concerned their search for meaning to help them make sense of their sudden and unexpected hospital admission. Several women continued to feel anxious despite assurances from staff that everything was 'OK', whereas others had overcome initial anxiety and were excited about the imminent birth. There was consensus that the information received whilst in hospital was inconsistent, and some women believed that their concerns were being 'ignored'. Some women attributed PTL to daily stress, such as working long hours. Social support from women's mothers and other patients appeared important. Several women had been ambivalent about their pregnancy in the early stages, but were now in a place of acceptance. Two women reported previous childbirth experiences that were viewed as distressing. PTL had motivated some women to re-evaluate their lifestyle. Women admitted to hospital in PTL could be assisted in their search for meaning by provision of consistent information, having their views acknowledged, satisfactory social support, and dealing with any previous history of perceived traumatic birth experiences.

Traditional postpartum practices of women and infants and the factors influencing such practices in South Eastern Turkey

Objective to gain an understanding of traditional postpartum practices for women and babies, and to investigate the factors influencing such practices. Design descriptive study. Setting Maternity and Children's Hospital in Adıyaman city, Turkey. Participants 273 women who gave birth at the Maternity and Children's Hospital in Adıyaman city from March to June 2004. Findings more than half of the 273 women (55.7%) were aged between 25 and 32 years (mean 27.85, standard deviation [SD] 5.45). A total of 22.3% of women were illiterate, and most were unemployed. The most popular practices among new mothers were eating a kind of dessert, called ‘Bulamaç’ (82.8%). A number of women (69.6%) drank a mixture of grape molasses and butter, 64.5% had their abdomen tightly wrapped, 62.6% were not left alone at home, and more than half of the women (57.9%) avoided sexual intercourse for 40 days after giving birth. Nearly, half of the women (45.4%) fed their babies with water containing sugar just after the birth, and 77.1% of women kept their babies’ umbilical cord in a special place. Afterwards, the mothers threw the cords into a river or they buried them in the grounds of a mosque or a school. Most of the mothers (89%) reported that they covered their babies with a yellow cloth in order to protect them from jaundice. A relationship between traditional postpartum practices and demographic characteristics of women was observed. The women's mothers and mothers-in-law (66.7%) usually encouraged such practices. Key conclusions postpartum care of women and their babies are important cultural practices. Some of these practices may have harmful effects on women and their babies. Implications for practice it is important to gain an understanding of cultural beliefs and traditional practices relating to the postpartum care of women and their babies. Midwives and nurses should discuss these findings and their implications when they educate new mothers and their families about contemporary methods of postnatal maternal and infant care.