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Despite the growing literature, the relationship between childcare provision and mothers' labour supply decisions is not fully comprehended by researchers and policymakers yet. The quite consensual importance is commonly followed by non-conclusive empirical evidences, generating doubts about the actual effectiveness of childcare policies due to promote mothers' life-balance between family and work. This thesis aims to contribute to this debate presenting an empirical, comparative analysis between a developing and a developed country, Brazil and United Kingdom (UK), addressing different interventions regarding mothers' childcare and labour supply choices. For the Brazilian case, this thesis presents and discusses the effects a reform on Brazil's primary education system possibly had on mothers' labour market outcomes. This reform advanced children's compulsory enrolment in primary education schools from the age of 7 to 6. Because of the imperfect compliance of the reform implementation, children's month of birth is used as an instrumental variable to control the endogeneity present at their actual enrolment in schools. The results show that to advance children's enrolment in the primary education system had positive effects on the labour supply of the single and least educated mothers, increasing their participation in job market and probability of becoming full time workers respectively. These results are different from those found in the recent literature about traditional kinds of childcare and mothers' labour supply, suggesting that childcare and primary education policies have to be considered separately regarding their influences on mothers' labour supply outcomes. In turn, UK is one of the largest investors in childcare policies among the developed countries. However, the empirical literature shows these investments have been ineffective to support British working mothers, what becomes even more complex in a context where informal kinds of childcare are available to mothers. In this scenario, UK equally appears as an important case study, since this country is the one where mothers present the highest preference for informal kinds of childcare among the OECD members (OECD, 2016). To deal with this, bivariate probit and multinomial logit econometric strategies are applied to UK's data to verify the determinants of mothers' preferences for formal childcare and labour supply, considering the use of informal childcare as one of the explanatory variables. The results highlight the positive influence the use of informal childcare by British mothers has on their labour supply and formal childcare choices. Furthermore, they show British married mothers conciliate formal and informal childcare arrangements as complements. The conclusion is that childcare remains as key intervention to support working mothers in both contexts of Brazil and the UK - in Brazil's case, to address the lack of childcare provision and, in the UK's one, regarding the use/availability of informal kinds of childcare. Furthermore, mother's marital status plays an essential role in the way she responds to childcare interventions, being particularly and positively affected in the case of Brazil and responding to informal childcare use/availability whether she is married in the case of UK. It generates important childcare policy implications due to support working mothers, such as the expansion of childcare provision in Brazil, the account of informal childcare in the UK, and the consideration of mother's marital status (and education) in both cases.

The thesis examines the stigmatization of American middle-class single mothers. In doing so, the research questions the extent to which being unpartnered as a mother influences stigmatizing experiences. Furthermore, as the work centers on privileged (middle-class) single mothers, it also disentangles arguments of stigma from socioeconomic status, socioeconomic status from lone motherhood, and singledom from single motherhood. The thesis illustrates that stigma is a personal and social consequence produced by cultural and structural inequalities linked to the construction of womanhood. As such, stigma among middle-class single mothers results from being unpartnered as women, thus challenging economics as a rationale for their stigma. Due to the complexities and dimensions of the research focus, narrative analysis was used to capture women's stories as they navigated single motherhood. Thus, the thesis presents a meta-narrative of the single mother narrative, detailing the various phases of middle-class lone motherhood. Collectively, the phases of disruption, resolution, and repair illustrate the stigmatization of these mothers. As the disruption phase centers on self-stigma, it captures how single mothers use the narrative of biographies to navigate or respond to their experiences of stigma. In doing so, lone mothers drew from historical and personal biographies to assess the 'single mother' stereotype. As a result of these influences, combined with their unhealthy/undesired romantic partnerships, mothers rationalized their choice to select single motherhood as an act of agency, thereby establishing the 'beginning' of the single mother narrative. As a result of selecting lone motherhood, mothers entered the resolution phase or 'setting' of the single mother narrative. As the work focuses on social stigma, detailed through various social levels of interactions, this phase captured how lone mothers used narratives of resistance (denying, challenging, or abstaining) as strategies in responding to their stigma. In doing so, the phase details how lone mothers experienced 'resource poverty' as a product of their lone motherhood. And finally, as single mothers' 'end' their narratives, the work closes with the repair phase, intended to repair their damaged identities as mothers and women. In doing so, repair narratives illustrate lone mothers' strategies to project and resolve their single mother narrative. And though these narratives focused on repairing a damaged self, single mother outcomes demonstrate that despite the ways women attempted to alleviate their stigma, each 'result' ultimately ends with women being denied full agency-evidencing the limitations of cultural and structural influences upon their trajectories as lone mothers. Ultimately, these phases of the single mother narrative evidence how single mothers experience the 'scarlet letter effect,' or the stigmatization of single mothers. In doing so, the work stands as a testament to stigma management, performance, and identity (re)construction inherited from a 'legacy of injustice' often extending beyond the personal to embody an existence defined by deviant positionality and resistance.

After the 1954 'Brown v. Board' judgement found racially segregated public schools to be unconstitutional, more strategic elements within the white segregationist South began to formulate organised resistance. One of the most prolific organisations to form within this milieu was the White Citizens' Councils, which became a vital part of Massive Resistance. An analysis of gender is central to understanding the Councils' formation, evolution, internal divergence, and their place within, and influence on, Massive Resistance. By using gender as a lens to analyse the Councils, this thesis reveals the significance of gender in the Councils' identity and propaganda. An analysis of overlooked and under-utilised sources, including visual and written propaganda, newspapers, and Federal Bureau of Investigation files, expose undiscovered gendered elements of the Councils. Doing so reveals that from the Councils' inception, narratives of gender were an important but hitherto overlooked tool in the tactics and strategies of the Councils. Gender identity was key to the heterogeneity of the Councils, being both a cause of divergence and an influence on the ways these differences manifested. Central to this analysis is uncovering the hidden or forgotten histories of women's activities in the groups: they were a driving force behind the adaptation of the Councils. Case studies of prominent Council women demonstrate their significance in the Councils, revealing individuals with agency who shaped the Councils and Massive Resistance. An analysis of these women's activities adds further nuance to our understanding of the Councils and, at the same time, sites Massive Resistance within longer histories of women's activism. This thesis expands knowledge by looking at neglected aspects in existing histories, moving the lens beyond the Deep South and beyond the 1960s. It reveals gender to be vital for understanding the Council, and central for building a more complete history of Massive Resistance.

The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate the problematic status of motherhood in current Iranian society-particularly among young middle-class women-and to characterise the problematisation process of motherhood. My research shows that the concept of motherhood has turned into a controversial topic for thought and discussion, as evidenced by academic studies, public discourses, and individual conversations about motherhood. My approach to motherhood mainly draws on a cognitive anthropological perspective and incorporates ethnographic, historical, and evolutionary viewpoints. I made a multi-methodological framework. I carried out ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observations and semi-structured interviews. I also employed my personal experiences, informal chats and observations with friends and relatives, secondary data from other studies, and historical evidence to support my ethnographic data. My findings indicate that the cultural model of motherhood is organised by the concept of project among young middle-class women. This schema is reflected in three metaphors of strategy, trade-off and conditional. Moreover, I argue that this conceptualisation is connected to how middle-class women perceive children, father(hood), and parenthood. Furthermore, I contend that three general-purpose schemas influence the cultural model of motherhood and its three complementing domains. The coexistence of the three schemas of familism, sociality, and individualism, as well as the conceptualisation of motherhood as a project, makes motherhood problematic I also propose a causal explanation for the motherhood problematisation and the emergence and distribution of the aforementioned cultural schemas. Applying the epidemiology of representations approach, I assert that the current cultural model of motherhood is the product of ecological and psychological factors throughout Iran's history. Finally, I argue that, while middle-class women and many lower-class individuals tend to accept the described cultural schemas, there are individual variations in how meanings are made of shared conceptions. Moreover, these expectations are not always fulfilled in reality.

Becoming a parent is a period of great transition in which a person's relationship to their evolving identity can impact upon their wellbeing. Both group membership (Seymour-Smith et al, 2017) and social comparison (Gilbert, 2014) can impact on a new parent's identity as they negotiate this new role. Parents, nowadays, face an ever changing social context in which social media use has become a normalised part of society, however research into the impact of social media use and the processes which underpin it is limited. The wellbeing of new parents is especially important when we consider that between 10% (Maternal Mental Health Alliance, 2020) and 20% (NHS England, 2020) of new mothers and 10% of new fathers (Singley & Edwards, 2015) experience perinatal mental health difficulties and this can have long lasting impacts on the health and wellbeing of both the parent and their baby. This study used a Grounded Theory methodology to explore the experiences of eleven new parents, who had infants aged between birth and two years. One to one interviews were used to explore the impact of social media use on their emerging parenting identity, their wellbeing and their relationships to others, including their baby. Two models are presented which aim to describe the processes associated with using social media, as described by the new parents. Parents used social media as means of seeking both information and connection and specific support groups were described as beneficial to new parents in meeting these needs. However, insecurity within their parenting role was identified as both a reason for continued social media use and as a consequence of using the platforms. This suggests bi-directional reasons for using the platforms. Furthermore, negative impacts of social media use were identified away from the screen. These included experiencing a negative impact on their relationships, their wellbeing and their desire to engage in performative parenting. Parents also described attempting to reduce their social media use; however this process came with challenges. A continued and complex process of stepping back from social media and being pulled back in was described. This study suggests that social media use, for new parents, is a complicated process which may have negative experiences attached to it. This has implications for clinical practice, throughout a new parent's perinatal journey, as the impact of social media use is not typically explored. Open conversations about an individual's use of the platforms may normalise the difficulty that can be experienced and support clients to identify those aspects of social media which may be unhelpful for them.

This thesis looks at the practical application of medical discourse to women found insane at London's Old Bailey between 1863 and1913. Through in-depth analysis of all cases of women found insane at the Old Bailey, 1863-1913, this PhD thesis analyses the various discourses, medical, legal and cultural which appear to have been applied to these women in order to achieve a successful insanity plea. Using trial transcripts, newspaper reports, and published medical discourse the thesis aims to provide a fuller understanding of women found insane in the period, including the types of offences they committed, their ages and social situations. Using the Old Bailey Online project these cases have also been compared with those of violent female criminals found legally responsible to attempt to identify the common elements in female cases where an insanity plea was successful. The application of published medical discourse to these women's post-trial treatment in Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum is also considered, through the use of admission registers and patient case files. The aim is to shed light on the relationships between medical and lay understandings of madness in the period, how these interacted to produce insanity verdicts, and to examine the impact of published medical theory on lived experience. In particular, this thesis focuses on medical discourse which identified specifically female madness and how this was applied in trials, and the ways in which wider cultural assumptions about women influenced how behaviour was designated as "normal" or "abnormal". A more in-depth analysis of all female offenders found insane at London's Old Bailey also attempts to address an imbalance in the historiography on the subject which tends to focus exclusively on mothers who killed their children and were found insane. The thesis aims to contribute to a greater, and more complete, understanding of the female criminal lunatic in the period, not just the representation in medical or legal discourse, but as individuals with real lived experiences.

Throughout the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948), British women travelled to the country as missionaries, teachers, welfare workers, nurses, doctors, journalists and colonial wives. Their actions affected the lives of the people of Palestine and tell us much about the nature of British colonialism in this settler colonial context. In the existing historiography of the Mandate, a male-dominated narrative prevails, with British women receiving very little attention from historians. This is the first extensive study of these British women. It uses their correspondence, reports and publications, archived across Britain, Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, Beirut, and Washington, D.C., to analyse their activities in various spheres of the intimate. The attitudes and actions of these women expose the variability of the colonial encounter in this setting. In Mandate Palestine, British women's intimate colonialisms were multiple: there existed an intrusive intimacy of condescension towards the Palestinian Arab community and a paradoxically distant intimacy of respect towards the Jewish community. This was based on discourses of difference constructed by British women and underpinned by hierarchies of child-rearing, domesticity, agency and modernity, with the Jewish community typically placed further up these social scales than the Palestinian Arab community. There were however inconsistencies in, and limitations to, these multiple intimate colonialisms, which ultimately undermined the strength of British women's discourse. This thesis develops existing histories of British women in early to mid-twentieth century Palestine and contributes to enhanced understandings of the British Mandate for Palestine more broadly. By inserting British women in Palestine into existing imperial literatures on intimate colonialisms, this thesis establishes a new framework for grappling with the nature of white women's colonialisms in the juncture between colonial and settler colonial phenomena: the concept of multiple intimate colonialisms. This marks an important and original contribution to both colonial and settler colonial studies.

This study aimed to explore the experiences of re-emerging disordered eating (DE) in the context of motherhood. My rationale for undertaking this endeavour was based on the dearth in anonymous studies on experiences of re-emerging DE in motherhood beyond the post-partum period, and conflicting findings regarding remission and relapse following pregnancy. Theories of control, emotional regulation, and identity formed part of the theoretical framework with which I presented previous literature, and contributed to my rationale for the research question: "what is the experience of re-emerging DE in the context of motherhood?" To explore this question and to expand the diversity in relevant literature, I conducted semi-structured interviews with seven Israeli participants in the Hebrew language. Participants ranged from 24 to 47 years old and were biological mothers for one to four children. Following transcription, I translated interviews and analysed data using the methodology deemed most appropriate; Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The analysis gave rise to three super-ordinate themes: "Motherhood as healing to DE", "Motherhood as triggering to DE", and "Good enough vs. thin enough mother". Each of these super-ordinate themes consisted of three to four sub-ordinate themes. One of the key novel findings in this study is the constant push-and-pull between managing DE and motherhood demands and throughout motherhood (i.e., beyond pregnancy and the post-partum period). A reflection on both the 'good' and 'bad', as well as 'confusing' relationship between DE and motherhood shed light into the previously observed fluctuations in DE presentations in mothers. Another novel finding was the continuous interplay between DE and motherhood, such that participants described coping with 'guilt about DE in motherhood' with further DE pre-occupation and/or behaviours. These findings point to the complex nature of re-emerging DE in motherhood. Furthermore, these findings emphasise the need for support to focus on the individual experience of the mother, and in-so-doing reduce shame and stigma that often prevents access to help and that may exacerbate DE struggles. In order to offer relevant support, and to learn from individual experiences, I have made recommendations for clinical practice to explore and normalise experiences for mothers as reactive care (i.e., to mothers struggling with DE) and as preventative care (i.e., to women planning to be mothers). In order to inform guidelines, I suggest areas for future research to check for the commonality of the experiences described by my participants. Considering the context of my study and that participants mentioned conflicting societal demands, recommendations for future research also included research focusing on discourse in line with different epistemologies. My focus on phenomenological and idiosyncratic experience is acknowledged throughout the study and its implications, as aligned with my constructivist epistemological and phenomenological approach.

This study is based on nineteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Botshabelo township, South Africa. I relied on narrative inquiry and narrative analysis to explore teenagers' stories, and make sense of the powerful experiences embodied therein. I worked with 88 young women (pregnant teenagers and young mothers who were HIV-negative or HIV-positive) to explore teenage pregnancy and young motherhood. This dissertation offers three major theoretical contributions. First, pregnant teenagers and young mothers in this study talk about being chastised for becoming pregnant outside marriage, before finishing school, and while being unemployed. Other people reprimand and punish these young women for transgressing a moral order that has eluded most of the people around them, even their own mothers. This punishment is reputational and gives rise to a punishing discourse that is related to the idea that key sources of moral value - marriage, education, employment - are under threat in this community. This sense of 'morality being under threat' creates a context of fragility, which in turn exacerbates the punishment and social sanction that these young women carry. This punishment gives way to a multifaceted stigma linked to being a teenager, being a young mother, and (for some teenagers) having HIV. This stigma has an arc-like trajectory. It begins with a positive pregnancy test, and peaks when the baby bump becomes obvious. By the time the baby is born, however, this stigma moderates. Second, this context of fragility begs for repair. As a result, most of these young women perform rituals of repair by hiding in the house, using blankets, and following medical routines. These are ways to protect unborn babies, clear the slate, and offer penance for the sin that is teenage pregnancy. Repair is a major component of the huge responsibility these young women bear for moral salvage. The process of repair - through acts of deference, discretion and redemption - helps these young women suture relationships with their families. Like stigma, repair has an arc-like trajectory. The shock of teenage pregnancy slowly gives way to the incorporation of both mother and baby into the life of the family. When families help with childcare, some teenagers can return to school. Third, most of these pregnant teenagers and young mothers are taught to follow a prevalent and aspirational moral order (what other people say) instead of the prevailing social order (what other people do). I use 'other people' to refer to nurses, neighbours, school teachers and/or kin. Most teenagers' mothers teach their pregnant daughters to hide in the house in order to avoid 'witches' who prowl in the community. Moreover, pregnant teenagers are 'not allowed' to attend school because school principals and teachers forbid it. Furthermore, other people denounce teenage pregnancy outside the sanctity of marriage. Many of the people who espouse these lessons, however, have not finished high school, were pregnant teenager themselves, and have never been married. The contradictions in the lessons other people give these pregnant teenagers and young mothers expose a gap between how teenagers should live (prevalent moral order) and how teenagers actually live (prevailing social order). It is in this space, this gap, that 'good' teenage mothering occurs. This dissertation adds to a growing body of literature exploring what life is like for pregnant teenagers and young mothers (who are HIV-negative or HIV-positive) in South Africa. This study contributes to the fields of public health, childhood and youth studies, and sexual and reproductive health. The stories described herein are not necessarily about pregnant teenagers and young mothers who are heroic. These are stories about pregnant teenagers and young mothers who are incredibly courageous, as they try to make the most of the way things turn out.

Section A provides a summary of key theories of mirroring and evaluates them against a review of current empirical studies. The main associations with mirroring, different definitions and methodologies were summarised. Existing constructs and coding strategies were critiqued for western-centric assumptions. Parts of the key theories were supported but some elements were not covered by the existing literature, including mechanisms of the development of the self in healthy and problematic environments. As the relationship with self may be influenced by compassionate relating, suggestions for further exploration included compassion in early life. Given the methodological challenges of understanding an infant's inner world, Section B instead focused on the mother's experience of compassion with her baby and others. Compassion has associations with wellbeing and resilience and theories suggest it evolved within the mother-baby relationship, later generalising to other close kin and wider social connections. Therefore, this study also explored mothers' experiences of compassion in a wider societal context. Participants valued compassion highly but felt that society could be judgemental and contradictory in its standards for mothers. Implications include a need for societal systems to be evaluated with a compassionate lens, and a collective effort to facilitate more compassion for mothers.

This study sets out to explore women’s perceived difficulties and challenges in career progression in the IT sector in India. While there is a growing body of literature about women’s paid employment in the formal sector in India their increased participation in professional occupations such as IT, the gaps in our knowledge remain. These gaps are investigating career outcomes and career progression of women in the IT sector in India. This study uses the three –dimensional (culture, structure, and action dimension) framework suggested by Julia Evetts to analyse the perceptions and experiences of women about the gender inequalities in the IT organisations and their family. This is qualitative research involving semi-structured interviews with 40 qualified engineers of different marital status and employed at different levels (front liners, middle level, and senior-level) in IT organisations in India. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Women’s views, perceptions and opinions about the challenges in career progression remain central to this research. The findings suggest that gender inequalities exist in the IT sector and Indian society. The culture and structure of family and organisations create the image of an ideal wife/mother and ideal worker, respectively. These two images are at odds with each other, and they pull women in the tug of war. In the workplace there is systemic gender discrimination in terms of work allocation, the promotion process, negative assumptions about women’s skills and talent resulting into their exclusion from leading roles, and promotions, thereby, creating horizontal and vertical segregation within the sector. In the family, women’s status is assumed subordinate to men. Their careers are considered as secondary and women are expected to give preference to family over careers and are subjected to negative, informal appraisals from the family members if they prefer career. Motherhood emerged as a significant factor influencing the career progression of women. Working mothers face more discrimination compared to non -mothers and men in workplace and family. Women’s perceptions effectiveness of equal opportunities in recruitment are favourable. Their perceptions about the implementation of Prevention of Sexual Harassment Act (2015) is also favourable. However, Women’s perceptions about the effectiveness policies of equal remuneration, and equal opportunities in promotions are unfavourable. They perceived that these policies are not implemented effectively. This study argues that the culture and structure of family and organisations contrive to influence the career decisions of women.

Background: Becoming a mother represents a monumental life transition which can bring complex and contradictory emotions, such as love and anxiety, joy and disappointment. However, discourse analyses suggest that cultural depictions of motherhood on image-based Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are predominantly simplistic and idealised (LeMoignan et al., 2017). This poses potential mental health risks to mothers, since research has found that the internalisation of idealised maternal norms harms women (Choi et al., 2005). A large body of experimental research has also found that exposure to images idealising female bodies can have immediate consequences for mood and body image satisfaction, and that those with pre-existing vulnerabilities may be more susceptible (Holland & Tiggeman, 2016). Aims: The current study aimed to investigate the impact of idealising portrayals of motherhood on image based SNSs on postnatal mental health. Methods: An experimental design was used. 184 postnatal women were randomised to one of three experimental conditions: (1) an idealising condition, (2) a normalising condition or (3) an architectural photography control. Results: Body image satisfaction, life satisfaction and self-compassion all decreased in the idealising condition but increased in the normalising and control conditions, with no significant differences between the latter two groups. Negative mood reduced slightly in all conditions. Differences in life satisfaction between the idealising and control groups were significantly moderated by parenting sense of competence, although the effect size was small and no other moderation effects were found. Conclusions: This study supports claims that cultural factors have an important bearing on postnatal mental health and that different types of social media can be a force for harm as well as for good.

This project explores the lives of Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin, the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin respectively. Through an in-depth exploration of their lives I seek to accomplish the following: 1) Provide a more accurate and holistic understanding of Black American revolutionary history. 2) Present and analyze the dehumanization of Black American women in its varying forms including erasure, misrecognition, and misrepresentation. 3) Analyze and contribute to Black American women's resistance to such dehumanization. 4) Define the term "motherwit" as a way to honor both the challenges Black American women have faced in the United States, as well as the ways they have survived and the knowledge they have created as a result of this paradoxical experience. I argue that motherwit, when thoroughly understood, can be used as a tool of analysis in the field of sociology and beyond. Furthermore, it can contribute to current discussions of Black womanhood in and outside of academia by honoring Black women's unique ways of giving life in their respective societies.

Depictions of non-motherhood remain a rarity in Francophone literature. The persistent silence surrounding maternal refusal communicates the strength of pronatalist and naturalising discourses which undergird notions of “normalcy” (typified by the heteronormative family). Within these discourses, the Mother remains the ethical figure par excellence and is the central vector in assessing successful femininity. Iterations of maternal refusal, when depicted, see non-mothers invariably figure both as a threat to the natural order (suggestive of the paradoxical symbolic power wielded by the childless cisgender woman in the collective imaginary) and bound by narratives which produce them as lacking, deviant or unnatural women, commensurate with a failed and futile existence. Condemned to endure clichéd representations, non-mothers are all-too often rendered faceless, voiceless and powerless anomalies in a sea of women qua would-be mothers. Further, binary thinking of “voluntary” or “involuntary” childlessness is imperfect, often masking a host of intersecting issues relating to “choice” around becoming a mother. Through an intersectional framework and a diverse corpus of authors, my thesis explores how authors challenge (or, indeed, fall foul of) such portrayals and how the non-mother reveals the failings of the feminist project in the contemporary to extricate the “woman” from the Mother, something which traps mothers and non-mothers alike. I draw on the theoretical works of Paul B. Preciado, Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Anne Dufourmantelle, Cathy Caruth, Lauren Berlant, Françoise Vergès, amongst others. Breaking the silence on both disempowered, dysphoric motherhood and the possibility of empowered, fulfilled non-motherhood, my first chapter explores Fatou Diome’s Inassouvies, nos vies (2008). Rewriting the traditional enmity between mothers and non-mothers, the central themes of un/fulfilment and dis/empowerment are enhanced through several childless figures, who give voice to alternative, extra-familial models of kinship and connection, permitting for a radical recasting of ethical (co-)existence. In my second chapter, I look at the iniquity of what I term the “political infertility” of queer couples seeking to become parents in the novels of Désorientale (2016) by Négar Djavadi and Gabrielle (2015) by Agnès Vannouvong. As laws expand to allow queer couples access to fertility treatments, I am interested in how the decidedly heterosexual stigma of the childless figure translates to operate within an emergent homonormative queer paradigm. I show how the female protagonists appeal to female biological determinism and normative affective responses towards the childless body to assert their right to become mothers. I also explore the convergence of racial discrimination in the context of (queer) reproduction. The second half of the thesis moves to work on two authors who explicitly choose not to have children. Whilst their treatment and exploration of non-motherhood emerges from vastly different circumstances, I am interested in the way in which refusals of motherhood can be not only an act of defiance, but positive affirmations of female subjectivity as “an end in itself” rather than a body for others. In Linda Lê’s autofictional letter À l’enfant que je n’aurai pas (2011), maternal refusal is also one which writes against the narrowness of feminine ideals and the myths of “bad” women, revealing the way in which female bodies are heavily pressurized and biopolitically managed to conform. My final chapter turns to Holocaust survivor and filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens’s memoirs, Et tu n’es pas revenu (2015) and L’amour après (2018). Having survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, Marceline raises important questions about female trauma, female pleasure and female subjectivity in relation to naturalizing discourses about the female body. After the prison of the camps, her refusal to reproduce is situated as a refusal of the imprisonment that women found themselves outside the camps and is as much a refusal of maternity as it is an act of choosing freedom.

Women of low socioeconomic status (SES) can expect to live shorter and less healthy lives than women of high SES. Health inequalities arise from individual factors and the structural characteristics of the environment. Lifestyle behaviours including the adoption of a healthy diet and participating in physical activity can prevent or delay the onset of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Healthy lifestyle behaviours are not, however, solely a matter of individual agency, they are tied to the parameters from which health inequalities develop. The first part of this research investigated two lifestyle behaviours, diet and exercise, in a group of mothers with young children, living in a London (UK) Borough, and identified the barriers and facilitators for the adoption of healthy behaviours. In the second part, the mothers contributed ideas for potential public health interventions that would help them participate in physical activity and eat a healthy diet. A focus group with a second group of mothers (Slough, UK), provided context for the development of the ideas for interventions. An Interpretive methodology, influenced by Critical Theory was adopted for the qualitative research. A series of three in depth interviews with twenty participants, provided the data. Access to the groups of mothers was gained through volunteering with a national charity and regular visits to Children's Centres. A thematic analysis identified four key themes that influenced lifestyle behaviours: the conflicted mother; concerns about the body; experience of health; and external contextual factors. Four ideas for potential public interventions were discussed with the study group: self-help group; support for all the family; volunteers in the home; and changes to the environment. The research provides important pointers for the development of public health interventions to support low SES mothers, particularly the need for practical support which takes into account the strong Ethic of Care in this group.

This doctoral research focuses on the second shift - the invisible work of home and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment. Hidden in plain sight and veiled by familiarity and insignificance, the second shift is largely absent from representations of home and family. Sociological studies on the second shift are numerous and considered in this thesis yet, given that the lack of visibility is perhaps the biggest problem, there is a paucity of visual art attempting to address it. I observe that the insistent distinction made between private and public masks both a comprehensive inequality and the excuse for failing to address it. Recognising that gendered differences extend beyond the individual to the structural creates space to press for change. I conducted fieldwork to forge connections and raise consciousness by recognising, hearing and seeing what women do, and how they feel, about the second shift; the personal is political. My art practice examines these ordinary, familiar experiences of home and the everyday. I use photography to observe what is overlooked in the habitual mode of daily life. The resulting artwork illuminates the details of quotidian practices of housework and family care, and a quiet anger at what is taken for granted. I conclude by considering art as a means of resistance, looking for what is omitted in representation, paying attention to what seems unworthy of noticing at all, and showing our ways of making do and getting by. The accompanying practice resulted in a body of photographs which was published in a photobook in 2019 and will be shown in a series of international exhibitions in 2020. This artwork aims to make the second shift and its attendant emotional affects visible and this representation is my contribution to knowledge.

Despite significant changes in gender roles and fertility patterns, most women become mothers and this experience shapes their identities and lives in meaningful ways. As important as whether or not women have children, is when they become mothers. Prevalent studies on the timing of the transition to motherhood tend to neglect women’s views and experiences, provide disembedded and binary accounts of time and agency, and disregard an in-depth analysis of time. In this thesis, I draw on conceptual elements from sociology, the life course perspective, and gender and feminist theories to address the ways in which women understand, experience and make the timing of the transition to motherhood in contemporary Chile. This research is framed within a constructivist paradigm, an interpretive epistemology, and a qualitative research design, and is based on life story interviews with 40 women from urban Santiago de Chile. The findings of this thesis reveal that making the right time in the transition to motherhood is shaped by the politics of choice and the multidimensional nature of time. In becoming mothers, women have to resolve cultural contradictions of agency regarding pregnancy and fertility. While neoliberal and postfeminist ideologies outline women as free, equal, and responsible to determine when to have children, in practice, their choices remain constrained by gender norms, restrictions to reproductive agency, and social inequalities. In becoming mothers, women also have to reconcile multiple ontologies of time, conflicting age norms and the sequence of the life course. This involves negotiating the influence of nature and God, the boundaries of the biological clock, the risks of ‘early’ and ‘late’ childbearing, and the delay of motherhood. By challenging binary understandings of the relationship between time and agency, this thesis unveils the complexities and nuances of lived experiences of timing the transition to motherhood, and advances theoretical and empirical knowledge on the intersections between motherhood, time and agency.

My thesis explores the experiences of women who suffered from mental disorder related to childbirth and pregnancy, looking in particular at Dundee, Fife and Forfarshire in the north-east of Scotland, during the period 1820 to 1930. This study offers a new perspective on women's lives, wellbeing and healthcare in this region by examining at a local level the ideas surrounding postpartum mental illness. By the mid-nineteenth century, the term ‘puerperal insanity' was widely known and much discussed and deliberated in medical literature. However, the day-to-day care and treatment of postpartum women suffering from mental disorder was not straightforward. My findings demonstrate that the diagnosis and treatment of postpartum mental illness in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Scotland was a complex issue influenced as much by social and economic factors as by medical ideas. Using records from the chartered asylums at Montrose and Dundee, court and prison records, and newspaper accounts, I have uncovered how childbearing-related mental illness was recognised, accepted and supported by families, neighbours, friends and authorities. Within the asylum, I have revealed how physicians assessed their patients' characters and status as much as their physical conditions, but nevertheless in many cases provided positive medical care and much-needed rest and nourishment. In criminal cases, my study has looked beyond legislation and verdicts to reveal a positive and constructive approach to the care and custody of women who had committed child murder. Awareness of postpartum mental illness in the community was developed through a collaboration of medical and lay knowledge, acquired through interactions between physicians, families and communities, and filtered through pre-existing understandings and ideas. I have identified a lay understanding and accepted discourse which guided the ideas and actions of friends, family and community in dealing with the problems associated with mental illness among postpartum women.

This thesis examines narrative constructions of motherhood in popular children’s novels published in the U.K. between 1945 and 1960. The interrogation considers family fictions intended for readers of nine years onwards, alongside narratives of development aimed at a female teenage audience of up to sixteen years. It focuses on texts by women writers, most of whom have received little or no attention from scholars in the field of children’s literature. In the case of two better-known authors (Enid Blyton and Noel Streatfeild) the thesis analyses elements of their work that have not previously been scrutinised. The study argues that the novels offer significant representations of maternity which are in dialogue with societal narratives on the changing role of mothers in post-war Britain. It proposes that, as widely-read texts that affirm and challenge received ideals of motherhood, these stories, conventional in form, are open to both compliant and resistant readings that would have played an active role in the creation of subject positions for the young reader. Combining evidence from socio-historic sources as well as literary texts, the research investigates the discursive engagement of the corpus in five substantive chapters, each indicative of shared thematic ideological preoccupations. Performative motherhood is examined through the lenses of the significance of home, domesticity and housework, so-called ‘working mothers’, maternal responsibility for feeding, and the maintenance of femininity. In bringing together such varied aspects of maternal discourse, the thesis makes innovative links between the history, sociology and children’s fiction of motherhood in this period. By rehabilitating formerly well-read, but now-neglected non-canonical works, this study contributes new perspectives within the academy for both children’s literature and motherhood studies. It concludes by evaluating the extent to which maternal ideology of the long 1950s remains a potent force in mothering today, demonstrating that these texts still have resonance.

This research sought to investigate why, despite growing demands for IT professionals and a growing emphasis on the benefits of diversity to companies and society, women remain underrepresented in the UK IT industry. Optimistic narratives had suggested contemporary career forms and characteristics of knowledge work, supported by technological developments and flexible working policies, would provide women with greater opportunities to participate in the IT industry - yet the disparity remains. This study draws on an original qualitative data set of 62 narrative career history interviews with male and female IT workers and 20 interviews with company and stakeholder representatives. It examines how gender interacts with other personal characteristics, occupational features, organisation dynamics and socio-cultural and institutional factors to form different career constraints for individual women and men in the IT industry at key stages over the life course. This research provides insights that help to understand the persistence of female underrepresentation in IT. The data reveals how the viability of paths of entry previously used by women to access IT careers is diminishing. It also demonstrated how gender and motherhood interact with organisational structures and the hybrid nature of careers to constrain female careers. Women and mothers are found to still suffer disadvantage in relation to traditional elements of career, but also in relation to the contemporary elements of career so optimistically regarded. Characteristics of constant change and informality and the endurance of masculine 'ideal worker' norms are highlighted as particularly problematic. This study also contends that efforts made by IT companies to redress the gender imbalance represent little more than half-hearted rhetoric. Gender initiatives privilege a few women and reinforce the masculine hierarchy while undermining calls for broader systemic changes. In an extension to existing critiques of the contemporary careers literature, this research finds that distinctions between organisational careers and careers crossing organisational boundaries are becoming less apparent as the sector is increasingly characterised by project-based work. Supporting calls to bring boundaries back in, this study has underlined the need for the reconceptualisation of female career constraints to a more informative gendered career boundaries approach. This allows for research to consider variances in boundary salience and permeability, creating nuanced consideration of the interaction between agency and context in the formation of careers, thus providing a more useful perspective for understanding contemporary careers of both men and women.

This study is concerned with exploring the lived experiences of six mothers who have experienced anorexia while raising their children. This group of women are currently under-represented in the eating disorder and anorexia literature. Much of the current literature on anorexia focuses on younger people; particularly young women. The limited literature that does exist on mothers with anorexia is often pathologising, where the women are represented as being needy, defiant and oppositional to treatment, or are signified as failing as mothers in important respects. The six women participated in telephone interviews that focused on how they made sense of their experiences of mothering and in seeking and receiving psychotherapeutic interventions for anorexia. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data. Three super-ordinate themes captured the ways in which these women made sense of their experiences. The first theme ‘We live in an Alice in Wonderland world’ illuminated the women’s feelings of ‘otherness’ through experiences of (in)visibility, shame and engaging with an anorexic identity. The second theme: ‘The windowsill syndrome’ highlighted the competing demands of motherhood and anorexia that were described by the women through the course of their narratives. The final theme: ‘Fuck you, don’t give up on me’ explored the diverse experiences of support and recovery, expressed through the stories the women told. The findings are examined in the context of dominant and feminist discourses on motherhood and anorexia. The utility of these findings for an increased psychological understanding of, and improved interventions for, mothers experiencing anorexia is also discussed. I argue that a focus on formulation, rather than diagnosis, would allow for a holistic perspective from which to inform help and support. Therapeutic interventions that acknowledge the life-world of the client offers a whole person focus that has often been lacking in therapy for the experience of anorexia. (The use of the word ‘treatment’ is part of a medicalised discourse and has been used sparingly in this research, primarily when discussing research that uses this term).

This project argues for a reconsideration of the importance of the maternal body in mid-to-late nineteenth-century social realist fiction, taking George Eliot’s work as its primary case study. Using recent work in sacrifice studies as a framework, I illustrate the ways in which maternal sacrifice underpins canonical Victorian narrative structures. The thesis draws on historical advancements in obstetrics and gynaecology, political economy, and Freudian psychoanalysis: these interlocking contextual strands combine to question the received idea that the pressures of the new industrial age created a divide between the public, masculine workplace and the feminine, domestic domain of the home. As the novel became increasingly concerned with an explicitly capitalist system of value, the figure of the mother became symbolic of the commodification of care; thus, the reproductive bodies of the female protagonists in these novels are embedded in a complex value system in which their idealized virtue is directly related to their economic function as producers, compounded by the patriarchal structures that obstructed female sexual autonomy. The thesis begins with an introduction that uses George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)—three narratives of complicated reproduction—to establish its theoretical and contextual concerns, before moving to a consideration of Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) alongside Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853). It then reads Daniel Deronda (1876) as a proto-Freudian fragmentation point for the novel form, before turning to an analysis of infanticide in Adam Bede (1859). The final chapter reads George Moore’s rewriting of these Victorian stories of taboo maternity in Esther Waters as a pathbreaking text in the renegotiation between representation and realism that came to define twentieth-century fiction. Published in 1894 and continuously revised until 1930, Esther Waters straddles the changing century, and so demonstrates the importance of maternity to this broader paradigm shift: the illegitimate mother survives, and the bodies sacrificed to the text are those of the father and, ultimately, the imperial soldier son.

Contemporary ideologies surrounding motherhood do not appear to reflect the experience for many women. Motherhood is often portrayed as idealised, romanticised and as a joyful experience however a large proportion of women do not find this and experience psychological distress, many receiving a diagnosis of postnatal depression. Current psychiatric systems may not adequately represent mothers' experiences or reflect the range and complexity of emotions experienced during the early stages of motherhood. In addition, most psychological research has explored mothers' emotions through the lens of a medical model, with a focus on depression; exploration of emotions, beyond depression, has been under-researched. This study aimed to explore the range of emotions mothers experience. A qualitative study of six women, who experienced distress postnatally, were interviewed using semi-structured interviews to ascertain their subjectively lived experience. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The study found an emotional conflict between the mothers' aspired and idyllic representations of motherhood and their lived experiences; three themes were identified: when idyllic notions of motherhood are not realised; when motherhood is not instinctive; and when prioritising childcare is not easy. When the mothers were unable to live up to these identified notions of motherhood, they experienced emotional distress, from resentment and guilt, to feeling broken and insecure. The amalgamation of emotions experienced created a landscape of emotional complexity the mothers had to negotiate. This study also found that these women's experiences were not represented in the psychiatric categorical systems; they did not identify with having postnatal depression in the early stages of motherhood and were therefore left unsupported. This study explored ways counselling psychologists may be able to offer support to this sub-clinical group of women through interventions and by viewing their experiences as a normal response to motherhood as opposed to pathologising them.

This thesis explores the experiences of mothers of children aged 0-3 years that have attended universal parenting courses. The aim of this research was to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that motivate mothers to attend a universal parenting course and to explore the wider experiences of early modern motherhood in the UK. In order to develop this understanding, the research explored participant perceptions of any benefit or otherwise in attending a parenting course and also considered the different forms of parenting advice accessed by mothers and how this provides an insight into the wider constructs and experiences of modern motherhood. Ultimately, the goal of this research was to consider the social and cultural pressures within modern motherhood in relation to different levels of surveillance (Henderson et al., 2010) and to produce new knowledge for practice within the early years sector in relation to the support currently offered to new mothers. A feminist post-structuralist worldview was taken to explore the dominant discourses within modern motherhood. This approach provided a 'productive contradiction' (Baxter, 2003, p. 2) whereby multiple experiences could be considered, particularly in relation to feelings of oppression, empowerment and being 'good enough' (Winnicott, 1964) within modern motherhood. A qualitative methodology was developed with the first phase being a survey with a range of questions designed to generate insight into the experiences of mothers (30 participants), followed by qualitative interviews with a sample of mothers using semi-structured photo elicitation interviews (7 participants). Findings revealed that universal parenting courses can provide opportunities for new mothers to build daily structure, social networks and reduce feelings of isolation. Some negative experiences of parenting courses were reported when health professionals and early years practitioners were considered 'pushy' or 'non neutral' - particularly regarding sensitive areas such as breastfeeding or the reaching of developmental milestones. Participants demonstrated that there is a perceived place in society for parenting courses when they are practical, supportive and neutral rather than formulaic, homogenous or grounded in psychoanalytical or neurodevelopmental underpinnings, which can promote feelings of judgement or added pressure. Findings also link to the wider 'parenting culture' (Furedi, 2008; Lee et al., 2014) with societal pressures, motherhood ideologies, comparisons between mothers and other aspects of interpersonal surveillance including social media and celebrity culture all adding to the challenge of retaining an identity and of finding confidence and agency within the role. Overall, self-surveillance is identified as the most powerful aspect of modern motherhood with challenges relating to a reluctance to discuss 'taboo' aspects of motherhood including difficulty with attachment following birth and the internalisation of social and cultural pressures. It was important to note that, although there are clear levels of surveillance that are embedded into society which resulted in evidence of self-doubt and dependency, there was also evidence of agency and autonomy in the responses to these levels which were developed through strong social networks and support systems. Following on from this research; proactive, empathetic, practical and localised support from health professionals and early years practitioners is needed along with empowering opportunities for new mothers to develop confidence in an informal environment and foster truthful, non-judgmental interpersonal support networks. It is through these support systems that new mothers will continue to be able to resist or reshape the dominant discourses and ultimately, enjoy the experience to its full potential.

Understanding parents' experiences is a key task in recent partnership based approaches to family interventions (e.g. Davis & Day, 2010) but insight into the meaning of psychosis to mothers with this diagnosis is under-developed within the literature. This study explored the experiences and personal meanings of six mothers with a psychosis diagnosis using community mental health services and seeing clinical psychologists. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The results indicated that psychosis has multiple meanings for mothers but was predominantly understood as biomedical. The interaction of a diagnosis with parenting was perceived to be mediated by the effects of symptoms, medication and hospital admissions. Services were experienced as supportive whilst also providing surveillance of symptoms, medication adherence and parenting. This study suggests that neither biomedical nor psychological narratives are sufficient to understanding the personal meanings that mothers attribute to their experience, in the context of being a parent with a psychosis diagnosis. This has implications for the way in which practitioners engage with service users to develop individual understandings.

Background: Little is known about the mental health of pregnant women in prison in England or the factors which impact admissions to prison mother and baby units (MBUs). Research suggests women with more 'stable' backgrounds and lower prevalence of mental disorder are more likely to be admitted to prison MBUs, and that women in MBUs have a lower prevalence of mental disorder, but the reasons for this are unclear. Aims: To describe the socio-demographic background of pregnant women in prison; to establish the prevalence of mental disorder in pregnant women in prison; to identify the factors which influence MBU applications and admissions for pregnant women in prison; to measure the impact of MBU residence and separation on initial outcomes for mother and child and to explore the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood and separation whilst imprisoned. Methods: A mixed methods design was used. Eighty-five pregnant women completed quantitative interviews at baseline, and 55 at follow-up in nine different prisons. Data was collected on mental health, drug misuse, hazardous drinking, personality disorder, quality of life and mother-child bonding. Qualitative data were collected via 31 interviews with pregnant women, and 24 postnatal interviews. Framework Analysis was used to explore, summarise and report the data. Results: Fifty-one percent of participants had depression and 57% had anxiety. Sixty-three per cent were admitted to MBUs. Those who were working prior to imprisonment were more likely to be admitted, and those with prior Children's Services involvement, diagnosis of personality disorder or history of suicidality were less likely to be admitted. Perinatal depression was greater at baseline than follow-up, and lower for women admitted to MBUs. Quality of life was higher at follow-up than at baseline, except for the social quality of life for participants not admitted to MBUs, suggesting poorer perceived social support. Conclusions: The high levels of depression and anxiety may have negative impacts on both the mother and child. Pregnant women with more complex backgrounds are less likely to be given a place in a prison MBU, and MBU placement may contribute to a reduction in perinatal depression. Women not admitted to MBUs may experience reduced social support. Participants were depressed, stressed and worried, mostly about what would happen to their unborn child, basic needs were unmet, and emotional support varied. Lack of information compounded feelings of stress.

This dissertation is a comparative study of children who succeeded as kings of England, Scotland, France, and Germany as boys under the age of fifteen in the central Middle Ages. Children are often disregarded in the historical record, even those divinely-ordained as king. The research undertaken in this thesis aims to uncover a more human aspect to medieval kingship by combining social aspects of childhood and gender studies with a political and legal approach to the study of the nature of rulership and royal administrative practices. Part I provides vital context of how royal fathers prepared their underage sons for kingship. I argue for the importance of maternal involvement in association, demonstrate the significant benefits a comparative approach brings to our understanding of anticipatory actions, and reveal the impact which changes in the circumstances and documentation of royal death had on preparations for child kingship. In Part II, I focus on vice-regal guardianship to expose how structural legal, social, political, and cultural changes affected the provisions for a child king. The symbolic meaning of knighthood, which had been a clear rite of passage to adulthood in the eleventh century, later became a precursor to kingship. The child’s progression to maturity was increasingly directed by legalistic ideas. These developments meant that, by the first half of the thirteenth century, queen mothers faced greater challenges to their involvement in royal governance alongside their sons. Part III presents a challenge to the idea that periods of child kingship were necessarily more violent than when an adult came to the throne through an analysis of instances of child kidnap, maternal exclusion from guardianship and departure from the kingdom, dynastic challenge, and opportunistic violence. Children often appear as passive actors controlled by the adults around them but accepting this unquestioningly is too simplistic. Child kings could make an impact on the political landscape even if they could not do so alone. Through an innovative comparative analysis of a child’s preparation for rulership, the care of king and kingdom, and the vulnerabilities and challenges of child kingship, I demonstrate far greater political continuity across medieval monarchies than is usually appreciated. This constitutes a fresh and original contribution towards the study of medieval rulership in northwestern Europe.

'Motherlight' is a literary novel arising from experiments in writing for children, memoir, short stories and flash fiction, each one focusing on aspects of female experience, Russian folktale and the conflict between agrarianism and a capitalist market economy. It is composed of fragments -isolated scenes - sifted, re-written and re-ordered in pursuit of a narrative whole. The novel is set entirely in Ukraine and opens in September 1992, one year after independence. Frances, a young English mother, joins her journalist husband in Kiev. Terrified of the apartment's balcony, she develops obsessive rituals to keep their baby safe. Her difficulties expose her to a struggle between Elena Vasilyevna, the old caretaker, and Mykola Sirko, the racketeer. Frances is the interloper, ignorant yet culpable. As consequences bear down she seeks out Zaya, her husband's caustic-tongued fixer, and Olek, the roller-blading boy who is paid by Mykola to spy on them all. 'Motherlight' is about motherhood and alienation. Its intention is to raise questions about what endures and what might be cast aside, as well as the nature of forgiveness. The time frame is one year, moving from one harvest to another, following the shift from the birth of a 'new' country to seemingly intractable paralysis and also the development of the child Ivan from newborn to toddler. It contributes to the canon of fiction about the ingenue abroad by focusing on a young mother who is outside the 'action' - the antithesis of the male adventurer. Baby Ivan appears in almost every scene in the novel; the 'domestic' is unleashed rather than confined and motherhood (in its many guises) is revealed as a central preoccupation for secondary characters Zaya, Mykola, Olek, Elena and Suzie. Frances, meanwhile, understands that her impact on those who remain in Kiev, ultimately, is negligible, yet they have enabled her to move beyond her own stasis as a daughter and as a mother.

The family has always been a central narrative theme in cinema. Korean cinema has been no exception, where the family has proved to be a popular subject since its earliest days. Yet Western scholarship on Korean cinema has given little attention to this dominant theme, preferring to concentrate on the film industry's recent revival and its blockbusters. Scholarship in Korea and in the Korean language, on the hand, has continuously discussed some of the major cinematic works on the family. However, such literature has tended to be in the form of articles discussing one or two particular works. A comprehensive study of the family in contemporary Korean cinema therefore remains absent both in Korean and in English. This thesis is an attempt to provide such a work, bringing together films on the family and writings on them in both Western and Korean scholarships, as well as filling the gaps where certain trends and patterns have gone undetected. How are the changes in the understanding of the family or in the roles of individual family members reworked, imagined, or desired in films? Taking this question as the starting point of the research, each chapter explores a separate theme: transformations in the structure of the family; faltering patriarchy and fatherhood; motherhood and the extremity of maternal love; and certain children's experiences of the family. The first chapter detects a general move away from the traditional patriarchal nuclear family and an interest in depicting alternative families, exploring shifting family forms in contemporary society and the public discourses surrounding them. The second chapter highlights the contradictory ways that the father has been illustrated in films during and after the IMF crisis. The third chapter explores a branch of recent thrillers that depicts mothers as dark and dangerous characters, offering an interesting cultural framing to the multiple perceptions of the mother figure in contemporary society. Finally, the last chapter aims to extend representations of the 'Korean family' to include films by/about those currently living outside of Korea, namely Korean emigrants and adoptees.

As a writer of medical summaries and compendia, Oribasius has often been dismissed as a harbinger of late antique medical decline. This dissertation challenges this long-lived assumption by revaluating the compiler and his writings, and the place of medicine in the cultural and social landscape of late antiquity. Chapter one examines the scholarly biases that surround Oribasius’ career, positing that his Medical Collections were produced in response to the intellectual priorities of the Emperor Julian’s scholarly circle. Moreover, both the medical art and the physician were highly regarded in the fourth century, as chapter two demonstrates. Not only do the Collections reflect the priorities and order of empire, but the idea of the medical encounter granted both emperor and bishop a symbolic language with which to pose and articulate social questions in this period. Chapters three and four outline the ways Oribasius engaged with the medical realities of his day, by retaining in his compilation a sense of personal experience and patient interaction. In his borrowed case histories, female subservience in the face of medical authority is expected; whilst the hierarchy of the elite household is shown to dictate his approach to the patients within it. A messier reality of female agency in their own physical and spiritual care is better captured by Christian writers in the miracle account and sermon, in part because Christians like the Cappadocians and John Chrysostom imbued female choice with new theological meaning. Chapter five sets Oribasius’ approach to the female patient in the broader context of late antique social shifts. The compiler’s careful delineation of responsibility and blame in dealings with vulnerable pubertal and pregnant women reflect an attempt to reaffirm an unwritten social contract with the elite and the paterfamilias; a social priority which is also apparent in the legal compendia of the period. Christian writers, meanwhile, drew metaphorically upon medical discourses of generativity and patrimony to distinguish Christian society from the classical past, as chapter six demonstrates. In the final analysis, Oribasius’ Collections are shown to be intimately and variously in dialogue with the society that produced them, reflecting both the high standing of the art in late antiquity, and its symbolic role in defence of the social world, patriarchy and empire. Christian interactions with medicine are shown to reflect many of these same priorities, and to engage with medical norms in more pervasive ways than has often been noted. But it is only in the Christian text that the medical writers’ woman transcends the determinisms of her traditional generativity and physical inferiority, so central to the writings of Oribasius and his classical predecessors.

Professional career women often find themselves caught in a dialectic ideological tension between fulfilling the demands of full-time motherhood and the expectations associated with their professional career. The stories of 10 middle-class, stay-at-home mothers from Singapore who had previously worked within commercial organisations are presented. Their narratives are collected through a series of phenomenological interviews and the use of a visual construction method. The findings unravel the complexities surrounding the women's enactment of culturally constructed good mothering, weaving a path between their conflicting sense of home-bound maternal duty and their aspiration for self-reliance. As stay-at-home mothers, the participants variously engage in entrepreneurial and self-development projects. Their families outsource an array of care responsibilities to business establishments outside the home, challenging the conventional notion of home, and in some cases, commercialising their intimate family life. The women, seeking to negotiate tensions between the home-based maternal duties and aspiration for independence, assimilate their occupational sense of self into motherhood to construct images of a competent and effective parent. The professionalisation of motherhood emerges as a way for the participants to reframe good mothering, blurring the rigid boundaries between paid work ideology and motherhood expectations. The findings highlight the women's interplay of diverse and interrelated sense of selves at the personal, relational, and collective level in the co-constitution of good motherhood. The identity interplay processes illuminate how the women's heterogeneous self-definitions coexist, compete, and cooperate in their everyday experiences of doing motherhood, which moves away from the traditional paradigm that conceives identity as an individuated entity, in relation to prevalent discourses within Singaporean society centring on a politically-driven struggle for gender equality. The thesis concludes by presenting its contributions and implications at the theoretical, managerial, and policy levels.

This thesis adopts maternal well-being as a prism for studying the roles and identities of African women. It critically analyzes the dynamics in culture and religion that militate against women's quest for fullness of life. As its methodology, it adopts narratives of African women as a source and means of theological research based on the anthropological model. This method prioritizes the voices and humanity of previously silenced, excluded, and oppressed women and their conditions of maternal mortality, poverty, and oppression rooted in gender biases and patriarchal stereotypes. Theology has largely ignored the reality of maternal mortality evidenced by the paucity of theological materials. A consequence of the neglect and ignorance of this critical factor is the chasm between the rhetorical use of feminine and maternal symbolisms to represent and define the significance of women in church and society and the concrete realities that confront them as women. Bridging this gap necessitates identifying exemplary icons and models of maternal leadership and wisdom in scripture, traditions, and cultural practices to redefine the status, identity, and role of women. It also entails recognizing and harnessing the unique gifts, qualities, and spirituality of African women for the edification of church, transformation of society, and flourishing of humanity. Of salience is the practice of maternal leadership as a source of a new ethos for church and society through women's capacities and contributions, though a patriarchal mind-set imposes biological motherhood as the sole criterion for defining women's existence and relevance. Maternal leadership and wisdom liberated from a reductionist, biological understanding of motherhood and the highlighting of incarnated roles and identities inspired by maternal values represent innovative and original aspects of this thesis. Only by listening to voices of women can church and society develop a more just, liberating, and inclusive understanding of womanhood and motherhood. Nothing substitutes for the voices of women.

Social egg freezing is a fertility preservation strategy which enables women to preserve a number of healthy unfertilised eggs for potential future use when faced with the threat of age-related fertility decline. The overall aim of this thesis was to explore how women understand, construct and experience social egg freezing in the context of debates surrounding reproductive ‘choice’ and ‘delayed motherhood’. The study sought to provide insights into how women perceive the risks and benefits of social egg freezing, how it relates to their discourses of parenthood and their future reproductive intentions as well as how the ‘medical’ encounter in egg freezing is experienced. The thesis draws on Layder’s theory of social domains, selectively focusing on the domains of contextual resources, situated activity, and psychobiography to explore the macro and micro level aspects of social egg freezing (Layder 2006). Consistent with this theoretical framework, the study utilised a multi-method approach: a content and critical discourse analysis of UK newspaper articles on egg freezing, a demographic questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews with 31 users of egg freezing technology. ‘Career reasons’ were presented as the dominant motivation for social egg freezing in newspaper reports. Highly gendered messages interwoven with discourses of blame and failure were identified throughout the newspaper sample alongside moralising discourses calling for women to act responsibly towards their fertility. Emotive language and specific lexical choices were central in constructing discourses about motherhood and reproductive timing which largely excluded a consideration of the structural, relational and ideological factors which influence reproductive timing and reproductive ‘choice’. The demographic profile of interview participants was similar to that found in existing quantitative studies of social egg freezing. Participants were predominantly single, highly educated women in professional careers, with an average age of 37 at the time of undergoing egg freezing. Egg freezing was constructed by participants in relation to a particular biological project and sense of self. Motherhood was something they wanted to experience at the ‘right time’ with the ‘right partner’. The right time for motherhood was related to the feeling of ‘being ready’, which was often linked to the acquisition of certain preconditions for parenthood. The ‘right’ partner was constructed as someone who reflected certain cultural ideals often associated with ‘new fatherhood’. The absence of such a partner indicated that it was the wrong time to pursue motherhood and thus led women to pursue social egg freezing. Many participants reported that a particular issue or event had acted as a critical factor leading them to undergo egg freezing. These included the breakdown of a relationship or the diagnosis of a health or fertility related problem, thus blurring the conceptual distinction between medical and social egg freezing. Through the use of Layder’s theory of social domains and concepts of neoliberalism and biomedicalisation, the thesis argues that women’s engagement with this technology is influenced by both macro and micro sociological factors including ideologies of parenthood, an individual’s social location, relationships with intimate partners and men’s fathering intentions. When faced with the ‘risk knowledge’ of their declining ovarian reserve, the female users of this technology can be seen as enacting ‘reproductive responsibility’ commensurate with neoliberal values of responsibility, self-actualisation and self-determined action in pursuit of a particular construction of motherhood. This theorisation provides a challenge to current understandings around delayed motherhood and suggests that women’s use of social egg freezing should not be seen simply as the outcome of women’s ‘choice’, but as a process involving a complex interrelation of discourses which contextualises decision making in the reproductive realm. This research has implications for practitioners, regulators, users and potential users of this technology, as well as for researchers concerned with questions of reproductive choice, delayed motherhood and reproductive timing.

This Ethnographic/Autoethnographic study reflects in rich detail a young teacher’s life as she navigates the changing landscape of her first pregnancy, the birth of her child and her subsequent return to work as a full-time teacher. Using data which has been collected from a personal journal which she kept throughout the eighteen month period of the study, it examines the practical and emotional challenges which she faced, and the commitment, self-sacrifice and dedication required of her for the continuation and advancement of her career. By combining her data with observed field notes, semi-constructed interviews and reflexive narrative, I have been able to offer a holistic and balanced account of her experience and expose the complexities of motherhood today and the impact they have on a woman’s life choices and professional decision making. My study revealed how this new mother faced a myriad of decisions and dilemmas, decisions, which ultimately impacted on her emotional well-being, and her power and identity as a woman, a wife, a daughter and a professional teacher. Its findings suggest that notwithstanding the historical political and legislative policies which have been implemented, in reality, little has changed since my own experience of being a working mother some thirty years ago. It recommends that if the increase in working mothers is to continue to rise, more must be done, both culturally and institutionally to alleviate the physical and emotional pressures which currently only serve to exacerbate the guilt and stress which appear to be an innate characteristic of the maternal condition. It concludes by recommending that working mothers need to harness “their strengths, their ability to learn, their confidence and joy in their work –[because this is] all part of being a woman now, [it is] part of [their] female identity” (Friedan, 1963, p.331), and rather than accepting motherhood as being a moderating factor, they should allow it to become an influence for further personal and professional growth and liberation, so that they can reassert their power and fight back to assume their equal place in society (Kristeva, 2015).

Whilst previous research has explored women's experiences of disclosing symptoms of postnatal depression (PND) to health professionals, very little qualitative research exists on women's experiences of disclosing to people in their personal support networks. Research has shown that some mothers with PND find it difficult to disclose to professionals and prefer to seek support from partners, family and friends. Aim: The current study aimed to explore the overall process mothers go through to disclose PND - to people with whom they have personal relationships, as well as health professionals. Method: Five women who experienced and disclosed PND participated in semi-structured interviews. Verbatim transcripts were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: The analysis produced four super-ordinate themes: 'Trying to cope whilst making sense of experiences', 'Deciding whether to disclose: Facilitative and inhibiting factors', 'The two-way interpersonal nature of disclosure', 'Disclosure as part of a transformative process'. Conclusions: This study highlighted the influence of internalised expectations of motherhood and stigma surrounding PND on how mothers try to cope with their initial symptoms and on their decisions about whether or not to disclose. The participants described a cautious approach to disclosure in which they had to deal with setbacks. Consequences of disclosing were considered alongside how the disclosure process was influenced by recovery from PND.

Based upon fieldwork in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, South East Mexico, this thesis is about how mestiza women in a low-income barrio become mothers. As such, it is an engagement with theories of embodiment, maternal subjectivity, transformation of self and gendered modernities. The chapters are intended to evoke discussion around the roles that mestiza women, the wider Mexican society and the state play in simultaneously embracing and rejecting constructed notions of the good mother. Competing notions of good motherhood come about through local practices and ideals, and also through discourses of risk and global health. The thesis is structured so that the corporeal processes of maternity (pregnancy, birth and nurturing) provide a common and interlinking theme which also demonstrate maternal transition as a life event akin to others. In doing so, this thesis is ultimately about the way in which gendered beings experience change. I intend this thesis to be both a political and theoretical project which highlights the lives of a community of women in a particular moment in their history. This thesis provides further evidence for the need to formulate new global theories of change that foreground gender in global processes. The women I met during fieldwork, and whose narratives have shaped the direction of this thesis, show that when individuals have recourse to a mixed economy of health care and are not reliant on state intervention, it can result in an outcome that better meets with the woman’s expectations. Women’s combined use of lay and clinical services reveal ways in which they make active attempts to avoid negative pre and postnatal experiences. In doing so, they embody a maternal identity that is deeply rooted in local ways of being-in-the-world. By managing the process of maternity more akin to local ways of thinking about gendered personhood, the women reveal how social change is both assimilated and contested in daily life.

This thesis frames the transition into motherhood as a rite of passage; proposes a new model for the rite of passage into motherhood based on the four seasons; and highlights the importance of contextual and specific ritual actions or sequences to navigate the transition. Qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with ten western women, from a middle class, Christian background, who had all become mothers through childbirth, are examined under three main headings. Firstly, the women’s experiences of their transition are explored using rites of passage theory as a lens. Although significant differences emerge, particularly from a gender perspective, important themes within the women’s experiences are highlighted, including the nature of relationships; the importance of support; journaling; and the telling of birthing stories. The influences of contemporary cultural aspects such as the medicalization of childbirth and myths about motherhood are also taken into account. Secondly, the field of ritual studies is explored in order to provide a framework in which to situate the women’s ritualizing. Existing rituals associated with motherhood are analysed and gaps are identified in existing Christian liturgical resources for this area, specifically for ritual actions or sequences marking motherhood as a rite of passage, and for the expression of birthing stories. A working definition of ritualizing is also established and the research findings are divided according to time frame, exploring the women’s ritualizing before birth, around birth and after birth. Thirdly, spirituality in relation to childbirth and the transition into motherhood is explored and its place within healthcare and theological literature examined. Nicola Slee’s theory on women’s faith development is used to draw out some of the patterns that emerge from the interviewees’ experiences, and the sacramental nature of birthing is considered. The thesis concludes with a critique of implications and associated suggestions for those within a church or healthcare context with responsibility for the pastoral and spiritual care of women during their transition into motherhood.

On account of their supposed link to nature, women in post-revolutionary France were pigeonholed into a very restrictive sphere that centred around domesticity and submission to their male counterparts. Yet this thesis shows how a number of women writers – Cottin, Genlis, Krüdener, Souza and Staël – re-appropriate nature in order to reclaim the voice denied to them and to their sex by the society in which they lived. The five chapters of this thesis are structured to follow a number of critical junctures in the life of an adult woman: marriage, authorship, motherhood, madness and mortality. The opening sections to each chapter show why these areas of life generated particular problems for women at this time. Then, through in-depth analysis of primary texts, the chapters function in two ways. They examine how female novelists craft natural landscapes to expose and comment on the problems male-dominant society causes women to experience in France at this time. In addition, they show how female novelists employ descriptions of nature to highlight women's responses to the pain and frustration that social issues provoke for them. Scholars have thus far overlooked the natural settings within the works of female novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet, a re-evaluation of these natural settings, as suggested by this thesis, brings a new dimension to our appreciation of the works of these women writers and of their position as critics of contemporary society. Ultimately, an escape into nature on the part of female protagonists in these novels becomes the means by which their creators confront the everyday reality faced by women in the turbulent socio-historical era which followed the Revolution.

The overall aim of the research was to understand the potential impact of sustained part-time working on women’s identities with regards to motherhood and work. Despite an implicit assumption in public discourse, policy and research that mothers will resume full-time careers once their children are ‘older’, half of working mothers with their youngest child at secondary school are working part-time (ONS, Q3, 2011). Often in the literature ‘good’ part-time working has been framed as short-term (see for example Tilly, 1996). The part-time ‘hidden brain drain’ (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2005) has been described as a waste of education and skills (Connolly and Gregory, 2010) and contributing to gender inequality (Walby, 2007). This PhD explored the life stories of twenty university educated, partnered mothers of older children (youngest at secondary school), who had mostly worked part-time since becoming mothers. Dialogic narrative analysis (Frank, 2010) was used to explore how these women made sense of where they had ended up through their story telling. A key finding is that for these women ‘becoming’ a part-time working mother was neither an informed ‘choice’, nor a fixed orientation, but was an ongoing process of negotiation, within a matrix of inter-related, constantly shifting and interacting tensions. Compromises to their jobs often became more extensive than expected and a continuing need to ‘be there’ for teenagers was unanticipated. Damage to ‘career’ is conceptualised as a ‘creeping trauma’. This is considered in light of the mothering stories indicating this was a price worth paying. The majority of women were engaging in a narrative of reorientation, using various strategies to reframe standards of ‘good’ working and the meaning of work within life. Success in reorientation differed according to individual experiences of constraints and opportunities.

Single motherhood has become increasingly common and yet very little research examines how women themselves experience the transition into single motherhood, thus their life stories remain largely unchronicled. This study explores the lived experience of transition from motherhood within a married or co-habiting couple to single motherhood for professional working mothers. The study is idiographic and qualitative and it is grounded in the detailed accounts of individual women going through the transition, prioritising their own view of the experience. Six professional women took part in semi structured interviews, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was employed to analyse the material. Three superordinate themes were identified; the first highlighted the emotional turmoil the women experienced , in the initial phase of transition, in relation to personal, familial and social consequences that divorce might have on them and their children. The second theme detailed the women's actual experiences of these consequences and their effects following divorce, with the most notable finding being that the women concurrently held ambivalent or conflicting feelings about their experience. The third superordinate theme pertained to the social stigma and stereotyping that the women encountered throughout the transitional process. Existing literature on life transitions, motherhood and single motherhood was used in order to discuss the findings. The findings revealed that after a great deal of emotional struggle women satisfactorily negotiated and adapted to their new single mother status. The outcome of this study has implementations for clinical work with professional women as it highlights the benefits of allowing them to become aware of and examine the possible transitions that might arise from ambivalent feelings as they make the transition from married to single motherhood.

This dissertation examines the role of the stepmother in Victorian culture and in the Victorian novel. It argues that novelists used the stepmother to represent and interrogate experiences of motherhood, and to respond to Victorian fantasies and anxieties about marriage, kinship, religion and national identity. I suggest that the stepmother was a generative figure for novelists because, she reveals aspects of every family that Victorian culture usually repressed or ignored. One strand of this dissertation is literary historical, showing how the stepmother allowed novelists to reimagine the domestic novel and problematise, reframe or reject the marriage plot. Other strands consider the Victorian legal, scholarly and demographic contexts to which, I argue, the fictional stepmother speaks. Chapter 1 demonstrates that Charlotte Yonge and Dinah Craik used the figure of the stepmother to portray the experience of biological motherhood, while still conforming to the conventions of the novel that otherwise prohibited such a portrayal. Chapter 2 looks at novels by Elizabeth Gaskell and Mary Elizabeth Braddon to show how the stepmother-stepchild relationship serves as an index to other, more common relationships within the fictional family, revealing the conflict and competition that exists between husbands and wives, and fathers and daughters. In Chapter 3, I show how changes to divorce and custody laws in the mid-nineteenth century enabled novelists such as Ellen Wood to separate the roles of wife and mother. This chapter also reads Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady alongside nineteenth-century anthropology to understand the novel as an investigation of the possibility of alternative kinship structures. The final chapter of this dissertation shows that the Protestant stepmother was a reparative figure for anti-Catholic novelists including Emma Jane Worboise, allowing a usable reading of Britain’s troubled religious history.

This research seeks to investigate the societal stigmas and misconceptions of ideal motherhood, aka “intensive mothering,” the repercussions associated, and the support systems both in place or missing. In addition, it seeks to contribute to fostering a healthier societal perception of motherhood. Methods include a literature review of existing research, case studies and analyses of other artists’ contemporary work in the field, and a visual solution in the form of an art exhibition. This research found that intensive mothering is a pervasive idea, ingrained in current society and detrimental to mothers’ mental health and well-being. Through the research and visual solution, it is shown that mothers are not alone in the struggles they go through, even across disparate mothering vocations such as working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, and student mothers, and that bringing together these various groups is essential to foster a healthier societal perception of motherhood and support systems for women.

As I wrestle with myself, I wrestle with my mother. Both my mother and I survived domestic abuse as children, my mother again as an adult. Our bodies carry our trauma, her body carried mine, and someday, my body will carry my children. M’ma contemplates what we do with what we’re given, how trauma is inherited and passed down to the next generation through the body, and the complex intimacy of the mother-child relationship. I express and project my questions about my future children, my relationship with and understanding of my mother, and of myself in anticipation of being a mother through a multimedia installation. The installation consists of a photo sculpture, two quilts, a video piece, and photographs. The project recognizes how the individuality of both the mother and child affect their relationship with each other. The materials used in the project explore the comfort, difficulties, and even danger inherent to the mother-child relationship. I engage with the photographic family archive and fragments to address the ways in which trauma is inherited and passed on. The house is a motif throughout the project to discuss the protective and stifling nature of the domesticity, mothers, and motherhood. The installation continues this motif as it mimics a domestic space and a womb, spaces a mother and child navigate with and against each other. My body is present throughout the work because the body is so much a part of motherhood, both in pregnancy and well beyond. My own body bears the weight of my questions through recorded performance, quilting, sewing, and self-portraiture. The installation affects the body of the viewer, forcing them to duck to enter and to navigate through the space.

In this near-dystopian novel, a young woman is employed by a large corporation as a professional surrogate. Fallow is a high-concept, speculative work exploring themes of bodily autonomy, motherhood, the nature of work, and the choices we are forced to make in today's world.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore care leavers’ experiences of parenting. Although research has previously been carried out on this area, there is a lack of research on mature care leavers’ experiences of parenthood which this study attempts to address. It was hoped that this research might further illuminate our understanding of care leavers as parents, and highlight potential areas of clinical need and ways in which these could be addressed therapeutically. Method: This study employed a qualitative design through the use of semi-structured interviews with six care leavers who were mothers; the majority of whom were in their late 30’s to early 40’s. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to develop a rich and multi-layered account of participants’ experiences. Results: Four main themes emerged across participants’ accounts. These were: ‘Fear of the past and its impact on the future’, ‘Trying to do better’, ‘Parenting is hard but rewarding’ and ‘Connecting and disconnecting: the push and pull.’ Implications: The study highlights the importance of holding the complexity of care leavers’ experiences as parents in mind; acknowledging both their strengths and struggles. Participants’ sense-making of their parenting in relation to their pasts as well as their resources and the processes surrounding learning to parent, were discussed in light of the themes that arose and previous theoretical and research literature. Clinical implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

Overlaying was a common nineteenth century explanation of sudden infant death while bedsharing. This thesis shows that in many cases the term overlaying was a misnomer, and instead it identifies infant overlaying death as a socio-structural historical event that can best be understood within a sociological and social constructionist framework. It expands on the work of Giddens, Elias and Archer to develop a theoretical perspective that incorporates ideas about structuration, sequestration, figuration and reflexivity. It also deploys concepts such as motherhood, infancy, infant care, the family and intimacy to explore and analyse its research materials and develops two further explanatory concepts; reflexive motherhood and the sequestration of infancy. The thesis uses ideas around discourse as socio-structural conditions of action in order to expand current understanding of overlaying death, and it explores and analyses public representations of overlaying during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to detail the discourse of overlaying. It goes on to identify cases of overlaying in Somers Town, St Pancras, c1900; and it shows the influence of social conditions in regard to the way such deaths were interpreted. It then examines other cases of sudden infant death in bed through the case notes of pathologist Dr Ludwig Freyberger, and analyses these in terms of the domestic setting and the body. It goes on to detail and analyse a dispute between Coroner John Troutbeck, Dr Freyberger and the GPs of south west London to show the ways in which the overlaying discourse was deployed to support the claims and positions of those involved. Overlaying subsequently became detached from the domestic context in which it was embedded and used to support discourses around infant mortality, maternal ‘ignorance’, medicine, national efficiency and temperance. The thesis provides a historiography of infant overlaying death and concludes that overlaying was constructed as social category of death through the actions of individuals in extensive networks of interdependence in relation to socio-structural conditions.

This study explores the accounts of first generation East Asian mothers living in England, for the purpose of examining if and how these women perceive their national and/or ethnic cultural heritage has affected their experiences and identity formation. In order to achieve this aim, the thesis investigates the gendered division of labour within the family and discourse around motherhood and employment, using biographical interviews with 30 first generation East Asian mothers with children under the age of 11. I develop an integrative theoretical framework by deploying various theories in order to analyse the complex and dynamic characteristics of identity formation for ethnic minority mothers. The concepts I draw on are ideology and discourse, storytelling and ‘othering’, patriarchy, masculinity and femininity, nation, ethnie, culture, class and intersectionality. The data was analysed by using discourse analysis, focusing on discursive themes across interview data, in conjunction with detailed narrative analysis of the individual life stories of four of the women. The findings of the data indicated that despite the increasing involvement of male partners in childcare and domestic work, women’s stories suggested that they continued to take on the majority of household labour. In addition, this pattern was more prominent among East Asian couples than mixed ethnic couples. This is suggestive of the persistent influence of the Confucian patriarchal norms among East Asian couples outside East Asia. Alongside this, the examination of discourse and narratives around motherhood and employment indicated that the motherhood ideologies of individual women, influenced by national and/or ethnic cultural heritage, had a major impact on mothers’ decision towards childcare and employment. For example, the majority of mothers from Korea and some mothers from Japan tended to endorse an intensive mothering ideology, in which women were expected to stay at home devoting their time and energy to looking after their children. The talk of home-stay mothers was dominated by the importance of the mother’s care for the psychological wellbeing of their children. In this discourse the mother’s absence was portrayed as having a detrimental effect on the healthy development of young children. But rather than referring to a Western notion of intensive motherhood (see Hays 1996), they talked of their decisions in reference to the way that mothers and fathers were expected to act in their country of origin. This contrasted with the discourse of employed mothers (especially from China), which did not necessarily support the incessant presence and availability of mothers for children, regarding childcare as replaceable by others, such as grandparents. The Chinese women talked of this in reference to their perception of the culture in China where all adults are expected to work, regardless of childcare responsibilities. However, despite notable differences in discourse around ‘good’ mothering and employment between home-stay mothers and employed mothers, the gendered idea about men’s and women’s roles seemed to continue to affect the predominant majority of women in my study, irrespective of their employment status. Hence, both home-stay and most employed mothers remained to be the primary care provider as well as taking the major burden of household labour, being subject to a gendered understanding of motherhood and womanhood.

In this thesis I analyse sub-national differences in the employment trajectories of mothers of young children in Germany (Bundeslaender) and the UK (Government Office Regions and Metropolitan counties). The thesis combines longitudinal and spatial approaches to paid work, and focuses on mothers of children under 6 - arguably the group at the core of the social (re)production of gender differences in employment. One of its aims is to nuance the existing literature explaining the differences in women's involvement in paid work in terms of national welfare and/or breadwinner regimes - by looking at the nature and extent of regional variations in the patterns of involvement that make these countries typical of such regimes. Its specific goals consist in testing the Latent Growth Curve (LCM) framework as a method for modelling variations in participation in paid work over time, then in exploring three possible explanations for the regional differences observed. The respective role of regional differences in the family formation and social position of the maternal labour force, of the availability of suitable jobs in particular segregated jobs, and finally of economic histories in relation to women's orientations to work is assessed. The results confirmed that LCM represents an innovative tool to understand variations of involvement in paid work over time, and revealed significant regional differences, beyond the 'North South' and 'East-West' divides documented respectively in the UK and Germany. In both countries, results pointed at a combined effect of the three explanatory factors analysed. Whilst composition and labour demands effects went some way towards explaining some of the variations observed, at the same time additional regional variations were discovered once composition factors were taken into account. Finally the pattern of association between the remaining unexplained regional variation and aggregate attitudes of women towards paid work suggests an influence of long term trends in participation on present levels of involvement.

Aim: Motherhood is placed under a lens by society: mothers are expected to fit within narrowly defined characteristics which dictate who mothers should be and how they should act. Although there are numbers of articles that explore this issue, little attention has been paid to how health professionals, and clinical psychologists in particular, position themselves in relation to societal ideas about motherhood. The research aims to define the discursive resources used by Clinical Psychologists (CPs) to construct the shapes and identities of motherhood, and to explore how these resources were deployed. Method: A discourse analysis approach is employed. Data came from 3 focus group interviews (N=9), which were set up in order to explore motherhood and mothers. Participants were all qualified CPs working within Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in the UK. The research is positioned within a social constructionist frame and takes a critical realist position. The analysis includes elements of both discursive psychology and critical discourse analysis, filtered through a postmodern feminist lens. Findings: A number of discursive practices and identity positions around womanhood and motherhood were highlighted and a set of interlinked dilemmas emerged for women around how to be a woman and how to be a mother. A further dilemma emerged for CPs which encompassed how they worked with women, and what positions they took when doing so. Womanhood and motherhood appeared to be troubled, which had the potential to oppress mothers attending CAMHS. Female CPs were included within this trouble, however, which created interesting juxtapositions within the deployment of discursive resources. Finally, some positive discursive practices were identified which highlighted acceptance and tolerance of pluralities of being a woman and being a mother. Implications: Reflection, deconstruction and an opening up of the debate were seen to be useful devices in helping psychologists to expose potentially oppressive practices. Politicisation of psychology was also explored.

Over the last three decades, the impact of dramatic change in the social, religious, political and economic environment has led to a rapid expansion in the number of women entering the paid labour force in Sri Lanka as elsewhere. However, their identities and workload continue to be defined around caring work, especially for children. Not surprisingly, employed mothers endeavour to balance these two central spheres of their life, family and work. This research focuses on the contradictions of mothers' work-life balance. It does so through an analysis of how successfully (or unsuccessfully) professional and managerial mothers in Sri Lanka combine motherhood with paid work, and how they understand this in terms of gendered identities and social norms. This example also allows an evaluation of western derived theories about mothers' decision making in the context of a developing, Asian country. Grounded theory was used to examine mothers' narratives about life in the family and at work, drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews, along with data from some representative secondary sources, in order to explore these questions. This thesis demonstrates that working women's mothering leads to the formation of a gendered identity which varies according to different socio-cultural and religious opportunities and constraints. Using the Bourdieu approach the research suggests how everyday life operates in terms of habitus, field and capital. However, these working mothers have low capacity to achieve a work-life balance and this may lead to complex social problems.