Miller, Tina (2000) An exploration of first time motherhood : narratives of transition. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The ways in which women experience and narrate their journeys into first time
motherhood is explored through a focus on narrative construction and
reconstruction. The unique positioning of childbearing - at the interface
between the biological and the social - both shapes expectations and renders
experiences which do not conform to idealised notions of motherhood,
diflicult to voice.
The 17 participants in this study were all white, working women, who were
expecting their first child. In depth interviews were carried out on three
separate occassions, both antenatally and postnataily, over approximately a
year. The longitudinal dimensions of the study enabled narrative trajectories
to be collected and strategic construction and presentation of narratives to be
explored. The movement in and out of the worlds of work and home was
found to provide different reference points from which to make sense of, and
narrate, a shifting sense of self. Narrative has not previously been used to
explore women's experiences of transition to first time motherhood.
Gathering women's narratives over time enabled different subjectivities to be
explored and narrative layers to be discerned. The shifts made visible by this
approach revealed the ways in which transition to motherhood is socially
constructed and experienced within the context of differing professional and
personal time frames. Within these competing time frames epistemological
and ontological shifts take place. Eventually, epistemological and ontological
security led women to challenge assumptions around mothering with which
they may have previously collaborated. Feeling able to cope led to the
voicing, retrospectively, of past difficult experiences. Narratives were
reconstructed and professional constructions of 'normal' transition to
motherhood, questioned.
The research suggests that needs can remain unvoiced in a context where
diverse mothering experiences are unjformly measured. The implications of
the research for policy and practise, which is based on normative
preoccupations, is considered.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Mothers -- Great Britain -- Case studies, First pregnancy -- Great Britain -- Case studies, Motherhood
Official Date:	March 2000
Dates:	Date Event March 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Sociology
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Clark, Judith
Extent:	[306] leaves
Language:	eng

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