Huss M. Is a woman aloud to regret her motherhood?. A qualitative study about social workers perception of women who regret having children. Degree project in social work 15 credits. Malmö University: Faculty of Health and Society, Department of Social Work, 2018.A common opinion is that having children is a choice you can’t regret. But what happens when women deviate from this norm and regret that they were having children? The purpose of this study was to investigate how social workers perceive women who regret that they were having children and how this perception affects their social work. The empirical material was collected by semi-structured interview questions in combination with the vignette method. Six social workers, which are working with children and families, were interviewed and then the material was processed by using coding and categorization. Eight categories were identified and analysed from a norm critical perspective, a psychological cultural perspective and Goffman’s theory about stigma. The study result showed that the social workers tended to explain the women’s feelings of regret as caused by reasons like postpartum depression, mental illness and attachment problems. The study results also showed that norms about motherhood influenced how the social workers viewed the topic. This was expressed in the discussions about how the children could be affected by the mothers’ feelings of regret. The discussions also gave an indication that the social workers had a different way of reasoning, depending on the gender of the parent who was feeling regret in these situations.Keywords: Motherhood, norms, regret, stigma, social work.

Denna uppsats syftar till att utforska hur mödrar som upplever ånger och tvivel i samband med att vara mamma blir bemötta. Hittills har undersökningar relaterade till ämnet främst analyserat olika chattrådar, men ingen från en svensk kontext. Av den anledningen studerar denna uppsats via en kritisk diskursanalys en chattråd på det svenska forumet Familjeliv. Vad som undersöks är vilka moderskapsdiskurser som framträder i chattinläggen och varför mammor upplever ånger och tvivel kopplat till modersrollen. Det teoretiska ramverket består av Berger och Luckmanns teori om institutioner, Hochschilds begrepp känsloregler, emotionellt arbete samt yt- och djupagerande, Goffmans term fasad och Butlers tolkning av termen genus. Resultatet visar på tre diskurser i datamaterialet; moderskapet som lyckligt, en fälla och inställningen till moderskapet. Ånger och tvivel uttrycks i förhållande till modersrollen när modern inte kan leva upp till diskursen om moderskapet som lyckligt. Då kan mamman känna sig inlurad i modersrollen, eftersom hennes förväntningar om moderskapet inte motsvarade den faktiska modersrollen. Av det skälet kan mamman börja uppleva moderskapet som en fälla. Om modern inte vill eller vet hur hon ska använda emotionellt arbete för att få “rätt” inställning till moderskapet kan hon även börja utveckla känslor av ånger och tvivel i relation till modersrollen. Vad som ligger till grund för förväntningarna om moderskapet är institutionen om familjen. Avslutningsvis har uppsatsarbetet enbart börjat fylla en kunskapslucka och därför kan inga absoluta svar presenteras till frågeställningarna. / This essay aims to explore how mothers who experience regret and doubt in connection with being a mother are treated. So far, studies related to the subject have mainly analysed chat threads, but none from a Swedish context. For this reason, this essay studies a chat thread on the Swedish forum Familjeliv using a critical discourse analysis. We investigate which motherhood discourses appear in the chat posts and why mothers experience regret and doubt linked to their role as a mother. The theoretical framework consists of Berger and Luckmann's theory of institutions, Hochschild's concepts of feeling rules, emotional work and surface and deep acting, Goffman's term facade, and Butler's interpretation of the term gender. The result shows three discourses in the data material; motherhood as joyful, a trap and the attitude towards motherhood. Regret and doubt are expressed in relation to the role as a mother when the mother cannot live up to the discourse of motherhood as joyful. Then the mother may feel tricked into her role as a mother, because her expectations of motherhood did not correspond to the actual role of being a mother. For that reason, the mother may begin to experience motherhood as a trap. If the mother does not want to, or know how to use emotional work, to get the "right" attitude towards motherhood, she can also begin to develop feelings of regret and doubt in relation to her role as a mother. The basis for the expectations about motherhood is the institution of the family. In conclusion, this essay has only begun to fill a knowledge gap and therefore no absolute answers can be given to the questions.

The main work for this thesis has been a thorough study of the novel Prediction with Partially Monitored Grouped Expert Advice and Side Information paradigm. This is newly proposed in this thesis, and it extends the widely studied Prediction with Expert Advice paradigm. The extension is based on two assumptions and one restriction that modify the original problem. The first assumption, Grouped, presumes that the experts are structured into groups. The second assumption, Side Information, introduces additional information that can be used to timely relate predictions with groups. Finally, the restriction, Partially Monitored, imposes that the groups’ predictions are only known for one group at a time. The study of this paradigm includes the design of a complete prediction algorithm, the proof of a theoretical bound of the worse-case cumulative regret for such algorithm, and an experimental evaluation of the algorithm (proving the existence of cases where this paradigm outperforms Prediction with Expert Advice). Furthermore, since the development of the algorithm is constructive, it allows to easily build two additional prediction algorithms for the Prediction with Grouped Expert Advice and Prediction with Grouped Expert Advice and Side Information paradigms. Therefore, this thesis presents three novel prediction algorithms, with corresponding regret bounds, and a comparative experimental evaluation including the original Prediction with Expert Advice paradigm. / Huvudarbetet för den här avhandlingen har varit en grundlig studie av den nya Prediction with Partially Monitored Grouped Expert Advice and Side Information paradigmet. Detta är nyligen föreslagit i denna avhandling, och det utökar det brett studerade Prediction with Expert Advice paradigmet. Förlängningen baseras på två antaganden och en begränsning som ändrar det ursprungliga problemet. Det första antagandet, Grouped, förutsätter att experterna är inbyggda i grupper. Det andra antagandet, Side Information, introducerar ytterligare information som kan användas för att i tid relatera förutsägelser med grupper. Slutligen innebär begränsningen, Partially Monitored, att gruppens förutsägelser endast är kända för en grupp i taget. Studien av detta paradigm innefattar utformningen av en komplett förutsägelsesalgoritm, beviset på en teoretisk bindning till det sämre fallet kumulativa ånger för en sådan algoritm och en experimentell utvärdering av algoritmen (bevisar förekomsten av fall där detta paradigm överträffar Prediction with Expert Advice). Eftersom algoritmens utveckling är konstruktiv tillåter den dessutom att enkelt bygga två ytterligare prediksionsalgoritmer för Prediction with Grouped Expert Advice och Prediction with Grouped Expert Advice and Side Information paradigmer. Därför presenterar denna avhandling tre nya prediktionsalgoritmer med motsvarande ångergränser och en jämförande experimentell utvärdering inklusive det ursprungliga Prediction with Expert Advice paradigmet.