This thesis reports on a qualitative study examining mother and teenage daughter responses to risk and negotiated independence. Parenting has gone up the political agenda fuelled by changes in family structure and moral panics over teenage pregnancy, risk taking and anti-social behaviour. As a result, political focus on parental responsibilities has advanced dominant perceptions that parents are increasingly liable for their children's behaviour with particular emphasis on monitoring and supervision. This thesis builds on recent work challenging simplistic and deterministic accounts as flawed and unhelpful, in favour of calls for more in-depth qualitative work. This allows exploration of monitoring and supervision as part of the parenUchild relationship and embedded within broader family and social processes. Data were collected from forty-two interviews undertaken with seven mother/daughter dyads over two years. Data collected focused on aspects of risk taking including mother/daughter negotiations and were located within biographical and social contexts. Data were thematically analysed using a computer software package. Findings suggested maternal anxiety was primarily caused by fear of male violence and sexual threat. Mothers adopted practical strategies in an attempt to keep daughters safe. More significant were ongoing relationships in which negotiations about risk took place. Communication emphasised democracy, reciprocity, trust, commitment to intimacy . and mutual understanding. Maternal responses to risk taking were pragmatic focused on harm minimisation and providing support, irrespective of feelings of disapproval. Daughters were keen to minimise maternal anxiety and maintain good relationships even though they had different perceptions of risk concerns. Irrespective of social circumstances dyads experienced relationships as supportive and central to everyday survival. Service development and policy implications responsive to maternal needs within 'ordinary families' were explored, as an essential requirement for mothers responding to the increasingly complex task of negotiating risk within the context of extended transitions and fears about male threat.

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No description available.

This thesis is an empirical study examining personhood. More specifically, it is concerned with the ways in which (maternal) subjectivity is constructed through and negotiated within power/ knowledge complexes. A qualitative empirical analysis of interview data gathered from mothers of pre school children demonstrates the central importance of social and cultural relations which account for selfhood. Selfhood here is negotiated through the child, who comes to stand, (more than ever), for the promise of a new moral economy. Such a weighty responsibility upon the figure of the child however, is turned back as coda for good parenting, implying much more than 'instinctual' or 'natural ՚ maternity, and rather pointing up the part classed relations, potentials and inscription has come to play in making and being 'good' citizens. This study is concerned then with the ways in which 'classlessness' has been invoked through the use of family, love, potentials (and more specifically the motif of the child) in current politicised constructions of community and society, which owe much to the legacy of Thatcherism. Political rhetoric and forms of expertise, (in this case, 'knowledges' around motherhood), make links to middle classed identity with the intention of dissolving difference and it is these appeals to work upon the project of the self (and cMld) that act as a screen for the re-appraisal of classed (be)longings in western de- industrialised economies The dismissal of class, or rather its traditional imagining has been replaced by appeals to an individual and altogether surveillant moral responsibility. Demonstrating, through reference to recent scholastic work and empirical data, the persistence of class and the fixing of selves in social space; this thesis provides a critical repudiation of late liberal and current New Labour appeals to 'classlessness'.

Significant change in the positioning of motherhood in women's lives is starkly revealed by comparing the 1970s and 1990s. Though barely a generation apart, these two decades afforded socio-cultural settings of distinctive contrast. In the 1970s, for example, mothers felt constrained to put their working lives on hold and focus their energies on raising children. In the intervening years, however, feminist discourse, in parallel with economic and demographic change, served to strengthen the value of paid work above unpaid endeavour. By the 1990s, an increasing number of women would fit motherhood into the interstices of their working lives. These several considerations led to a broad theoretical enquiry, including the issues of gender, work, and the needs of mothers and their infant children. The focus has been on researching perceptions of motherhood among women representative of occupational groups 1, 2 and 3 only (SOC, 2000). High functioning women experience a particular tension between motherhood and other life roles, as the literature testifies. The aim of uncovering the essence of personal experience suggested a qualitative approach to data collection, within a feminist framework.

Over the last few years researchers have paid increasing attention to the experiences of parents and children of post-divorce family transitions. This body of work has largely focused on the 'traditional' arrangement of resident mothers and non-resident fathers and to date there has been little research on non-residential motherhood in the U. K. This study addresses this gap in the research literature by examining post-divorce parenting from the perspective of non-resident mothers. The research design employs a narrative approach to explore the subjective perspectives and experiences of a sample of twenty non-resident mothers. Data collection is based on unstructured interviews where each respondent was simply asked to tell the story of their life as a non resident mother: how they came to be living apart from their children and what this experience has been like for them. Analysis considers the characteristics of women's described experiences of non-resident motherhood and how they explained and evaluated their situations. Findings highlight the ways in which gendered societal and internalised expectations about mothering impact upon women's interpretations and understanding. Notably, all respondents employed child welfare discourse and used their narrative accounts to defend against a 'bad' mother label by providing a legitimising account of how and why their particular arrangement came into being. Analysis also reveals significant differences in the narratives delivered by those who entered non-resident motherhood voluntarily and those who 'lost' residence to fathers against their will. Distinct patterns emerged regarding women's perspectives on motherhood, their representations of child welfare needs and evaluations of father residence according to the degree of choice and control they felt they had over child residency and contact. Women who elected to be the non-resident parent delivered the most positive evaluations of their experience whilst those who lost residence to fathers against their will were consistently negative in the attitudes they expressed. Once set, these narratives appear 'fixed' and seem act as a supporting framework enabling these women to maintain a positive maternal identity. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of highlighting the gender specifics of non-residential parenting in family policy and legislation and the ways in which narrative interventions might be usefully applied in situations of parental conflict and contact disputes post-divorce

Background: Dysfunctional perfectionism and self-criticism are constructs related to psychological difficulties in adults and children. Research indicates that perfectionism in children may be related to maternal perfectionism and both perfectionism and self-criticism may be associated with parental criticism. However, studies have been limited by their reliance upon retrospective questionnaire designs using undergraduate populations. Aims: This study investigates the relationships between levels of perfectionism and self-criticism in mothers and children. It also investigates differences in levels of criticism displayed by mothers of children with either higher or lower levels of perfectionism. Design: A non clinical sample of school children aged 12-15 years (N=110) and their mothers were surveyed in a cross-sectional design. Mothers and children both completed measures of perfectionism (Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale; Frost, Marten, Lahart & Rosenblate, 1990) and self-criticism (Levels of Self-Criticism Scale; Thompson & Zuroff, 2004). Relationships between these measures were explored. Children were ranked according to their scores on the perfectionism measure, with those in the upper and lower quartiles forming higher and lower perfectionism groups. A between groups design was employed to investigate differences in the frequency of critical and positive comments used by mothers of children with higher and lower levels of perfectionism, during a Five Minute Speech Sample

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate mothers' internal views ofthe relationship with their children as a key mechanism of understanding parenting behaviours. A 5 year, longitudinal study (study 1; N= 122 primiparous mothers and babies) of the stability and changes in mothers' thoughts and feelings about their babies from pregnancy to the postpartum period addressed questions in relation to parenting practices and child socio-emotional development. Results revealed that there was moderate stability in maternal perceptions of the child during the transition to parenthood and that child temperament and environmental risk factors were associated with maternal perception to some degree. Contrary to hypotheses, some inverse correlations between mothers' positive prenatal! postnatal perception of the relationship and less optimal parenting behaviours at 5 years were found. Moderating effects of child temperament on the link between maternal characteristics and child adjustment were found for parenting, but not for maternal perceptions. Findings suggested that the mother-child relationship was gradually established over time, through repeated interactions, and that the maternal internal model of the relationship with the child also appeared to undergo some degree of modification. In a cross-sectional study (study 2; N= 79 mothers and 1.5 year aged children), mothers' generalized thoughts and feelings about the relationship with their children, situation-specific cognitive processing and disconfirmed expectations were investigated before and after a challenging parenting situation with their children. The results demonstrated that mothers' positive generalized views of the child were associated with disconfirmed expectations; however, this effect disappeared after controlling for the child's actual behaviours. Moreover, these mothers who held positive views of the child did not differ in their perception of the child's behaviours from observers after the event happened. Mothers' thinking styles in a narrative interview was found to be related to parenting behaviours. Mothers who held a balanced view about the child's emotional behaviour in the specific situation demonstrated the most sensitive and adaptive parenting behaviours. In contrast, mothers whose thinking style was characterized as defensive positivity showed remote behaviours compared to mothers whose thinking style was affectively over- 4 activated. Overall, the findings indicate the importance of mothers' moment to moment thinking processes during the interaction compared to mothers' generalized views of the child at the conscious level.

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No description available.