There has been very little research into repeat pregnancy in teenage mothers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of pregnant teenage mothers who were expecting their second child. Six pregnant teenage mothers were interviewed and asked to complete a number of questionnaires. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of the interview transcripts demonstrated the four following super-ordinate themes: "Being a good mum", "It's not easy but it's a case of having to cope", "Perceptions and misjudgements", and, "Building my life". A number of theories are presented that may help us understand the experience of second pregnancies in teenage mothers. It is hoped that the findings of this study will help us to begin to understand more about the experiences of this population from their perspective and facilitate professionals to be in a better position to provide teenage mothers and their children with appropriate support.

This study explores aspects of the future in adolescents' choices to continue or terminate pregnancy. Future orientation (FO) (e.g. Seginer, 2005) and reasons for pregnancy resolution were investigated using a researcher constructed and administered questionnaire. Three groups were included: termination of pregnancy (ToP) (n = 19), ante natal (AN) (n = 9), and never pregnant (NP) (n = 23). Participants were 13-18 years-old. Statistical and content analyses reveal groups differ in aspects of FO and reasons for pregnancy resolution choice. Future factors are shown to be important in teenagers' pregnancy resolution decisions. The impact of negative discourses about teenage pregnancy and parenting is discussed. Suggestions are made for conducting research that can advance understanding of this complex issue.

The aim of this study was to illuminate the experience of early mothering for a small group of first-time mothers from the Southof England in 2001. Central to this were the detailed descriptions, as recounted by the women, of the way in which they gradually adapted to being mothers. In this phenomenological inquiry seven women shared their stories with me. The interview took place at a time and place of the women's choosing and they were asked to describe,in as much detail as possible, the way in which they had experienced "becoming a munf'. Each womantook a unique and circuitous journey to mothering and their narratives were rich and evocative, revealing the complexity of the transformative process. The datawere analysed using a descriptive phenomenological approach, which revealed seven constituents contained within a general structure. Although the women interviewed provided notably contrasting descriptions,underlying and uniting their individual experiences was the general structure. This can be summarised as, "Becoming a mother for the first time introduced some fundamental changes into the woman's manner of being in the world. Essentially,this concerned the development of a new becoming-a-mother-change-of-body subjectivity in which the woman was required to re-order her way of being in all its existential dimensions. The new mother sought to integrate and authenticate this challenging life event within her biography-she manifested both an openness to the beloved child and a resistance to the truncation of her existential possibilities." This is not to say that the women all experienced the phenomenon in the sameway, instead there were particular essential constituents through which each woman negotiated her transforming journey into motherhood. Some women assimilated these changes to their embodied self with ease, others struggled and resisted, feeling assailed and overwhelmed. The seven constituents are: " Welcoming the intimate stranger " Anxious loving " The baby fills her vision " Acceptance:from crisis to comprehension " Exhaustion,recovery and the physical body " Relationships:re-evaluation and conflict " Isolation, ambivalenceandtears The data also challenged mainstream understanding of postnatal depression as a discreet, diagnosable illness. Becominga mother is a transition that compels women to make radical re-adjustments to every aspect of their manner of 'being-in-the-world'. It would be extraordinary if this did not cause significant levels of distress,dis-equilibrium and a sense of chaotic disorganisation.I propose that distress in early mothering is understood as a normal reaction to a significant life-changing event. Implications for clinical practice and further research are also discussed.

In recent years teenage pregnancy and parenthood have been topics of much debate within academia, government and the media in the UK. The contemporary problematisation of teenage parenthood has meant that young mothers have been the subject of a number of recent policy interventions. This thesis examines the issues which confront young mothers in the context of these social policy interventions. It provides an overview of the literature debating the conceptualisation of teenage pregnancy and parenthood as a significant social problem. In addition, it traces the development of policies aimed at reducing the incidence of teenage pregnancy and supporting teenage parents. The thesis involves a qualitative study of young parents and their responses to these problematising discourses and the policies they have stimulated. Qualitative research methods are used to examine key 'decisions' and 'choices' made by young women as they 'become' mothers. Participant observation was conducted in three young parent support groups in the South East of England. This was followed up with a range of interviews and focus groups to elicit a deeper understanding of motives and influences behind key 'decisions' made by young parents. The discussion of 'decisions' are divided into three areas. Firstly, contraceptive and reproductive 'decision-making'; secondly, the 'decision' to continue with a pregnancy; and, thirdly, 'decisions' relating to relationships, education and employment made by the women once they have 'become' mothers. This allows a sense of the women's 'paths' to 'becoming' mothers to emerge. This thesis adds to the emerging debate which challenges the contemporary problematisation of teenage pregnancy and parenthood in media and policy discourses. The focus on young women's 'decisions' provides a unique approach to examining the experiences of teenage parents in relation to policy. Consequently this enables a valuable insight to emerge of the ways in which social policy is experienced by those it is designed to support. Frameworks of gender and constructions of 'good' motherhood are employed to understand how the women engage, resist and manage social policies aimed at shaping their behaviour. As such, some assessment can be made of the 'successes' and 'failures' of policy approaches to teenage pregnancy and parenthood.

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.

This ethnography draws upon fieldwork experiences in South Manchester, England. The central theme is an exploration of the everyday relatedness of mothering practices, class, space and belonging. I examine mothering as practiced in both the politics of state intervention and through the mundane experiences of women living in a specific social space: the Wythenshawe Council Estate.This research explores how support programs for raising children and a specific home-visiting volunteer project to support mothers promote the production and reproduction of a particular kind of moral citizen (individualised, autonomous, and disciplined selves). I argue that volunteering schemes come to play a key role as government technology. Women volunteers who live in the community in which they volunteer (indigenous experts) come to act as a model for other local women, who are usually defined by the authorities (professional experts), as lacking the right kind of knowledge The volunteers are thus challenged to enhance and empower their neighbors and friends. However, this transmission does not occur in a linear fashion, but in quite subversive ways. While local women are actively involved in the use and appropriation of the resources provided by these programs, at the same time, they resist and transform them according to their own needs and desires.I also argue that mothering functions as metaphor and metonym for the imagined nation-state. The experience of living on the Estate is not just a physical act, but a permanent negotiation of who you are as a person in the defined social space of the Estate. I learned what it means to belong to Wythenshawe through its spatiality, but I also learnt a particular mode of belonging through my own racial and class background. My experiences of being a Latin-American ethnographer living on the Estate, whose population is mostly white and living on low income, significantly shaped my fieldwork experiences

Cette étude s'intéresse à l'adaptabilité de l'entretien prénatal du 4e mois, mesure phare du plan périnatalité (2005-2007), auprès d'une population de mères adolescentes. Il s'agit d'une étude rétrospective (2007-2011) et comparative de 303 accouchements de femmes mineures dans les maternités hospitalières de Saint-Denis et Nantes. Le suivi de grossesse chez ces adolescentes reste globalement inférieur en qualité aux moyennes nationales françaises, mais des différences significatives sont observées lorsque l'on prend en compte des éléments sociodémographiques. Trois profils différenciés vont apparaître et permettre d'identifier les raisons sociales, familiales, environnementales et professionnelles qui peuvent expliquer des disparités significatives dans le suivi de grossesse. Tenir compte du profil sociodémographique de ces adolescentes est essentiel pour étudier les maternités précoces et pallier les vulnérabilités propres à cette population fragile. Un repérage des facteurs favorisant une surveillance de grossesse optimale chez ces jeunes femmes est mis en parallèle avec une réduction des risques obstétricaux et sociaux. / This study concerns prenatal fourth month interviews, key measure of the perinatal plan (2005-2007), as being adapted to a population of adolescent mothers. It is a retrospective (2007-2011) and comparative study of 303 births by underage women in the maternity hospitals of Saint-Denis and Nantes. The quality of medical care during pregnancy of these adolescents is generally inferior to national French averages, but significant differences are observed when sociodemographic elements are taken into account. Three different profiles appear and identify the social, family, environmental and professional reasons which explain these significant disparities during medical pregnancy care. Taking into account the sociodemographic profiles of these adolescents is essential to the study of early pregnancies and to mitigate the vulnerability specific to this fragile population. Finding the factors which further optimize medical pregnancy care for these young women is parallel to a reduction of obstetrical and social risks.

Progressing into the 21st century young pregnancy and parenthood in the United Kingdom is a focus of political, media and public attention. The country is described as experiencing an epidemic, with the highest rates of young pregnancy and parenthood recorded in Western Europe. Statistics demonstrate that in 2000 38,690 under 18 year-olds in England became pregnant, of which 44.8% ended in legal termination. In light of this data, and within their remit to address the issue of Social Exclusion, New Labour commissioned a report into young pregnancy resulting in the development and implementation of the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. The Strategy has two main aims; namely reducing the rates of young conceptions and providing better support and education for young parents. This thesis argues from a conceptual framework that questions the contested assumption that young pregnancy and parenthood is a problem. A literature review demonstrates a lack of representation of the voices and experiences of young mothers. This directs the research question to ask what is the experience of young mothers in their own words and placed within context? Critical Discourse Analysis is used to examine three examples of context shaping data that includes government policy, a newspaper article and a radio talk show programme. The analysis reveals discourses that suggest there is a right time and framework for motherhood. These discourses form a dialectical relationship with voices and experiences of young mothers that are analysed using Discourse Analysis. This analysis elicits two key central discourses permeating the experiences of young mothers that are the Good- Bad mother binary that informs and exacerbates experiences of maternal ambivalence. Moreover, these discourses inform the practice of discrimination against young mothers. The thesis concludes with a call to listen to the experiences of young mothers in order that their needs might be more fully understood. It suggests that discrimination against young mothers be incorporated into Equal Opportunity and Anti- Discrimination policy.

Using the concept of coping strategies, this thesis is essentially concerned with the way young women in Mozambique achieve social well-being during the life event of unintended pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy in Mozambique places significant strain on informal and formal relationships, educational access, economic stability and the maintenance of good health. It also has significant implications for young women’s roles, responsibilities and status within families and communities (CEDAW 2005). Twenty one qualitative semi-structured individual interviews were completed with young women (16-19 years old) who have recently had an unintended pregnancy, as well as eight focus groups using a vignette with young women (16–21 years old) from youth associations and fourteen individual interviews with key informants (those working in the area of sexual and reproductive health with youth and adolescents). From these three forms of rich data, the relationships young women have with others, the negotiations they engage in and the coping strategies they employ are illuminated. This research contributes to an increased understanding of unintended pregnancy and the ways young women respond and ‘cope’ with this life event (as a process) largely via different forms of social interaction. The chosen methodology was designed to elicit this type of knowledge drawing on different disciplinary interpretations of coping strategies. Although unintended or early pregnancy in young women has developed as a key social development concern in recent years (Hainsworth 2002; Mahy 2002; Westoff 2003; UNFPA 2007), this research indicates that policy strategists in Mozambique struggle to develop adequate and effective intervention in response. The narratives shared by young women, and the analysis developed through chapters four to seven builds a complex picture for intervention, as family relationships remain a major factor for social and economic well-being. The socially and culturally constructed nature and predominant location within families mean that macro strategies and community level intervention has limited impact during unintended pregnancy. Strengthening relational strategies (both formal and informal) through social development intervention is therefore necessary for young women to access social and organisational resources for coping and social well-being. By using the concept of coping strategies, the juxtaposition of ‘copers’ and ‘non-copers’, the relationship between agency and structure, the strategies employed at different levels, the significance of social interaction and coping as a process has been opened up to scrutiny. This thesis not only evaluates and critiques models of social development, but also argues that the concept of coping strategies can be usefully applied to inform social development in ways that address both individual and collective wellbeing.

The mother-child relationship is the first basic relationship with which any human being is confronted. The temperaments of mother and child play an important role in this relationship. The aim of this study is to explore the perception of mothers with regards to temperaments. This study uses a qualitative approach, which is explorative and descriptive, to gain insight into the influence of temperaments in the mother-child relationship. Seven mothers were selected by purposeful sampling to participate in the group work as research process. Group work progresses through the following three phases: awareness, exploration and personalisation. Naive sketches were used to determine the perception of the mothers during the awareness and personalisation phases. A focus group interview was utilised in the exploration phase. Finding showed that the mother-child relationship plays an important role in the optimal development of the child and his or her mother. This study confirmed the importance of understanding temperaments in the mother-child relationship. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Specialisation in Guidance & Counseling)