There is a dearth of literature examining mothers’ experiences of mothering in the context of domestic violence (DV), and their perception both of the difficulties they face with regard to parenting their children, and how their own relational history influences their parenting. This research utilised Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to understand the experiences of seven women living in refuge, and their perceptions of how their relationships with their children had been impacted by the domestic violence. Four super ordinate themes emerged: the perceived influences of their own childhood experiences; transition; relationship to the individual child or children, and emotional regulation and trauma in the mother-child relationship. The findings have clinical implications for therapists and agencies working with mothers transitioning out of DV relationships, and highlight the importance of providing resources as well as respecting and reinforcing women’s personal agency. These findings add to the emergent literature on the attachment relationship within the DV context.

Transitions developed after experiencing one of the largest transitions of my life from an autonomous being and business owner to a pregnant woman to a mother, all during my three year Masters of Fine Art program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. The first section of the show follows my emotional progression throughout pregnancy, as well as physical form, highlighting inner conflict. An emotional conflict and progression is illustrated through the use of emotional landscapes on the exterior walls of the space. Each emotional landscape is created from 25 canvas prints that I photographed on my mobile devices. The interior walls showcase my growing pregnant torso and separated oversized heads. The second section of Transitions deals with the issues of motherhood, specifically the working mother. As a working mother and graduate student, I have had to spend a large amount of time away from my daughter, and because of this I have felt a large amount of guilt and sadness. To illustrate these feelings I created installations from empty rocking chairs and all of the milk storage bags that have been used to feed my daughter in my absence. These two sculptures bookend a 10 minute long projection of my drive home taken on my iPhone. Around the exterior walls of this space, images of my daughter sleeping, and personal affects of her room are shown on large 36"x24" digital inkjet prints.

The 1950s saw the height of the Beat literature movement. Within this movement moved a cohort of women who helped revolutionize gender relations in the early Cold War era, leading to the emergence of the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By questioning social gender norms and harnessing their artistic, sexual, and economic autonomy, Beat women built lives of lived art outside proscribed social norms building the base for a new era in gender relations.

This dissertation examines how American writers in the 1920s demonstrated the eugenic influence on motherhood through fictional representations of violent resistance. My project charts the ways in which fictional, dramatic, and cinematic texts displayed negative visualizations of maternity as a response to the early twentieth-century preoccupation with eugenics. In this project, I argue that these methods of opposition took place through actions of child abuse, maternal neglect, and infanticide. Part of this dissertation identifies eugenically motivated cultural discourse, including various forms of the media, that used both overt and subliminal messages to encourage pronatalism among the white upper and middle classes while promoting sterilization and the use of birth control for minority populations. By addressing this rhetoric, I draw attention to the pervading dialogue that influenced and shaped the texts used in the dissertation. In addition, to analyze depictions of positive and negative eugenics is to reveal a social policy powerful enough to go beyond issues of class and race and drastically impact American mothers as a united group; instead of being labeled as a problem of race, color, or class, I argue instead that these American modernist writers interpreted eugenic rhetoric as a problem of gender, common to any woman who found herself with child. While many studies exist on eugenics and literature, as well as on motherhood and literature, the combination of the two topics is one that has previously gone unanalyzed. Therefore, addressing the problems raised by this subject also highlights how both male and female writers were compelled to construct situations of subversive mothering. By situating my project in the 1920-1930 time frame, I limit my commentary to how writers approached eugenics during its most popular and influential time period in the United States. My chapters argue that these constructs of subversive motherhood appear through cinematic portrayals of dysgenic children and the negative effects on their maternal figures (The Phantom of the Opera and The Black Stork), unhappiness in the role of mother and outward expressions of anger toward the offspring in question (Edith Summers Kelley's Weeds), decisive participation in the act of abortion and infanticide (Nella Larsen's Quicksand), and daughters who refuse to participate in the act of mothering because of their negative upbringings (Edith Wharton's The Children). By incorporating the genres of fiction, drama, and cinema alongside historical and cultural documents, I inform my audience of the threatening and harmful realities of childbearing during this time period, and will show that the connection between eugenics and motherhood reflects a desire of American writers to reveal the grim repercussions of eugenic practice.

abstract: This dissertation explores the relationship between motherhood and power in seventeenth-century England. While historians have traditionally researched the role of mothers within the family unit, this study explores the more public and discursive roles of motherhood. It argues that the various threads of discourse surrounding maternity betray a common desire to circumscribe and condemn maternal authority, as this authority was threatening to masculinity and patriarchal rule. It finds that maternity was frequently cited as harmful and dangerous; household conduct books condemned the passionate and irrational nature of maternal love and its deleterious effects upon both mother and child. Furthermore, various images of ‘unnatural motherhood’ reveal larger concerns over social disorder. Sensationalistic infanticide and monstrous birth stories in cheap print display contemporary fears of lascivious, scolding, and unregulated women who were subversive to patriarchal authority and thus threatened the social status quo. The female reproductive body similarly threatened masculinity; an analysis of midwifery manuals show that contemporary authors had to reconcile women’s reproductive power with what they believed to be an inferior corporeal body. This study ends with a discussion of the representation of mothers in published funeral sermons as these mothers were textually crafted to serve as examples of ‘good mothering,’ offering a striking comparison to the ‘unnatural mothers’ presented in other sources. Motherhood in seventeenth-century England, then, involved a great deal more than the relationship between mother and child. It was a cultural site in which power was contested, and a site in which authors expressed anxiety over the irrational female mind and the unregulated, sexual female body. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation History 2015

The main objectives of this research, that took place in Lima between 2012 and 2013, were to analyze: a) the consequences of teenage motherhood in education, labor and family and b) the factors that influence the reconfiguration of the life trajectories of the teenage mothers after the pregnancy period. After interviewing thirteen teenage mothers that come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and whose children age range between 2-5 years old, we find two types of trajectories: a) the teenage mother trajectory and b) the teenage as mother trajectory. The results of this research suggest that the socioeconomic background, gender, teenage culture and motherhood, as well as the experiences, characteristics and aspirations of each woman are key factors that shape the life trajectories of teenage mothers. / Analizar las consecuencias de la maternidad adolescente en los ámbitos educativo, laboral y familiar, así como los factores que influyen en la reconfiguración de la trayectoria de vida de la madre adoles- cente tras el embarazo, son los principales objetivos de esta investigación realizada entre los años 2012 y 2013. A partir de trece entrevistas en profundidad a madres adolescentes con hijos entre 2 y 5 años de edad y provenientes de distintos estatus socioeconómicos de Lima, encontramos dos trayectorias tipo: la trayectoria madre adolescente y adolescente-madre. Los hallazgos de este estudio sugieren la importancia del estatus socioeconómico, los roles de género, las concepciones en torno a la adolescencia y al ejercicio de la maternidad, así como las vivencias, características y aspiraciones propias de cada mujer como factores que intervienen en la configuración de la trayectoria de vida de las madres adolescentes.

abstract: Although recent studies have report that many stressors and strains (i.e., financial, educational and psychological) arise from being an adolescent mother, whether adolescent motherhood influences delinquency remains an unanswered empirical question. Using data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents (National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health), the current study examines the relationship between motherhood, depression, and delinquency (N = 676). The sample is comprised of solely females between ages 13 and 21-years-old. The female subjects were categorized either as an adolescent mothers, non-mother adolescents, or adult mothers. This study tests the following hypotheses: (1) adolescent mothers are prone to involvement in delinquent behavior; and, (2) adolescent mothers who experience depression are at greater risk of delinquent behavior. The results indicate that there is a decrease in delinquency among adolescent mothers who do not experience depression. However, there is an increase in delinquency among adolescent mothers who experience depression. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Criminology and Criminal Justice 2014

M.Cur. / A lot of mothers and babies are being discharged earlier from the hospital because of limits with the medical aids on the length of stay. In a few ofthese cases the mother and baby were readmitted because of health problems that persisted after they had been discharge. The question arises as to where the problem lies and what are the reasons so many patients are discharged with health problems and what can be done to prevent or reduce these problems. This study investigates the health status of the mother and their health problems on being discharged. The sample came from mothers with medical aids, in the post natal unit, in a selected clinic and ready to go home. Guidelines were developed to prevent these health problems or how to handle them differently. A literature study was undertaken on the normal physiological changes that take place with the birth of the baby and after the mothers have been discharged. According to this study changes and abnormalities could be identified. An instrument was developed to assess the mother's condition on discharge and to identify possible complications that could develop at home and obstruct health promotion. The results show that some of the mothers were discharged with one or other health problem that could cause severe problems at home. The biggest problem identified was with breast-feeding as well as oedema of the feet and hands. There were also a few mothers still unsure as to how to handle their babies. Guidelines were formed to help the nursing staff to supply information for the mother on early discharge and to help prevent health problems or to lessen them. The guidelines help the mothers to know how to look for the signs and symptoms of health problems at home Recommendations were made regarding future research on this issue.

This study traces the evolution of motherhood discourses in 41 fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) public awareness documents produced in British Columbia from 1979–2015. These documents offer a window for understanding how dominant cultural values and motherhood norms are upheld and promoted via FASD prevention, with special implications for women marginalized by race, culture, and socioeconomic status. In order to deconstruct dominant discourses, this project is rooted in feminist post-structuralism and uses a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis as its method. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s (2009) problematization framework, I analyzed the documents using two questions: 1) What is ‘the problem’ represented to be? and 2) What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of ‘the problem’? Findings indicate that FASD public awareness-raising overwhelmingly positions maternal substance use as a woman’s individual choice. Alcohol abstention is framed as a duty to the fetus, although it is framed differently depending on the targeted audience. Findings show that documents present maternal substance use as a gauge of fitness for motherhood and unfairly focus on women who are racialized, low-income, and young. Uniquely, documents produced by and for Indigenous populations differed thematically than for the general population. In conclusion, this study highlights how FASD public awareness-raising promotes dominant cultural values and adheres to a neoliberal health promotion tradition. / Graduate

Written in first person, NOTHING NORMAL HAPPENS TO ME is a memoir in essays that traces the narrator’s journey from self-destruction to creation. Part one encompasses the narrator’s lost years, after she breaks free from the tyranny of her mentally ill mother and goes to live on her own at 17. Part two provides context for those bad girl years, exploring her childhood when she identified with her histrionic mother. Part three comprises stories about the narrator’s years of awakening when she seeks out transcendence, faith, and a family of her own. The pieces vary tonally and stylistically as they attempt to trace the maturing voice of the narrator. Like SEEKING RAPTURE: SCENES FROM A WOMAN’S LIFE by Kathryn Harrison, this collection centers on a young girl, who without her mother’s love, struggles to love herself. It is both a cautionary tale and a story of redemption.