<p>Advancement in education has ensured that there is parity in terms of enrolment for&nbsp / both females and males at tertiary institutions. However, women students continue to face challenges to advancing in education. Given that South African society remains highly gendered and that universities are historically male-dominated sites that do not necessarily cater for the particular&nbsp / needs of women (or children), one area of challenge may relate to having to balance parenting roles with the demands of being a student. For example, at the University of the Western Cape&nbsp / (UWC), students with children are prohibited from access to the residences, leaving them with no option but to seek alternative accommodation, where they can remain with their babies or look for childcare support from their relatives. While there is a growing body of work on the experiences of school-going pregnant and parenting learners, there is little work in the South African context of the experiences of women who are both parents and students at tertiary institutions. Since the national education system clearly supports and encourages life-long learning, an investigation into the conditions and experiences of learning for parenting students is important. The focus on women students was motivated by existing findings that show how normative gender roles persist and that women continue to be viewed as the primary nurturers with respect to the care of children. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of motherhood among young female students at UWC. The study was situated within a feminist social constructionist framework and a feminist qualitative methodology was employed. Two or more interviews were conducted with a group of eight participants, selected by convenient sampling, and aged between 18 and 30 years, each with a child or children under the age of five&nbsp / years. Interviews were conducted at the participants&rsquo / choice of location and at a time that was convenient to them. All interviews were audio-recorded and the tapes were kept safely in the&nbsp / researcher&rsquo / s home. All standard ethical procedures for research with human subjects were followed. Data was transcribed verbatim and a qualitative thematic analysis was conducted. Key&nbsp / themes&nbsp / were elucidated and data presented thematically. The key challenges cited included time management, self motivation and the social demands of being a mother. These tend to have adverse repercussions on academic excellence. The analysis revealed that though the young women are allowed to return to universities after becoming mothers, they face many challenges in trying to balance motherhood and the demands of schooling. Furthermore, the findings highlight the tension and ambivalence experienced by participants as they negotiate the social and cultural expectations of motherhood and their personal reality, in meeting the demands of motherhood as student mothers. In their struggle to meet the social and cultural expectations of motherhood, they placed tremendous emotional and physical stress upon themselves which manifested as guilt, physical exhaustion, psychological stress, physical illness and the desire to leave studies notwithstanding the value they attached to it. Although the participants challenged these expectations in various ways, the underlying nuances when they recounted their experiences, remain embedded in these societal and cultural expectations. However, in voicing their experiences, it was clear that they were not always simply accepting the status quo but at times challenging it, and thereby deconstructing the myths of motherhood that are so salient in current social and cultural contexts. The study also found that student mothers at UWC, at least on the basis of this small sample - do not appear to receive sufficient support on campus (physically, materially and emotionally). The study concludes that this group of&nbsp / student mothers face serious challenges as mothers and students and, further, that these challenges are exacerbated by the continued social expectations of women to be &lsquo / perfect&rsquo / mothers which, together with the material gender inequalities in sharing parenting care, could impede effective academic studies. The study recommends that universities play a stronger role in alleviating the challenges for such students. In addition, it recommends that more research be conducted in the area, possibly longitudinal studies, as well as studies that may be more generalisable.</p>

1 Abstract The thesis discusses breastfeeding in terms of cultural anthropology. The theoretical part describes breastfeeding in the historical and social context, while also focusing on the current situation in Slovakia. The research part of the thesis analyzes selected group of eleven Slovak university educated women of the present generation of nursing mothers. The basic research hypothesis is that society and culture affects the relationship of selected group of mothers to breastfeeding. The paper uses the method of semi-structured interviews and participatory observation. Basic sets of issues reflect subjective views and experiences of mothers with these problems. The work concluded that breastfeeding among university-educated mothers is significantly affected. To a large extent, breast feeding is structured in relation to social pressure, and it is also prevalent in women's distinctive individuality.

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

The objective of this dissertation is to document the lived experience of mothering in poverty and the unique challenges the role of mother presents to maintaining food security. Millions of households in the United States are struggling to put food on the table, a problem made worse by the current economic recession and high food prices. Among them, households with children and specifically, single mothers, report the highest prevalence of food insecurity. While Federal food assistance programs are available to help alleviate this issue, the continued problem of hunger is a very real and pervasive concern for millions of American families. While there is a robust and comprehensive scholarly body of work focused on food security and nutrition, this study fills an important gap in the literature. By describing the unique social and cultural circumstances that accompany the transition to motherhood in a low-income setting, I connect the lived experienced of mothering with vulnerability to food insecurity. This is framed within the underlying assumption that the related experiences of expectant mothering and caring for an infant impart different risk factors for food insecurity. This study used a mixed methods approach to examine its objectives. These include semi-structured ethnographic interviews, participant observation, surveys and questionnaires and foodscape analysis. The mixed method design allowed for a holistic examination of the lived experience of mothers through narrative analysis, the visual representation of their foodscape through community mapping, and the triangulation of findings through administered surveys and questionnaires. The primary findings of this dissertation include identification of social, cultural and geographic patterns of maternal isolation among low-income women and their impact on food security. Results of this study indicate that the unique demands of mothering in a low-income setting present challenges to maintaining food security. Gaps in services provided to low-income mothers to address food insecurity were identified to include improving the social connectedness of expectant and new mothers. This study is intended to reach a wide target audience including students, practitioners, anthropological colleagues and policymakers. In an effort to translate the findings of this study into practical recommendations for action, the author calls for more research into the issue of maternal isolation and for policy initiatives to recognize the unique role mothering plays in contributing to household food security status.

Recent writing in the anthropology of affect and cognate fields has positioned hope as a useful category with which to examine socio-political life and formulate a political and theoretical response adequate to its form. This dissertation extends this endeavour by exploring the ‘hopeful projects' mothers and families undertake in order to secure their children's futures in contemporary Cape Town. Based on ethnographic research conducted with Black mothers between March and October 2018, I argue that the supposedly private maternal hopes my interlocutors hold are in fact indexical of the ways in which social inequality functions and becomes manifest in everyday life and care. Situated at the interface of embodied experience and political histories, their hopes are indicative of how liberal logics of selfextension, self-mastery, and self-maximisation are inhabited to produce alternative futures. At the same time, however, such hopes are continually undone by contexts of intractable structural violence and deprivation, reinvested into normative notions of kinship, domesticity, sexuality, and the body, or marshalled to perform reparative work that should properly fall under the purview of the state. In detailing the ways in which my interlocutors attempt to craft more capacious, more just, and more materially abundant futures for their children, I illustrate the affective entailments of life-building in post-Apartheid South Africa

Thesis advisor: Margaret . Lombe / The present study is situated at the intersection of the topics of migration and mothering; it seeks to examine the complexities around mothering in conditions of violence, precariousness, institutional neglect and mobility across borders. In particular, it documents the pre-migration, transit and post-migration experiences of 17 Central American mothers who have crossed the US-Mexico border with their children since 2014, and are resettling in the Boston area while they wait resolution of their asylum claims. By analyzing participants’ narratives, collected through in depth semi-structured interviews, the study explores (a) mothers’ exposure to traumatic events and human rights abuses transnationally; (b) mothers’ practices to survive and support their children under difficult conditions; (c) and the association of maternal experiences and practices with maternal mental health. The study documents how the unjust conditions in which these mothers parent their children—violence, precariousness and institutional neglect— contribute to difficult maternal practices—such as decisions to leave children behind or to risk taking children across borders—and unjust mental health outcomes for mothers. Some mothers in the study reported high levels of anxiety, depression and PTSD, related to contextual experiences and challenging maternal practices. Based on these findings and feminist theories, the study presents a gender sensitive theoretical framework to guide scholarship and practice with asylum-seeking mothers traveling with some of their children across borders. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

This paper explores possible applications of the experiential knowledge of motherhood in the field of art education through self-portraiture, a methodology which blends a/r/tography with elements of portraiture. A review of relevant literature situates the study within the scope of mothering pedagogy and arts-based research. Employing artistic practice and anecdotal journaling as the primary methods of inquiry, the researcher examines her experiences as a mother in a preservice art education program and the intersections of her roles as mother/artist/teacher. The researcher identifies resonant metaphors, including labor, separation, the umbilical cord, circles, the ovum, and pretending; offers parallels between mothering and art education in play, scaffolding, relationality, matrescence, changing plans, and paradigms; presents challenges such as time constraints, breastfeeding/pumping breast milk, and sleep deprivation; and provides an artist statement. The study attempts to address issues of misrepresentation and underrepresentation of mothers in art education by promoting understanding through empathetic participation.

Thesis advisor: Juliet B. Schor / Why do mothers practice a sustainable lifestyle? While existing literature views motherhood as a motivating factor that encourages women to adopt sustainable practices, this article conceptualizes women's desire to live sustainably as an outcome shaped dialectically with the material experience of mothering. Drawing from interviews with eight mothers who self-identified as interested in living sustainably, this study shows that intensive mothering creates time scarcity in mother schedules, discouraging women from acting upon their ecological concerns, and exacerbates their reliance on eco-intensive options. Women adopt sustainable practices to compensate for their current inability to create institutional changes through political channels. By investing in the immaterial qualities of these practices, women pass on cultural resources that enable their children to facilitate institutional changes. Mothers' efforts in cultivating children's eco-friendly dispositions are not only a symbol of "good" mothering but also a marker of the boundary between the household and the market. My findings contextualize the formation of ecologically oriented taste within the experience of mothering and present an alternative approach to understanding why women engage in a sustainable lifestyle. This article also holds insights for explaining the relationship between engagement in a sustainable lifestyle and participation in the formal political process. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

South Africa is the most popular international destination for Zimbabwean migrants escaping the economic crisis of their country. It has been estimated that by 2016, one and a half million Zimbabwean nationals were living in South Africa. However, little research explores the lived experience of Zimbabweans in South Africa in the context of family. This is despite scholars highlighting an increase in family migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa in recent years. This study explores the parenting experiences of immigrant Zimbabwean parents raising their children in South Africa. Specifically, it investigates the ways in which raising children in a different country and cultural context influences parents’ understanding of and approaches to parenting. Nine Zimbabwean mothers and fathers living with their spouses and children in Cape Town participated in a qualitative study, with semi-structured interviews. Data was collected and analysed using thematic analysis. The study found that the participants’ overarching experience of parenting was that they were ultimately raising ‘South Africans’. Participants framed their children’s ‘South African-ness’ positively, identifying the children as cosmopolitan and empowered, which they celebrated. However, they also lamented the children’s loss of identity as the most problematic aspect of ‘South African-ness’. To navigate the resultant tensions, participants relaxed some of their existing beliefs while simultaneously implementing measures to reinforce some non-negotiable values and beliefs in their children. This dissertation argues that while parents’ understanding of parenting is strongly rooted in their cultural background and values, they adapt their parenting styles and practices according to what they calculate will enable their families to thrive. The study adds to the body of knowledge on immigrant Zimbabwean families who have become part of South African society. This is especially relevant in light of the South African government’s laudable initiatives towards regularising the stay of Zimbabweans in South Africa, such as the Dispensation of Zimbabweans Project (DZP) of 2009 and its successive permits. This study can therefore contribute to the body of knowledge that informs the ways in which South Africa can continue to respond to the reality of migration from Zimbabwe.

Mentorship is a critical component of a graduate education and facilitates the process of socialization into the role of professorship. Numerous studies continue to support the idea that mentorship, particularly woman-to-woman mentoring, is essential for overcoming barriers to women’s mobility within male-dominated fields. This study critically examines this assumption through the analysis of 59 qualitative interviews with faculty mentors and graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics conducted at one Canadian and one American institution. Initially, I explore how mothers in academe are socialized from differing levels to fit into narrowly defined roles as “good” professors. This expands our conceptualization of a motherhood penalty to include more subtle discrimination and illuminates the complexity within which motherhood is embedded in work organizations and reproduced through interaction (including mentorship). By following a comparison of the relational dynamics of women graduate students in same-gender and cross-gender iv mentorships, the overwhelming conclusion is that both men and women as faculty mentors are capable of socializing their students in ways that have potential to transform the academic institution regarding gender equity. Still, many examples of how mentoring alternately functions to perpetuate inequities exist. Finally, a crossnational analysis allowed exploration of institutional contexts and how they influence the ways in which mentors model balance. In contexts where family leave is institutionalized (i.e. Canada), conflict between work and family life should be lessened. Given this assumption, we should see a distinct separation of experiences between Canadian and American academics. In reality, these boundaries are more blurred. This finding implies that despite differences in levels of support formally offered to families through policy initiatives, professional barriers experienced by academics prevent the type of substantive benefits they are meant to afford. In practice, faculty mentors remain wedded to ideal worker models rooted in the masculine work ethics of their professions regardless of institutionalized family policies, thereby perpetuating inequality through mentorship. This, in turn, prevents institutional change. In summary, this study contributes to theoretical models of gendered institutions; advances understanding of the tenacity of gender inequality in academia; and informs university policies related to mentoring practices and workfamily policies.