Loyalty conflicts. Resistance. Anger. This thesis will take you along on my journey as a South Asian woman and the mother and stepmother of a cross-cultural stepfamily. Through the form of an arts-informed auto-ethnography I will illustrate how I underwent personal and spiritual transformation while (step) mothering four children. It is a story that “both cuts and heals” (Luciani, 2000, p. 39). In this work I show how mothering and stepmothering can “deteriorate into martyrdom if a mother gives her children and spouse the love and care she doesn’t feel that she herself is worthy of receiving” (Northrup, 2005, p. 13). I explore how the pressure to be a “good mother” and “good stepmother” left me feeling inadequate, resentful, doubtful of my abilities and neglectful of my own needs. Hope. Solace. Spirituality. Love. This story is also about healing and renewal and my process of recapturing a sense of self by returning to spirituality. By sinking into my life as a mother and stepmother and viewing my life circumstance as a “vehicle for waking up” (Chodron, 1991, p. 71), I cultivated a conscious state in which anger and resentment was replaced by awe and wonder. I strengthened my agency by directing nurturing and caregiving to myself, pursuing my creativity, and sharing childrearing more equitably with my partner. Mothering and stepmothering became sites of empowerment as I found joy in my relationship with myself, my children, and the community around me. This research provides an example of how meaningful knowledge production can occur in alternative forms to mainstream academic discourse. Arts-informed, auto-ethnographic research offers insights on human relationships and interactions in the world by fostering an epistemological shift for the researcher as well as the reader. As Sameshina and Knowles note (2008) this methodology is “transformational in process and possibilities” (108).

Loyalty conflicts. Resistance. Anger. This thesis will take you along on my journey as a South Asian woman and the mother and stepmother of a cross-cultural stepfamily. Through the form of an arts-informed auto-ethnography I will illustrate how I underwent personal and spiritual transformation while (step) mothering four children. It is a story that “both cuts and heals” (Luciani, 2000, p. 39). In this work I show how mothering and stepmothering can “deteriorate into martyrdom if a mother gives her children and spouse the love and care she doesn’t feel that she herself is worthy of receiving” (Northrup, 2005, p. 13). I explore how the pressure to be a “good mother” and “good stepmother” left me feeling inadequate, resentful, doubtful of my abilities and neglectful of my own needs. Hope. Solace. Spirituality. Love. This story is also about healing and renewal and my process of recapturing a sense of self by returning to spirituality. By sinking into my life as a mother and stepmother and viewing my life circumstance as a “vehicle for waking up” (Chodron, 1991, p. 71), I cultivated a conscious state in which anger and resentment was replaced by awe and wonder. I strengthened my agency by directing nurturing and caregiving to myself, pursuing my creativity, and sharing childrearing more equitably with my partner. Mothering and stepmothering became sites of empowerment as I found joy in my relationship with myself, my children, and the community around me. This research provides an example of how meaningful knowledge production can occur in alternative forms to mainstream academic discourse. Arts-informed, auto-ethnographic research offers insights on human relationships and interactions in the world by fostering an epistemological shift for the researcher as well as the reader. As Sameshina and Knowles note (2008) this methodology is “transformational in process and possibilities” (108).

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Internet use is a routine element of daily life in the early 21st century for many middle-class Americans. Today, millions of middle-class American mothers read and write online web-logs detailing motherhood and domestic life and mom blogs, formerly known as "mommy blogs," facilitate substantial economic activity. Participants collectively invest millions of hours in these blogs, sharing information and experiences, and offering each other validation and support. The present qualitative study of American mom blogs uses traditional grounded theory methods as well as Netnography techniques to investigate the thematic content found in the publicly posted text of 25 different mom blogs during 2011. Aspects of Goffman's theory of Dramaturgy and Chayko's theory of portable communities provide an interpretive framework for my findings. These findings suggest that mom blogs give participating mothers the power of voice which they use to publish highly controlled, yet powerful messages that communicate the values and role definitions of early 21st century motherhood to a growing online community. Messages tend to portray standards, styles, and secrets of contemporary, middle-class American motherhood.

The overall aim of this study is to explore how health visiting and mothering practices have been shaped by the implementation of Health for All Children (Hall). ‘Hall’ denotes a programme of work around child health surveillance and promotion published in four reports between 1989 and 2003. The fourth Hall report (Hall 4) marked a shift towards a more targeted approach to service provision, predominantly through the work of health visitors, yet aimed to meet the needs of all families with young children. The study explores how health visitors’ work practices have been shaped by this new policy context, including how it has influenced their relationships with families as well as the profession as a whole. It also examines the experiences of mothers, their relationships with health visitors, and how they negotiate and manage their children’s health and well-being. A review of Scottish policy reveals an early years agenda focused on risk and early intervention; and that community nursing has been at the centre of, and shown resistance to, a number of policy directives over the last decade. A review of the existing literature explores the relationship between evidence and Hall and identifies health visitors as the profession charged with its implementation. Literature on mothering and fathering exposes a focus on parenting in policy which belies the gendered nature of caring for children. The empirical study reported in this thesis is located theoretically in relation to the shifting emphasis in disciplinary practices shaping child health from normality to risk. The study uses a qualitative approach and took place within the Lothian region of Scotland. Initially, discussions with policy-makers and practitioners working in the early years, nationally and locally, were carried out to scope the context for the study. Semi-structured interviews with 16 health visitors and 20 mothers were then undertaken and analysed thematically, with the findings chapters shaped through an iteration between theory and grounded analysis of the accounts of the health visitors and mothers. The health visitors’ accounts reveal the changing nature and form of their knowledge and expertise and the implications of this for their practice and profession. The discussions of health visiting practice identify the important roles of observation and relationships work with families, in homes and clinics over time, and how these activities enable health visitors to construct knowledge of families. The interviews with mothers suggest a blurring between lay and professional knowledge where normality is defined by mothers themselves and through their relationships with health visitors. While the mothers work to construct themselves as morally adequate, attention to the stories mothers tell, and, in particular, the emotion in them, suggests that vulnerability can be experienced by any mother. This phenomenon sits in contrast to increasing attention by professionals placed on the monitoring and policing of ‘vulnerable’ families while opportunities for observation and relationships work diminish. The study concludes by exploring key conceptual issues. It considers shifts between normality and risk and how these are shaping how vulnerability is constituted through health visiting practice. In conjunction, it explores the implications of changing health visiting practices, for health visitors, as a profession. Finally, the scope for the health visiting profession to shape policy and practice are considered.

This research study was an examination of the relationship between mother nurturance and involvement and the Christian formation of adolescents. Mother involvement was measured according to the adolescent's perception in twenty domains of motherhood. Eight domains of Christian formation were evaluated using the Spiritual Formation Inventory (SFI) developed by Brad Waggoner. The literature review includes a biblical theological foundation for motherhood, mother nurturance and involvement literature, and an examination of adolescence. The chasm between the sociological and biblical theological fields of research was bridged through the presentation of mutual perspectives on adolescent development. The research produced several important results. First, the results suggest that mother nurturance was significantly correlated with all SFI domains/subscales except with the Building Relationship domain and the overall SFI score. Second, the results suggest that higher perceived mother involvement could lead to significant increases in SFI subscales and overall SFI scores. Third, the results suggest that desired mother involvement was not significantly related with SFI subscales/domains and the overall SFI. Fourth, the results imply that males have, on average, higher overall SFI scores than females. Fifth, with age, gradual decreases in the Seeking God, Building Relationship, and Doctrine domains/subscales scores were observed as age increases. Similar observations were found for the overall SFI score. This appears to consistently be a direct consequence of age. The effect of type of adolescence was also observed to be significant for such domains (that is, early adolescents had higher scores in these domains than late adolescents). Finally, the qualitative interviews suggested five common themes from the respondents' answers: (1) "She was there for me when I needed her," (2) "She helped shape my character," (3) "She taught me how to live," (4) "She helped shape my faith," and (5) "She was supportive of me." Though answers varied, the three central themes were presence, support, and teaching.

Children’s active outdoor play (AOP) is an unstructured physical activity that takes place outdoors during a child’s free time. Despite its association with health and well-being benefits (e.g. increases levels of physical activity, improves psychosocial skills), growing evidence suggests that children are playing less outdoors in comparison to previous generations (Clements, 2004; Witten et al., 2013). This trend is generating a number of studies aiming to examine its decline. Parents, especially mothers, are identified as significant actors in increasing children’s opportunities for AOP in order to prevent adverse health and developmental outcomes. Although parents have an important role in socializing children to leading healthy lifestyles, few studies have documented their difficulties in providing children with opportunities for AOP. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach, this qualitative study focuses on the social, cultural, and structural factors that shape children’s opportunities for AOP within the family context and examines the salient factors of contemporary motherhood that impact children’s AOP. Twenty-one mothers from the Ottawa-Gatineau region took part in an in-depth semistructured interview. The analysis shows that many aspects of contemporary mothering and the multiple roles occupied by mothers make it difficult to provide opportunities for AOP. A key finding is that mothers struggle to prioritize children’s AOP due to discursive conflicts that stem from their roles as risk managers, time managers, and screen time managers. Results provide crucial data for future initiatives aimed at increasing children’s levels of physical activity within a family setting. By focusing on the lived experiences of mothers, this study provides recommendations to promote AOP despite the challenges of contemporary family life.

The research question for this thesis arose from the author's desire to find ways to integrate into her sense of Self her personal experience as woman and mother and to be empowered by that. She sought a source of empowerment that affirmed the life honouring, spiritual and ecological values that were being highlighted by the mothering experience. The connection is deepened further by the recognition of a time when these values were incorporated into the earliest of human creation stories, from watching the creative cycles of the seasons, and the bodies of women in the gestating creation cycles. The body which forms the presentation of this thesis is in two media, text and the visual arts. It is expressed and interpreted in three parts: through the texts of the book, 'The wheel of the year : seasons of the soul in quilts' and the research document, and through the visual medium of artquilts in exhibition which symbolise the Old European and Celtic seasonal celebration. The process for construction of this research has been to piece together the fabrics of two women's research groups' life experiences, and the author's own personal reflections on her life and theirs, through the creative process of mothering, patchwork quilting and participating in seasonal ritual / Master of Social Ecology (Hons)

<p>This article examines the case of Filipina women that substitute for Filipina migrant workers. Through semi-structured interviews in the Philippines this study draws attention to the experiences of the ‘stand-in’ women and demonstrates how the organisation of care in the transnational families is based on a system whereby female family members or friends are ascribed with a ‘natural’ responsibility to become social reproductive stand-ins for the migrated mothers. In the global transfer of social reproduction, hierarchies of women are maintained, based on intersectional power structures such as ethnicity, race, nationality, age, and class. But the stand-in women in the three-tier transfer of reproductive labour, or global care chain, do not  always occupy one single position, but actually shift in time and place between ‘the middle’ and ‘the bottom’ of the hierarchy. Regardless of location, Filipina women remain under the burden of their gendered duties and whether working abroad as domestic workers or acting as local stand-ins, they have to take on both local and global social reproductive work. They become the breadwinner in their families, at the same time as they are ascribed natural responsibility for households and families, as wives, mothers and stand-ins ‘at home’.</p>