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’.

While it is widely known that most women convicted of crime or serving time in prison are mothers, little research has focused specifically on whether and how the daily activity of mothering affects women’s criminal behaviour. On the one hand, criminalized women often report that parenting is important to them. If mothering reduces the opportunities to engage in crime, strengthens informal controls, and increases the costs of crime, it should discourage offending. On the other hand, the challenges of mothering are particularly onerous for women who are economically disadvantaged, marginalized, and socially isolated – that is, the types of women who are most likely to engage in crime. If children create an imperative for resources that women cannot accommodate legally while simultaneously exacerbating psychological and emotional strains, women may turn to criminal behaviour. Using a sample of 259 criminalized women, I explore the mothering-crime relationship by examining whether the daily responsibilities and demands of living with children affect month-to-month changes in women’s involvement in offending. Controlling for criminalized women’s relationships, socio-economic contexts, living arrangements, and leisure pursuits, I provide quantitative evidence about the relationship between mothering and property crime, drug use, drug dealing, and women’s use of violence against their intimate partners. I supplement this analysis with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with these women. Results indicate a non-uniform effect of mothering on criminalized women’s offending: living with children discourages women from engaging in property crime and using drugs, makes no difference to whether or not they deal drugs or engage in ‘mutual’ violence with intimate partners, and increases their use of ‘sole’ violence against intimate partners. I discuss why living with children is an important “local life circumstance” shaping variation in criminalized women’s commission of some, but not all, offences, and consider the policy implications of these findings.

As I write this piece, I wonder how I got here. I began with an interest in adolescent mental health services in schools. Then I was captured by autoethnographic writing and Carolyn Ellis became my hero. I read everything I could find regarding autoethnography and mostly I read autoethnographic stories. This led me to wanting to tell my own stories, but I realized they were very difficult stories to tell and very difficult stories to hear. I became interested in why certain stories are difficult to tell. I wanted to know what made them difficult stories. I wanted to understand why we tell certain things more easily than others or why we dont tell at all. I then became interested in secrets. I realized that my personal secrets were mostly about mothering. I wondered what it was about mothering that made these stories so difficult to tell. I wondered what was unique and specific to the secrets of mothering. I read extensively about mothering and motherhood. I was exhilarated when I found the work of Andrea OReilly and the Association for Research on Mothering at a book fair at a local conference. I had found another hero. Then I read Susan Maushart (1999) and Adrienne Rich (1986) and I became immersed in the search for meaning about motherhood, mothering, the masks of motherhood and the normative discourse of mothering. I realized there was a disconnect between the discourse of mothering and the actual practice of mothering. I also began to realize that perhaps the masks of motherhood and the normative discourse contributed to and perpetuated the secrets of mothering. I tell my own secrets of mothering to examine this phenomenon. And I tell stories that I never thought I would tell in a public forum. My stories look behind my cool and competent mask of motherhood (Maushart, 1999), and expose the raw emotions of my secrets of mothering. I am often vulnerable and naked and I ask readers to appreciate this in context of their own nakedness and vulnerability. An exploration of the discourse and practice of mothering, and the secrets related to that, offers a means to disturb the normative discourse of mothering and a means to unravel my secrets of mothering. I offer no solutions only hope and possibility that the disturbing and unraveling will guide mothers and parents to decide which mask to wear (or not) and which secrets to keep (or not) and perhaps to awaken readers to the social and political issues related to these stories (both mine and the readers). I introduce and provide the background for the dissertation through my positionality in Tomasulos chair. I will give no other explanation of the chair except to say that I move in and out of the chair as I explore the purpose of my dissertation and position myself within that exploration.

<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>

While it is widely known that most women convicted of crime or serving time in prison are mothers, little research has focused specifically on whether and how the daily activity of mothering affects women’s criminal behaviour. On the one hand, criminalized women often report that parenting is important to them. If mothering reduces the opportunities to engage in crime, strengthens informal controls, and increases the costs of crime, it should discourage offending. On the other hand, the challenges of mothering are particularly onerous for women who are economically disadvantaged, marginalized, and socially isolated – that is, the types of women who are most likely to engage in crime. If children create an imperative for resources that women cannot accommodate legally while simultaneously exacerbating psychological and emotional strains, women may turn to criminal behaviour. Using a sample of 259 criminalized women, I explore the mothering-crime relationship by examining whether the daily responsibilities and demands of living with children affect month-to-month changes in women’s involvement in offending. Controlling for criminalized women’s relationships, socio-economic contexts, living arrangements, and leisure pursuits, I provide quantitative evidence about the relationship between mothering and property crime, drug use, drug dealing, and women’s use of violence against their intimate partners. I supplement this analysis with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with these women. Results indicate a non-uniform effect of mothering on criminalized women’s offending: living with children discourages women from engaging in property crime and using drugs, makes no difference to whether or not they deal drugs or engage in ‘mutual’ violence with intimate partners, and increases their use of ‘sole’ violence against intimate partners. I discuss why living with children is an important “local life circumstance” shaping variation in criminalized women’s commission of some, but not all, offences, and consider the policy implications of these findings.

As I write this piece, I wonder how I got here. I began with an interest in adolescent mental health services in schools. Then I was captured by autoethnographic writing and Carolyn Ellis became my hero. I read everything I could find regarding autoethnography and mostly I read autoethnographic stories. This led me to wanting to tell my own stories, but I realized they were very difficult stories to tell and very difficult stories to hear. I became interested in why certain stories are difficult to tell. I wanted to know what made them difficult stories. I wanted to understand why we tell certain things more easily than others or why we dont tell at all. I then became interested in secrets. I realized that my personal secrets were mostly about mothering. I wondered what it was about mothering that made these stories so difficult to tell. I wondered what was unique and specific to the secrets of mothering. I read extensively about mothering and motherhood. I was exhilarated when I found the work of Andrea OReilly and the Association for Research on Mothering at a book fair at a local conference. I had found another hero. Then I read Susan Maushart (1999) and Adrienne Rich (1986) and I became immersed in the search for meaning about motherhood, mothering, the masks of motherhood and the normative discourse of mothering. I realized there was a disconnect between the discourse of mothering and the actual practice of mothering. I also began to realize that perhaps the masks of motherhood and the normative discourse contributed to and perpetuated the secrets of mothering. I tell my own secrets of mothering to examine this phenomenon. And I tell stories that I never thought I would tell in a public forum. My stories look behind my cool and competent mask of motherhood (Maushart, 1999), and expose the raw emotions of my secrets of mothering. I am often vulnerable and naked and I ask readers to appreciate this in context of their own nakedness and vulnerability. An exploration of the discourse and practice of mothering, and the secrets related to that, offers a means to disturb the normative discourse of mothering and a means to unravel my secrets of mothering. I offer no solutions only hope and possibility that the disturbing and unraveling will guide mothers and parents to decide which mask to wear (or not) and which secrets to keep (or not) and perhaps to awaken readers to the social and political issues related to these stories (both mine and the readers). I introduce and provide the background for the dissertation through my positionality in Tomasulos chair. I will give no other explanation of the chair except to say that I move in and out of the chair as I explore the purpose of my dissertation and position myself within that exploration.

This study examines the traditional views surrounding Indigenous birthing and mothering, as well as the mother-child relationship cycle in contemporary Indigenous literature, and compares the traditional past to the contemporary present. Five contemporary Indigenous novels from four different American Indian and Indigenous Nations are included: Louise Erdrich's The Painted Drum (Ojibwe), Betty Louise Bell's Faces in the Moon (Cherokee), Dawn Karima Pettigrew's The Way We Make Sense and The Marriage of Saints (Creek), and Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors (Maori). Themes in the novels are studied individually and collectively, through the frameworks for literary analysis that Arnold Krupat terms nationalism, indigenism, and cosmopolitanism. Each novel will be analyzed first using Arnold Krupat's theory of literary nationalism, which suggests that in order to fully comprehend an Indigenous text, it must be explored using only a culturally-specific framework that focuses specifically on the Nation depicted within the novel. However, on a broader scope Krupat's literary theory of indigenism will addressed throughout this study, examining ways in which similar parallels within each selected text and Nation overlap to create common areas of study. Lastly, aspects of the mother-child relationship will be assessed using Krupat's theory of literary cosmopolitanism, which suggests that even though there are very unique aspects of Indigenous literature that must be viewed from a tribally-specific vantage point, there are also cosmopolitan, or common, elements within the human experience that link all individuals together like the act of birthing and mothering.

Northern British Columbian Aboriginal mothers raising adolescents with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) face many challenges. This interpretive ethnography provides an understanding of how these mothers interpreted and responded to their adolescents' FASD. It affirms the experiences of Aboriginal mothers and acknowledges their life stories and those of their adolescent children.The concepts of vulnerability, marginalization, and mothering, conceptualized within the theoretical perspectives of postcolonialism, provided the framework for this study. Postcolonial perspectives were particularly relevant to this research: the explicit aftereffects of colonialism on the well-being of Aboriginal women have shaped the worldview of mainstream society resulting in marginalization and stigmatization. A postcolonial perspective suggests that FASD is a problem compounded by colonization; until the underlying compounding issues are addressed, the incidence of FASD among Aboriginal people will continue to increase.English-speaking Aboriginal women with one or more children between the ages of 14 and 18 years affected by FASD were recruited for the study. Appropriate measures were taken to ensure trustworthiness, verisimilitude, and legitimacy. Data collection included three sequential audio-recorded interviews with eight women over a specific time. Interview data were enhanced by document review, intervals of observation participation, and the examination of other historically and culturally relevant data.The interpretive theory derived from the data, Mothering from the Margins, explains how Aboriginal mothers raise their adolescent children who have FASD. The theory provides a perspective that enables nurses to view mothers with adolescents affected by FASD in an all-encompassing manner, and unifies the experiences of participants mothering adolescents with FASD. Aboriginal mothers of adolescents with FASD continue to experience societal blame and marginalization for consuming alcohol during pregnancy. This study extends the knowledge of how this blaming and marginalization experience plays out in the lives of both mothers and children. The findings debunk the stereotypical myth that Aboriginal mothers are not good mothers. In fact, the findings from this study demonstrate how, despite all the difficulties and challenges faced by study participants, they have demonstrated adaptability, confidence, and care in their mothering roles.

The conceptual orientation of this study was informed by social ecology theory coupled with the concept of rural place, to investigate social processes embedded within the physical, social and symbolic environment affecting the health of rural grandmothers raising grandchildren. A modified grounded theory methodology was used to generate a middle range theory explicating the basic social process of rural grandmother-mothering. The Rural Grandmother-Mothering as Cushioning model explains how the rural place experience of the physical, social and perceptual environmental context influences the health of rural grandmothers raising grandchildren.This research has significance for the scientific community by demonstrating how place is fused with human experiences. Results can inform nursing interventions tailored to the unique social processes in rural settings and designed to promote the health of the increasing numbers of women engaged in grandmother-mothering.

Madness in women exists as a trope within the literature from the earliest of civilizations. This theme is evident and appears to possess a link with male dysfunction in several of Toni Morrison’s texts. Lack of maternal accountability has long served as a symptom of female mental instability as imposed by patriarchal thought. Mothers who have neglected or harmed their young across cultures and time periods have been forcibly branded with the mark of madness. Female characters in five of Morrison’s novels bear a striking resemblance to the female archetypes of ancient Greece. This paper will demonstrate the kindred strands of prescribed female madness in the women of the myths of ancient Greece and Morrison’s characters as it relates to neglectful mothering and male flight.