Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka professionellas perspektiv, föreställningar och upplevelser av att arbeta med missbrukande mödrar. Sex professionella intervjuades och det empiriska materialet analyserades utifrån teorierna symbolisk interaktionism, genus teori, skam och skuld samt stigma. Studiens resultat indikerar att det fortfarande finns genusspecifika stereotyper i samhället gällande mödrar och som negativt påverkar behandling för missbrukande mödrar. Studiens resultat visar att professionellas attityder, kunskaper och föreställningar om mödrar i missbruk är av stor vikt för mödrarnas villighet till behandling, men de är även viktiga för tillgängligheten av behandling. Respondenterna anser även att en mer familjeorienterad syn, där både mödrarna och barnen är i fokus för behandling och där mödrarnas komplexa livssituation tas i beaktande, är viktigt för mödrarnas tillfrisknande. / The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives, views and experiences professionals have of working with mothers in addiction. Six professionals were interviewed, and the empirical data was analyzed with Symbolic interactionism, Gender theory, Shame, Guilt and Stigma. The result of the study indicates that there are still gender specific stereotypes in society regarding mothers that negatively affects treatment for mothers suffering from addiction. The results also show that the professional’s attitudes, knowledge and views of mothers in addiction are of great importance to the mother’s willingness and accessibility for treatment. The respondents also believe that a more family oriented approach to treatment, where both the mother and child’s complex situations are in focus, is of importance for the mothers recovery.

Police organizations have a problem retaining female police officers, especially those who are mothers. Women leave the policing profession at higher rates during childbearing and child-rearing years than during any other time in their career. Using feminist theory as a foundation, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain a deeper understanding of the lived experiences of policewomen who are mothers and identify factors that contribute to poor retention rates during childbearing and child-rearing years. Data were collected through 11 interviews with policewomen, who were also mothers, in Ohio. These data were analyzed using Saldana's 2-cycle coding procedure followed by thematic analysis. The findings included a set of patterns that provided insight into the reasons why female police officers are more difficult to retain. These patterns included: (a) challenges related to a double standard associated with women being primary caregivers, (b) psycho-social changes after children including hypervigilance on the job, (c) fear of reassignment or termination, and (d) the perception that departmental policy fails to address the unique needs of female officers. Together, the findings suggest that police departments today have yet to fully understand the challenges that policewomen who are mothers face on a daily basis. The implications for social change include reformed policies and practices that could contribute to the advancement and professionalization of the policing profession as a whole by changing the traditionally masculine organizational culture and promoting a more gender-neutral environment, thus allowing communities to benefit from having a more diverse police force.

This study explored the lives of lesbian mothers with children conceived through insemination or the adoption process in an effort to understand the conflicts they encountered along their journey to motherhood and how they managed those conflicts. The qualitative study included in-depth interviews conducted with six participants. The participants’ ages ranged between 25-60 years old. Interview results were analyzed to explore participants’ narratives in regards to their experiences, relationships, identities and transformation into motherhood. This research highlights significant ongoing developments in the field of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) studies and seeks to intersect the boundaries between interpersonal and sociopolitical conflicts with the phenomena of lesbian-mothered families. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this research provides a contribution to the interdisciplinary field of conflict resolution with a focus on the central research question: What is the common experience shared among lesbian mothers in their transformation to motherhood? The key findings of this study interrelate with themes of interpersonal conflict, role conflict, and sociopolitical conflict. The conclusions contribute to the field of conflict analysis and resolution, expand upon recent developments on LGBT family systems, and suggest new areas for further examination from the perspective of conflict analysis scholarship.

By examining critically poems in which Sylvia Plath’s speakers appear as daughters, wives, and mothers, this study situates Plath as an artist operating within Romantic and Modernist traditions of exemplary suffering. The thesis offers, on the one hand, a line of inquiry that accounts in part for the nature of the enduring Romantic interest in Plath, the synonymy of her cultural iconicity with pain or struggle, the way she has been read as an exemplary sufferer. On the other, it indicates Plath’s own self-conscious involvement in the Romantic tradition, the way she participates in and complicates that lineage by imbuing it with Modernist, feminist concerns. The thesis thus clarifies some vital, historico-artistic dimensions of Plath’s position as artistic sufferer (what qualifies it as exemplary), and scrutinizes the workings of suffering within the selected poems, the specifics of Plath’s exemplarity. Three thematic banners spanning across the poetic body of work are demarcated: representations of the daughter, representations of the wife, representations of the mother. All three denote major sites of conflict (agons), sites of struggle. They make for volatile, generative, provocative loci showing poetic engagements with suffering; as such, they highlight the gendered nature of the preoccupation. These categories are investigated as evolving narratives, trajectories that can be traced from the early stages of Plath’s poetic career right up until its end. Within each category special attention, in the form of a close reading, is given to select poems regarded as emblematic of a particular facet in the unfurling narrative. The study maps out and evaluates the manifestations, forms, and functions of a suffering whose genesis lies in prominent literary-historical traditions. / Thesis (PhD (English))--University of Pretoria, 2021. / English / PhD (English) / Restricted

dissertation thesis: Construction of motherhood and feminity in the three generations Author: Mgr. Romana Marková Volejníčková This dissertation aims to analyze the norms of "good" motherhood, discourses, and social practices related to these norms, and their connection and interrelationship with the issue of agency and women's/mothers' free choice under specific conditions over the course of three defined periods. In particular, in this study, I focused on the prevalent conditions (be it legislation, i.e. family and social policies, expert discourses in the field of psychology, demography, pediatrics, etc., but also societal expectations of women within family and employment) during the three defined periods. I analyzed how individual standards of "good" motherhood and "proper" child care are defined and conceived under these circumstances, in which the interviewed mothers carried out their motherhood projects. Furthermore, I focused on what choices mothers could make in these normative conditions, what choices they considered available to them and realistic in each one period, and whether some of the mothers' personal traits may have bolstered or diminished their ability to make informed choices concerning their motherhood project. In the three periods examined, the manifestations of biopower...

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Motherhood has been set up as an institution of control over women by the patriarchy. Dominant ideas of motherhood and what constitutes being a good mother are steeped in patriarchal ideals and conceptual thoughts. What is absent from ideas of motherhood is the female lived experiences of mothering. Mothering, by contrast, is the conceptual understanding of what it means to be a mother from a women-centered perspective. Under the dominant discourse of motherhood, mothers are self-sacrificing, generous, calm, patient, and loving. Those mothers who do not meet these standards are constructed as "bad mothers," reinforcing a binary understanding of mothers. This paper challenges the good/bad mother binary by drawing on the lived experience of one mother who uses substances to demonstrate the judgmental road mothers are forced to walk. This thesis takes a feminist-based approach to explore Ruth's story: a mother who engages in substance use. This research is produced through a feminist ontology to add to a body of scholarship that works to create a counter-discourse for mothers from mothers against dominating patriarchal norms of motherhood. A Narrative case study methodology is applied to Ruth's story to extrapolate the complex realities Ruth faces as she attempts to make sense of her mothering identity within the patriarchal definition of the "good mother." While engaging in substance use, Ruth's mothering story produced four themes that facilitate understanding mothering from a holistic, women-centric lens. First, this research emphasizes the barriers Ruth experiences in building, understanding and maintaining her sense of self. Second, Ruth's story illuminates the impact of the dominant "good" motherhood discourse on how women like Ruth conceptualize themselves as a mother. Third, Ruth's story enables the exploration of the intersectional identities of mothering and substance use in a way that creates space for both identities to work together rather than in opposition. Lastly, reflecting on the surveillance Ruth has endured in relation to her family and interactions with child welfare, her story reveals how discourses of risk are connected to and associated with substance use. Through the exploration of Ruth's mothering experiences, a narrative is produced to challenge and disrupt the oppressive institution of motherhood. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This paper conducts a critical comparison of the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné, Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria and Joséphine Bonaparte. These women instruct their daughters through a writerly exchange that implements a remarkably similar use of language that indicates a “performance” of her maternal role, meant to implement a personal or political agenda that requires the daughter’s acknowledgement and reciprocation. This project explores theories of speech acts and subjectivity to conduct a literary analysis of the construction of the maternal figure in a historical context, its representation in the letters of each woman with their daughters, the motivations for a “performance” of the maternal role, and the subsequent characterization, reaction, and liberation of the daughter’s voice.

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