Using found poetry extracted from in-depth ethnographic interviews, this study seeks to explore the experiences and imaginations of eleven Muslim mothers of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), particularly focusing on their religio-educative, child-rearing roles. With strikingly spatial language, participants describe themselves in terms of heroines and poets, while also expressing overwhelming feelings of failure to fulfill self-defined “ideal” motherhood. Using poetic inquiry, this research moves beyond apparent paradoxes, offering the concept of poetic spaces –in-between spaces that are fluid and transformative, navigating everyday truths in relation to religious Truths- to demonstrate the complexity of mothers’ imaginations. This work is also part of a small yet growing line of inquiry, seeking to explore Muslim imagination from an aesthetic perspective, rather then through a predominantly legal lens. Within this small yet important area of inquiry, this work is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on Muslim mothers. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Thesis advisor: Ellen Lewin. Includes bibliographic references (p. 275-293).

Yes / In this age of ‘intensive motherhood’, new mothers are flooded with information on the best ways in which to raise their children. One of the key issues is infant feeding, in particular, the timing and method of weaning their children onto solid food. This paper examines a new approach called ‘baby-led weaning’ (BLW) in which the child feeds themselves instead of being spoon-fed, that came into popular parenting culture in recent years, considering the ways in which it is represented in National and International newspapers. The media search database Proquest International Newsstand, was searched for ‘baby-led weaning’, producing an eventual sample of 78 articles from a number of countries. The articles were subjected to a critical discursive psychological analysis. The key themes that emerged from the newspapers focused around two main areas; the infant as agentive in their eating behaviours; and, constructions of maternal identities and resisting ‘good motherhood’.

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This thesis is an examination of the process of learning to mother as experienced by women in Scotland between 1945 and 2004. The research involved interviews with mothers and their adult daughters – the latter also being mothers – as well as consulting archival sources and contemporary, professional advisory material available either to the mothers or to professionals who interacted with mothers.

This thesis is a memoir of the women in my family and their relationship to motherhood, both adoptive and biological. The primary source of this work is memory and is contextualized within the Caribbean culture. The process of interpreting these memories relies on narrative, cultural, and life history theory that disarticulate ideas of motherhood found in North America from those in the Caribbean. The beginning chapters are a personal memoir of motherhood while the end chapters are analyses of the theoretical foundations of what I have explored. In the last chapter, I reflect upon the personal process of writing memoir. There is no equivalent study of the perception of the adoptive mother versus the biological mother in the Caribbean. These stories of my family contribute to our understanding of motherhood in the lives of women of color in the Americas, many of which have been missing from history's larger narrative. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Abstract THE PIE REDEMPTION THEORY/WHEN THE FLOOD COMES HOW WILL YOU CHOOSE By Julie Hutchison Geen, MFA A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing, dual genre at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University July 2018 Director: Tom De Haven, Professor of Creative Writing, English Department The following document is the first 144 pages of a novel developed over the past three years at Virginia Commonwealth University. It is a dark comedy exploring the complexities of modern motherhood and marriage. Beginning on page 145 are 60 pages of creative nonfiction titled “When the Flood Comes How Will You Choose,” developed over the past three years at Virginia Commonwealth University. It is an excerpt of a longer work exploring the evolution of a love relationship with a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder after a twenty-year marriage to a man.

Recent scholars have identified a phenomenon known as the motherhood wage penalty with research demonstrating that women with children face wage discrepancies beyond those associated with being female. This project adds to our understanding of non-wage-related penalties by investigating two distinct gatekeeping stages: screening and interviewing. I asked do employer hiring practices create barriers to mothers’ access to jobs? To answer this question, I used a novel mixed-methods approach, combining a dual-state audit study with qualitative employer interviews. I framed my study using the status theory of motherhood, which suggests that whenever motherhood is salient in the labor market, mothers will face discrimination. This study is the first of its kind in the field of motherhood and organizational discrimination. In phase one, I completed an audit study in two states: Utah and California. Each week, I applied for 10 jobs in each state using two fictitious applicants for a total of 40 resumes per week. This resulted in 960 applications (480 companies) over a 24-week period. I then randomly selected employers in each state for a total of 27 interviews, allowing me to speak directly with hiring managers regarding their employment practices. Throughout this project I identified employer bias at both the screening and interviewing stages. This included three key mechanisms: employers’ ideal expectations for their workers, the subjective assessment of both soft skills and family responsibilities, and the employment gap inquiry. Findings also varied by state suggesting that the salience of motherhood may be impacted by larger cultural and policy contexts resulting in varied labor market outcomes.

The notion that pregnancy can, for some women, be a time of unhappiness and depression has only recently been recognized in media and by the general public. Researchers and clinicians have begun to study antenatal depression with regards to prevalence, associated factors, and treatment. Most of the research regarding antenatal depression has been quantitative in method. Qualitative inquiry would provide the rich description of womens lived experience and meaning of antenatal depression. A hermeneutic phenomenological study was conducted with six women who scored 10, 11, or 12 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, indicating mild to moderate symptoms of depression. Participants were interviewed individually regarding their experiences of depression during pregnancy. Data generated in the form of transcripts were analyzed and five themes emerged: disconnection vs. new connection and/or reconnection; loss of identity vs. new identity; fatigue and illness vs. vitality and wellness; anxiety and insecurity vs. confidence and security; and sadness and hopelessness vs. joy and expectation. The overarching shared meaning of these experiences was ambivalence. Findings provided rich, thick descriptions of the lived experience and meaning of antenatal depression. Future research and implications for counselling practice are discussed.

The notion that pregnancy can, for some women, be a time of unhappiness and depression has only recently been recognized in media and by the general public. Researchers and clinicians have begun to study antenatal depression with regards to prevalence, associated factors, and treatment. Most of the research regarding antenatal depression has been quantitative in method. Qualitative inquiry would provide the rich description of womens lived experience and meaning of antenatal depression. A hermeneutic phenomenological study was conducted with six women who scored 10, 11, or 12 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, indicating mild to moderate symptoms of depression. Participants were interviewed individually regarding their experiences of depression during pregnancy. Data generated in the form of transcripts were analyzed and five themes emerged: disconnection vs. new connection and/or reconnection; loss of identity vs. new identity; fatigue and illness vs. vitality and wellness; anxiety and insecurity vs. confidence and security; and sadness and hopelessness vs. joy and expectation. The overarching shared meaning of these experiences was ambivalence. Findings provided rich, thick descriptions of the lived experience and meaning of antenatal depression. Future research and implications for counselling practice are discussed.