The demographic literature has tended to interpret the postponement of childbearing, experienced in developed countries over the past three decades, as beneficial for families. As women who postpone their first birth accumulate resources before they become mothers, an increasing maternal age at first birth is expected to be positively associated with children’s wellbeing. Existing evidence is only partially able to support these arguments, primarily for two reasons. Firstly, the demographic literature has been mainly preoccupied with the social aspects of postponement, ignoring that, as showed by the medical literature, older childbearing may involve health complications and result in worse outcomes for children. Indeed, the link between postponement and child wellbeing may depend on how late the birth occurs. Secondly, the “weathering” hypothesis literature argues that the link between maternal age and child wellbeing is heterogeneous for population subgroups. Ethnic minority women may have fewer opportunities to acquire resources even if they postpone childbearing. Because of the disadvantage and racism they endure, they may experience a more rapid deterioration of their health, which implies that their children’s wellbeing might worsen, rather than improve, with increasing maternal age at birth. The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is that of investigating the way childbearing postponement is associated with family and child wellbeing by integrating and reconciling different perspectives on maternal age, which have so far been developed and applied relatively independently. The research focuses on the U.K. context, on first births and compares (children born to) Black and White mothers. The results, on average, support the arguments of the demographic literature as first born children of older mothers (30+) fare significantly better than children of younger mothers, although, consistent with the medical literature, the benefits cease to accumulate at particularly advanced maternal ages. However, consistent with the “weathering” hypothesis literature, the results suggest that when analysed separately for Black and White mothers, the association between maternal age and child wellbeing varies across these groups. Indeed, Black/White gaps in child low birth weight widen with increasing maternal age at first birth. The results also reveal that when Black mothers delay childbearing to older ages, they do not experience the same accumulation of resources as White mothers do, suggesting that childbearing postponement may reflect qualitatively different processes for these groups.

Aims. Research on women's health and the effects of multiple roles is associated with women's increased labour force participation in the post war period in the West. Competing theoretical approaches view women's work out of home either negatively or positively. Developing countries such as Iran, on their way towards industrialisation, are subject to socioeconomic changes similar to those in the West. This thesis investigates the extent to which the recently accelerated trend towards women's labour force participation in Iran affects women's health, either positively or negatively, and explores the relevance of Western theoretical approaches in a different cultural context. It is the first known study of its kind in Iran. Method. A primary survey was conducted of a representative sample of working and nonworking mothers in Tehran in 1998 (N=1065, 710 working mothers, with a response rate of 84.5% and 355 non-working mothers with a response rate of 88.1 %). Three main explanatory factors were examined (socio-demographic, work and work-related, and social-life context variables) alongside a range of mental and physical health outcome variables. Results. Unlike in the West, where women's paid work is generally associated with better health, statistically significant differences between working and non-working women were not found in Tehran. It is argued that this is a result of the counter-balance of the positive and negative factors associated with paid work, such as increased stress on the one hand and self esteem on the other. Iranian society's particular socio-cultural climate has contributed to this finding, with its dominant sex-role ideology; the priority and extra weight placed on women's traditional roles as wives and mothers, and the remarkably influential impact of husbands' attitudes on women's health. Among working women, however, significant improvements in health were related to certain factors: better psycho-social and physical conditions in paid work; higher occupational class; higher self-esteem; working outside the home, rather than doing paid work in the home; approval of paid work by husbands; and lower levels of role conflict.

Chapter One examines the literature on children’s experiences of domestic violence. The research reviewed indicates that within the same family children can have different experiences of domestic violence. Within the literature five common themes were identified; children’s experiences of abuse, responses to and effects of domestic violence, coping and sense making, impact on relationships and access to services and support. Children consistently experienced feelings of fear towards the perpetrator and a sense of responsibility for their mother’s well-being. Further qualitative research was recommended to identify different children’s resilience’s. Chapter Two explores the unique perspective of mother’s experiences of their relationship with their children within the context of domestic violence. IPA analysis indicated that domestic violence led the women to experience shame and see themselves as a ‘bad mother’. They attempted to distance themselves against this uncomfortable emotion by experiencing their child as a ‘bad child’. There were areas of resilience and agency as the women interviewed altered their parenting style and consequently their relationship with their child once leaving the relationship. Chapter Three provides reflections on the research journey. This includes the author’s experiences of methodological and ethical issues relating to conducting research with women who have experienced domestic violence, particularly with regards to the utilization of the principles of feminist and empowering methods.

Food retains a central importance in family life, which extends beyond its nutritional necessity. Through in-depth interviews with 39 mothers of pre-school children, this study focuses on how mothers negotiate the complex and competing priorities of feeding their children. Mothers are expected to feed their children, according to expert definitions of appropriate nutrition, whilst taking account of individual food preferences and structural constraints. The ways that feeding children intersects with the construction of ‘good’ mother or how mothers negotiate external information and advice on feeding their children has not been the focus of much research. This research considers these issues at a time when government policy remains focused on health, lifestyles and obesity. This study shows that mothers feel the responsibility of motherhood strongly whilst accepting their accountability. It also shows that feeding children is one of the main concerns of mothers of young children and one that occupies a great deal of time. By talking to mothers of different ages and living in different social circumstances, this study shows that all mothers accept the links between food and health and all take account of these links as they look to their children’s future health. All mothers seek external sources of information and advice but sources differ with mothers’ age and social class. Expertise is found not to be the preserve of those with formal qualifications as mothers talked of how expertise is negotiated. Mothers therefore work hard to negotiate their own versions of good motherhood through their food decision-making. By focusing on the aspects of feeding children that are considered the most important at any given time, mothers are able to negotiate their own sense of good motherhood.

Considered one of the most controversial phenomena produced by the processes of economic globalization, the expansion of the sex industry and the radical shift in its composition and organization have received much attention in the last two decades, both academic and political. My research aims to interrogate the largely unexplored transformations that have affected the urban geography of prostitution and the evolution of local regulatory systems. In the context of a metamorphosis of the local sex markets, coincided with the accelerated growth of international women’s migration from the last decades of the century, these pages present an original empirical study on the relationship between prostitution, communities and local authorities in the major cities of the Italian region of northeast: the Emilia-Romagna. The survey focuses on street prostitution and observes three processes that in the last twenty years contribute to the crisis of the existing ones and the production of new urban regulation of sex work: 1) the settlement of migrant prostitution in the geography of territory; 2) the impact of spatial configurations of street prostitution on the communities; 3) the institutional mediation carried out by the local policy makers (first of all the Majors) on the effects of globalization of the sex market in the urban context. The comparison between cities is based on the hypothesis that the geopolitical dynamics between the different territorial systems operate as an organizing principle in the production of specific rules and practices on the prostitution issue.

My thesis comprises three papers on individuals' preferences over family composition and the degree to which these are culturally determined, or learnt. Prices, Norms and Preferences: The Influence of Cultural Values on Fertility This paper investigates the influence of cultural values on fertility. High country of origin fertility is associated with high fertility in the UK, in line with previous results. This is consistent with fertility preferences being a transmissible (learnable) cultural value. However, I find that high fertility in the country of origin is also associated with earlier childbearing. If timing is not accounted for, this phenomenon could lead to an upward bias when estimating the importance of cultural values. Son Preference and Culture I measure the sex preferences of immigrant women in the United Kingdom by estimating the effect of family composition on birth hazard rates. International comparisons of son preference are constructed, the first known to the author. A theoretical model suggests that costs (e.g., dowries) are unlikely to explain the variation in outcomes between groups. Finally, women arriving in the UK at a young age appear to have less distinct tastes, also consistent with a primarily cultural, rather than economic, explanation for parental sex preferences. Son Preference and Sex Ratios: How many 'Missing Women' are Missing. When parents prefer sons, heterogeneity in the probability of having sons can lead to excess girls. I argue that this may lead to under-counting the number of 'missing women'. Parents show significant differences in son preference between countries. I exploit these differences to simulate sex ratios in the presence of measured heterogeneity. Parents' son preferences account for 1.5% of differences between sex ratios worldwide (significant at 10%). The presence of this effect may imply that sex ratios are more biased than previously estimated, since previous comparisons use benchmarks that already contain too few girls. Therefore there may be more women missing due to discrimination than we thought.

The present dissertation takes late postwar Japan as its case study and investigates the ways in which ambivalence to/in motherhood’ emerges at the very site where maternal violence and, more specifically, maternal filicide disrupts social norms of acceptable maternal behaviour. In 1970s Japan the number of cases of mothers who killed their own children saw a dramatic increase to the point of reaching, within media representations in particular, the dimension of a social phenomenon. Within the framework of idealizations of maternal identity, formulated in terms of continuous love, self-sacrifice and domesticity, filicidal mothers came to be labelled as either "bad" (cruel, monstrous) or "mad" (mentally unstable, neurotic). The apparent proliferation of maternal child-killing and what was perceived as the unjust treatment meted out to these criminalized mothers became a major concern for a new women’s liberation movement emerging in Japan between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, known as ūman ribu (woman lib). Ribu contested the widespread characterization of mothers who kill as either devilish or mentally ill, and drew on the numerical increase of cases of maternal filicide as evidence of a symptomatic malfunctioning of the dominant gender ideology in modern Japanese society. Postwar Japan also witnessed a boom in women’s literature whose focus on the grotesque, on worlds of dreams and madness and on the morbid portrayal of female antisocial behaviours constituted fertile terrain for the proliferation of disquieting images of motherhood and maternal violence. This thesis focuses on the work by Japanese writer Takahashi Takako as a specific case study to address the discursive construction of filicidal mothers in women’s literature. This study acknowledges motherhood as a heated site of contested meanings and focuses on a close textual reading of media coverage, the rhetoric of ribu and women’s literature in order to explore the discursive constructions of mothers who kill which characterised early 1970s Japan. It sheds light on the problematic interactions between the different discourses under consideration and identifies the relationship between motherhood and violence as a hot-spot where clashing discourses produce a constant re-articulation of maternal and female identity.

The historical social positioning and exclusion experienced by disabled people, particularly disabled women in Western society, is profound. Traditional disability research methods and theoretical approaches are built from a combination of fear and ignorance, reflecting myths and misconceptions about the 'abnormality' and 'dysfunction' of disability. People with disabilities remain largely invisible and 'out of place'. Many disability researchers adopt a 'colonial' perspective toward disability and arguably fail to engage with disabled people in a substantive manner other than as a particular type of limitation or possible candidate for correction. Quantitative disability data provides a rudimentary reference source from which a medicalised one-dimensional profile of disability has developed, but information gaps and methodological weaknesses with such data can readily be identified. This thesis is hence a qualitative critical disability survey examining the timing and spacing realities of lives for women with physical disabilities. The social context of disability in public/private space is thereby examined for the perspectives of disabled women. The fluidity of embodied geographies, disability, and impairment are explored, moving well beyond individual incapacity in the workplace and looking at wider social perceptions and attitudes. Through a series of in-depth interviews developed in conjunction with the involving twenty women in Scotland and twenty in Canada, the interconnections of education, community and workspaces are explored in relation to disability policies. The 'voices' of women in disabilities remain at the forefront, and what emerges are rich contextual profiles of women making spaces on their own terms, allowing new insights into proactive policy interventions.

The thesis is an ethnographic study exploring understandings of love and intimacy amongst young middle class Indians of Gujarati origin living in the UK and India. It is based primarily upon repeat in-depth interviews, and participant observation. A two site comparative study was used to enable an understanding of how social and economic contexts shape cultural constructions of intimate relationships and sexuality. I explore these issues through the narratives of men and women who are either single, in the process of courtship/pre-marital relationships, or are recently married. The study is informed by recent work in the 'political economy of love' and Giddens' thesis on the 'Transformation of Intimacy‘. I examine to what extent young Gujaratis aspire to or are moving towards a more individualized, companionate and 'western' model of relationships, and whether such a 'transformation' impacts on the gender relations between husband and wife. I argue that while global ideologies of romantic love are pervasive, they are interpreted by informants within local understandings of appropriate marriage and relationships. As such, informants in Baroda, India are negotiating new forms of courtship which fit in with the ideals of love, but also with more traditional aspects of arranged marriage as a system of status maintenance. They want to be in love with their future spouse, but only within socially acceptable models of endogamous marriage. In contrast in the UK love marriage is idealised over arranged marriage. Informants distanced themselves from any sense of 'arrangement' in their relationships, which seemed to call into question for them the veractiy of their love. The social context of the UK both supports and facilitates love marriage amongst young people, while the converse is true in India. Largely men and women in both contexts appeared to have similar aspirations for their relationships, though women were likely to be more in favour of egalitarian values. What this meant was interpreted differently in India and the UK. In neither setting, however, was gender equality fully realised in the lives of the informants due to both structural and normative constraints.

This thesis attempts a sociological and feminist analysis of anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is an illness which affects predominantly women, and its incidence is greatest among middle-class young women in Western countries. Its strong bias along class and gender lines suggests that such an approach to the illness could prove fruitful. The thesis argues that analysis of anorexia demands a clear understanding of the sociology of the body. The sociology of the body sees the body as constructed in social life: understandings of the body vary temporally and culturally, and reflect the categories of their culture. It is suggested that anorexia nervosa represents an attempted transformation of the concept of the feminine body in contemporary culture. Anorexic women aim to transcend appetite, and to allow no intrusions into the body, constructing an anorexic body which is closed, separate and inviolable. Since this transformation is individuated and privatised, however, it cannot ultimately succeed in overturning a system of social meanings. The thesis concludes that individual solutions to anorexia will not lead to the end of the illness as a social phenomenon in the lives of women. Only collective feminist action can reconstruct the degraded contemporary concept of woman. The argument is pursued firstly through a discussion of the initial use of the term `anorexia nervosa' in the late nineteenth century by Gull and Lasegue. The treatment of anorexia as a modern disease is discussed, and the claim that anorexia has always existed but has not been recognised is refuted. Psychiatric and feminist accounts of anorexia are then considered. The former see anorexia as a purely individual phenomenon, and the limitations of this position are discussed. Feminist analyses of anorexia, in seeing it as deeply intertwined with women's social position in a patriarchal culture, are argued to advance understanding of the illness, while still retaining individualist elements. The next section analyses the ways in which anorexic women themselves explain their illness. This leads on to a discussion of the notion of the body as concept. After a theoretical outline, several body-concepts are analysed and placed in their social and historical contexts. Contemporary understandings of the body as an individuated possession are then discussed, with particular focus on the concept of the feminine body as passive object. Objectification, discipline and chaos are argued to be the central meanings of the feminine body in contemporary culture. Analysis of the issues of abortion and rape seek to make this theoretical point clearer. A detailed analysis of anorexic practices looks at how these meanings are transformed in anorexia. It is suggested that anorexic women try to construct an inviolate anorexic body which is completely under their control through a complexly ritualised eating pattern. The precarious nature of this control points to the limitations of individual `solutions' to social problems.