Making motherhood work

Motherhood can be a critical moment in the making of gendered biographies, and in the negotiation of a gendered division of labour within a household. This paper draws on the 'Making of Modern Motherhoods' study, which combined interviews with a diverse group of expectant first time mothers and family case studies in order to build an intergenerational and longitudinal perspective on contemporary mothering situations within the UK. In this paper, the category 'work' is used as a lens through which to encounter new motherhood. After contextualising working motherhood in relation to a sociological literature the paper draws on interviews undertaken with women towards the end of their pregnancy with their first child to reveal something of the emergent collision of working and maternal identities, women's experiences of being pregnant at work including the anticipation and managing of maternity leave. The second part presents a case study, which animates the personal drama involved in reconciling working and maternal commitments, tracing how a woman's feelings about work change over time in negotiation with partner, family and the market. As Sue Sharpe observed in her 1984 book on working mothers, 'full-time mothering has never been accessible to all women in the same way at the same time' (1984: 22). Social class, locality and migration shape a range of cultures of mothering within which work features very differently. Divisions exist between women who share a generational location as well as between women of different generations. This complexity is revealed through a juxtaposition of the voices of mothers and grandmothers, which show how work may both, divide and unite women in the project of motherhood

Thinking intergenerationally about motherhood

This paper draws on The Making of Modern Motherhoods study, which explores how a contemporary generation of women are creating motherhood, and how intergenerational dynamics of mother daughter relationships can provide insight into the interplay of historical, biographical and generational processes. The study combines an intergeneration and longtitudinal research design, building 12 case studies from an initial interview sample of 62 expectant first time mothers. The paper begins with a review of the conceptual tools employed within the study in order to make sense of rich empirical data, including memory, generation, co-existence and configuration. These themes are then realised through a detailed case history of the Calder family – tracing the impact of the arrival of a new generation. This thick description enables us to see beyond the individual towards the historically contingent configuration that is a ‘family’. By counter posing the horizontal dimensions of the generation against the vertical dimension of historical process and intergenerational change it is possible to capture a sense of how people live, creating change in order to establish continuity. The paper concludes by exploring the contingency of formations of mothering and their connectedness over time, through reflections on the interplay of historical, generational and biographical temporalities

Day-in-a-life microethnographies and favourite things interviews

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Figuring Families: Generation, Situation and Narrative in Contemporary Mothering

This paper contributes to the theme of the special issue by identifying concepts that both embody relationality and have the capacity to address and articulate temporal processes. Based on an empirical study of first time motherhood, we offer a sensitising conceptual framework which privileges the temporal, scaffolding the macro socio-historical with the micro personal and subjective. The study combines longitudinal and intergenerational approaches to develop an understanding of maternal experience as it unfolds, while forging connections between individual biography, generational investments and intergenerational dynamics. Drawing on a conceptual tool kit from life history, cultural studies, social psychology and sociology, we profile two biographical case studies as an illustration of our approach. Our analysis of their contrasting experiences as 'young' and 'old' mothers demonstrates the salience of key conceptual terms including 'generation', 'situation' and 'narrative' and how this conceptual framework can both map and animate accounts of contemporary mothering.Motherhood; Generation; Situation, Narrative

Shifting the Blame: Systemic Issue, Individual Responsibility

Sexual violence continues to be a pervasive issue on university campuses. The introduction of Ontario’s Bill 132, which mandates that all Ontario universities maintain a policy on addressing sexual violence involving students, indicates an awareness of the need to confront this issue. However, the existing literature demonstrates a need to understand how universities are engaging in addressing sexual violence by identifying whether the policies address the systemic factors that legitimate sexual violence societally and how universities incorporate sexual violence prevention strategies into their policies. This paper employed Foucauldian-informed critical discourse analysis using an intersectional feminist and anti-colonial framework to analyze the publicly available sexual violence policies and associated annual reports from a sample of Ontario universities. While this analysis demonstrated a general awareness by the universities of the link between various systems of oppression and sexual violence, the language of the sexual violence policies did not demonstrate meaningful efforts to address these systems of oppression at a structural level. This lack of structural analysis allows for the persistence of several common rape culture narratives, such as a reliance on carceral processes to deter violence and the use of language which perpetuates victim blaming discourses. Moreover, these narratives were found to inform the violence prevention approaches being employed by the universities, resulting in an effective assignment of responsibility to the individual to manage a systemic issue. This paper concludes with a discussion of what it means to “shift the blame” and the need for post-secondary institutions to meaningfully engage in intersectional and anti-colonial approaches in order to eradicate all forms of gender-based and sexual violence

The making of modern motherhoods: Storying an emergent identity

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New frontiers in QLR: definition, design and display

Research that is attentive to temporal processes and durational phenomena is an important tradition within the social sciences internationally with distinct disciplinary trajectories. Qualitative longitudinal research emerged as a distinct methodological paradigm around the turn of the millennium, named within the UK through journal special issues, literature reviews and funding commitments. In 2012-3 the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods funded a network for methodological innovation to map ’New frontiers of QLR’, bringing together a group of scholars who have been actively involved in establishing QLR as a methodological field. The network provided an opportunity to consolidate the learning that has developed in QLR over a sustained period of investment and to engage critically with what QLR might mean in new times. This paper documents the series of discussions staged by the network involving the definition of QLR, the kinds of relationships and practices it involves and the consequences of these in a changing landscape for social research. The series was deliberately interdisciplinary ensuring that we engaged with the temporal perspectives and norms of different academic and practice traditions and this has both enriched and complicated the picture that has emerged from our deliberations. In this paper we argue that QLR is a methodological paradigm that by definition moves with the times, and is an ongoing site of innovation and experiment. Key issues identified for future development in QLR include: intervening in debates of ‘big data’ with visions of deep data that involve following and connecting cases over time; the potential of longitudinal approaches to reframe the ‘sample’ exploring new ways of connecting the particular and the general; new thinking about research ethics that move us beyond anonymity to better explore the meanings of confidentiality and the co-production of research knowledge; and finally the promotion of a QLR sensibility that involves a heightened awareness of the here and now in the making of knowledge, yet which also connects research biographically over a career, enriched by a reflexive understanding of time as a resource in the making of meaning

Key ecological sites of Hamilton City: Volume 1

Ecological sites of significance previously identified in 2000 were reviewed in 2011. Natural vegetation in areas acquired by the city since 2000 was also surveyed to identify any new key sites. In total seventy key sites that met the Waikato Regional Council Regional Policy Statement criteria for ecological significance were identified across Hamilton City. Of the original key sites, the total area covered by sites, average site size and overall quality of sites had increased between the 2000 and 2011 surveys. This was due to restoration efforts across the city by Hamilton City Council and the community. Vegetation restoration efforts have had other biodiversity and ecological benefits such as providing additional habitat for the city’s increasing tui population. Key sites are not spread evenly across the city or across landform types. Most key sites are either in gullies or adjoining the Waikato River. Less than 1% of urban alluvial plains and peat bogs are key sites. Two sites on private land have degraded and no longer meet the ecological significance criteria in 2011. The current survey utilised a standard methodology focused on vegetation types. There will be other significant sites not identified including sites with significant fauna values but a detailed and costly survey would be required to identify all such sites. The 1.5% of the city area covered by key sites is well below the 10% minimum recommended to prevent biodiversity decline in urban areas. Areas where vegetation restoration has begun in the city have the potential to expand existing key sites or develop new sites if council and community efforts continue in the future. The Council and its restoration partners should continue to seek ways of increasing native vegetation cover in Hamilton City and restoration of the distinctive gully landform remains the best option

Reproductive Biology and Ecology of the Endemic New Zealand Tree Ixerba brexioides (tāwari)

This research investigated the ecology of Ixerba brexioides (tāwari) with regard to pollination, breeding strategy, seed biology, and forest composition. Research was focused around three main questions: 1. How is tāwari pollinated with regard to vector and pollen source? How is it adapted for this? 2. How is seed dispersal of tāwari achieved and under what conditions is germination most successful? 3. What are the dominant community associations of tāwari what how are they constrained by environmental variables? The first research question was addressed using video surveillance, nectar analysis, and artificial pollination experiments in a small tract of tāwari forest at Tūī Ridge Park in the Mamaku Range, North Island, New Zealand. Analysis of 125 hours of video footage showed that tāwari is predominantly insect pollinated with occasional bird visitation. The most frequent flower visitors were flies and nocturnal moths. Tāwari nectar volume peaked at midday, and declined toward the late afternoon, before increasing again at dusk. This pattern of nectar secretion followed closely the activity patterns of flies during the day and moths at night. Nectar sugar concentration was 11% on average (range 3% to 20%) which is considered low, but is suited to moths, bats, birds, and bees. Exclusion experiments demonstrated that tāwari is capable of producing viable seed under cross-fertilisation, self-fertilisation, and agamospermy. Breeding system indices demonstrated that tāwari is medium pollen limited (PLI = 0.31), self-compatible (SCI = 0.93), and autonomously selfing (ASI = 0.65). Question two was addressed by video surveillance of tāwari seed capsules, morphological observation, and by a series of germination experiments. Video failure meant that with limited footage (mostly at night) no dispersal activity was captured on film. However, using available literature and observations of seed morphology birds were considered the most probable effective disperser. Germination trials included standard conditions, shade, seeds left in fruit, seeds deposited on soil surface, and seeds buried at 5 cm soil depth. Germination was most effective in the buried treatment (average 85% germination) and the soil surface treatment (average 75% germination). Cluster analysis and NMS (Non-Metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling) ordination of 641 plots of tāwari forest from the NVS (National Vegetation Survey) database was used to assess the community associations of tāwari. Based on plot species assemblage, the analysis showed four main forest types that are largely separate in geographical space: Northland, Coromandel, Kaimai, and Urewera. Each type had significant indicator species that were constrained in range by latitudinal limits. Recent literature suggests that environmental variables that most influence tāwari forest distribution are annual temperature and rainfall in conjunction with solar radiation. Tāwari forest occupies only areas which are cool and moist, and seedlings are biased toward high light conditions. In the central North Island tāwari had the highest probability of occurrence in sites with a mean annual temperature of 11° to 13° Celsius, mean annual rainfall between 2000 and 2250 mm annually, and mean solar radiation of 143 to 145 MJ m2 per day. Parent material also plays an important part, especially the depth of Taupō Pumice deposits as tāwari forest is more prone to occur in areas of mature soil where depth of volcanic deposits is not excessive. Information on tāwari from the present thesis combined with other published and unpublished sources is presented in the form of a New Zealand Biological Flora Series journal contribution. Recommendations for further research on tāwari and New Zealand reproductive biology in general are given