1 - Becoming a Mother

Summary

This chapter sets the broader context for the book, which repeats a study on transition to first-time motherhood undertaken 21 years earlier. It asks what a new study on motherhood can tell us about how expectations and experiences are configured in harsher neoliberal conditions and digital landscapes that can empower and individually and experientially, undermine. In this first chapter, the context against which contemporary motherhood is experienced is compared to the earlier study. This chapter will also provide the theoretical and conceptual framework for the book through a focus on definitions and debates around motherhood and narrative construction, gender, and contextual, structural factors. The methodological details of the two qualitative longitudinal studies (which use the same research design) on transition to first-time motherhood are outlined in this chapter, setting the scene for the data presented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The chapter asks if it has ever been a more challenging time to be a woman who is also a mother.