We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
In this chapter, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on new motherhood amongst the contemporary sample are examined through ‘diary’ entries (shared by email, WhatsApp messages or voice notes) shared by participants between April 2020 and May 2021. The pandemic resulted in daily living for many being concertinaed into available rooms in homes, as spaces and time were redefined. Taken-for-granted and minutiae aspects of daily living were suddenly apparent to those not normally involved in these tasks and family, caring and work dynamics shifted. The ‘diary’ entries focus on responses to the first and subsequent lockdowns and restrictions experienced between lockdowns when restrictions continued across the UK (e.g., face coverings, limits on numbers allowed to convene and where, access restricted to some places, childcare and schools being periodically closed). The unique situation and real-time, unfolding responses illuminate several things, including how aspects of perceived good mothering are hard to escape and continue to be invoked to frame individual experiences, including examples of what they perceive to be ‘poor’ mothering (‘too much screen time’) as well as resilience and coming through the trials of lockdown. The hard work of an unremitting sense of maternal responsibility is crystalised through this exceptional year.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.