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"Based on interviews conducted from before conception through to after the child's birth, this book maps out the social norms that shape experiences of new parenthood. It will equip those in gender studies, psychology, and sociology with a detailed understanding of what it means for heterosexual couples to become parents"--
List of contents
1. Introduction; 2. Undertaking a Qualitative Longitudinal research study with intending parents; 3. Motherhood moralities; 4. Birthing experiences; 5. Emotion work in the transition to motherhood; 6. Development of a parental identity; 7. Views about having more children; 8. Changes in the couple relationship over time; 9. Grandparents navigating shifts in relationships and identity; 10. Reflecting on the study findings and experience.
About the author
Damien W. Riggs is a Professor of Psychology at Flinders University, Australia. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and a psychotherapist who specialises in work with trans children. He has authored more than twenty books, including Diverse Pathways to Parenthood: From Narratives to Practice (2020).Clare Bartholomaeus is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Flinders University, Australia. Her previous books include Home and Away: Mothers and Babies in Institutional Spaces (with Kathleen Connellan, Clemence Due, and Damien Riggs, 2021) and Transgender People and Education (with Damien Riggs, 2017).
Summary
All too often heterosexual first-time parents are treated as the unmarked norm within research on reproduction. First-Time Parenting Journeys maps out what it means to be situated within the norm, while providing a critical account of how social norms about parenthood shape, regulate, and potentially delimit experiences of new parenthood for heterosexual couples. Based on qualitative longitudinal research, this book tells the story of journeys to parenthood, highlighting the impact of gender norms, moral claims, emotion work, and generativity. While drawing on Australian data, the critical conceptual framework has broader applicability across Western contexts in terms of understanding normative family structures and parenting practices. By focusing on expectations about, and the reality of, new parenthood, it explicates the ways in which institutionalised norms about parenthood are internalised and explores what this can tell us about the broader contours of parenthood discourses.
Foreword
Presents stories of Australian heterosexual couples to explore social norms about reproduction in the transition to first-time parenthood.
