Motherhood

As the competing demands of care and paid work become increasingly complex has there ever been a more challenging time to be a woman and a mother? Comparing two studies conducted across two generations Motherhood explores women''s experiences of becoming first-time mothers. Through richly narrated real-time accounts of transition Tina Miller examines what has changed since her original study was conducted twenty-one years ago. Using sociological and feminist perspectives she analyses how motherhood has further intensified against a harsher neoliberal backdrop.The book examines the social political and moral contours in which motherhood is situated which in the contemporary context include ideas of planned labours and work/life balance as part of potent maternal prenatal imaginings. Birth continues to change everything and the qualitative longitudinal and comparative data show these ideas to be mostly illusory.