The DOI matches its Crossref record; 39 of the 39 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Supermum, superwife, supereverything: performing femininity in the transition to motherhood
Abstract
The aim of this qualitative study was to comprehend how mothers understood and accounted for their experiences in relation to the ideology of motherhood which has been socially constructed as a critical aspect of femininity. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 24 primiparous and multiparous women, and transcripts analysed using open and axial coding with triangulation. Using a material‐discursive approach to interpret the data, two higher order themes are presented: ‘the realization of new motherhood’ and ‘coping with new motherhood’. These themes demonstrate how unprepared for motherhood the women were and how their expectations were based on various myths of motherhood. This led to feelings of inadequacy as they struggled with the myth versus reality discrepancy. However, they could not be seen to be inadequate and therefore employed greater efforts to portray themselves as supermum, superwife, supereverything and hide the opposite. These findings are interpreted within the context of the social construction of femininity and how it is performed within motherhood. Implications for antenatal and postpartum care are discussed.
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Cites
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Cited by
McLeish, J., & Redshaw, M. (2017) · BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth · doi:10.1186/s12884-017-1220-0 · Cited by 257
Becoming a Mother: The Influence of Motherhood on Women's Identity Development
Laney, E. K., Hall, M. E. L., Anderson, T. L., & Willingham, M. M. (2015) · Identity · doi:10.1080/15283488.2015.1023440 · Cited by 219
Morrell, C. J., Sutcliffe, P., Booth, A., Stevens, J., Scope, A., Stevenson, M., Harvey, R., Bessey, A., Cantrell, A., Dennis, C.-L., et al. (2016) · Health Technology Assessment · doi:10.3310/hta20370 · Cited by 155
Self-citationSilverio, S. A., Sheen, K. S., Bramante, A., Knighting, K., Koops, T. U., Montgomery, E., November, L., Soulsby, L. K., Stevenson, J. H., Watkins, M., et al. (2022) · International Journal of Qualitative Methods · doi:10.1177/16094069221124739 · Cited by 140
Staneva, A. A., Bogossian, F., & Wittkowski, A. (2015) · Midwifery · doi:10.1016/j.midw.2015.03.015 · Cited by 136
Metadata
- Authors
- Choi, P., Henshaw, C., Baker, S., & Tree, J.
- Venue
- Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2005-05
- Volume
- 23
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 167-180
- ISSN
- 0264-6838 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-672X
- OpenAlex
- W2089362138
- Cited by
- 334
- References
- 39
- FWCI
- 14.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
