Becoming a Mother, 2005-2007

<P>Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.</P><br>This is a qualitative dataset. <br>
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This research project aimed to contribute to theoretical, methodological and policy understandings of the changes in women’s identities in the process of becoming mothers for the first time. It addressed questions central to the Economic and Social Research Council Identities and Social Action research programme objectives: the mutual influence of intra-psychic and social worlds, the negotiation of self in relation to others, the universal and culturally particular, continuity and change, the processes of identification, agency, regulation and positioning in structures and discourses. The research gave equal emphasis to the psychological and social worlds of the participating mothers and aimed to pioneer methods that allow both to be studied as part of the same questions.<br>
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Aims and objectives of the study were:<ul><li>to contribute to theoretical understandings of women’s identities during the transition into motherhood</li><li>to examine empirically the co-articulation between motherhood and ethnicised, racialised, age-related, kin-related, class and socio-economic status-based, national and gendered identities in first-time mothers</li><li>to develop innovative qualitative methods appropriate to psycho-social identities research</li><li>to contribute to community-based professionals' understandings of first-time mothers from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds</li><li>to contribute to the programme psycho-social concepts and methods useful to the theorisation of identification in social science identities research</li></ul>Further details about the study are available in the user guide.<br><B>Main Topics</B>:<BR><br>Changes in women's identities in the process of becoming mothers, changing relationships with their babies and with others in their social worlds, Free Association Narrative Methods, cultural and ethnic diversity, and social identity.<br>