The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in London, England: An online focus group study.

Aims: This study examines the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on postpartum mothers in England, with the aim of identifying opportunities to improve maternal experience and wellbeing. The postpartum/postnatal period is widely acknowledged as a time when mothers require greater levels of support from multiple sources. However, stay-at-home orders, commonly known as "lockdown," deployed in some countries to limit COVID-19 transmission reduced access to support. In England, many postpartum mothers navigated household isolation within an intensive mothering and expert parenting culture. Examining the impact of lockdown may reveal strengths and weaknesses in current policy and practice. Subject and methods: We conducted online focus groups involving 20 mothers living in London, England, with "lockdown babies," following up on our earlier online survey on social support and maternal wellbeing. We thematically analysed focus group transcripts, and identified key themes around Lockdown Experience and Determinants of Lockdown Experience. Results: Participants raised some positives of lockdown, including fostering connections and protection from external expectations, but also raised many negatives, including social isolation, institutional abandonment, and intense relationships within the household. Potential reasons behind variations in lockdown experience include physical environments, timing of birth, and number of children. Our findings reflect how current systems may be "trapping" some families into the male-breadwinner/female-caregiver family model, while intensive mothering and expert parenting culture may be increasing maternal stress and undermining responsive mothering. Conclusions: Facilitating partners to stay at home during the postpartum period (e.g., increasing paternity leave and flexible working) and establishing peer/community support to decentre reliance on professional parenting experts may promote positive postpartum maternal experience and wellbeing. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-023-01922-4.

Narratives of Gendered and Racialized Carework: Feminist Faculty of Color Organizing During the Pandemic

Inspired by feminist narrative and the Latin American tradition of testimonio, this paper is grounded in the lived experiences of the four authors as academics, mothers, and organizers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on women of color feminisms and theorizing anti-racist feminist understandings of motherhood as a political identity, we examine how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated challenges faced by parenting and caregiving faculty, especially those positioned at the intersection of multiple structural vulnerabilities. The COVID-19 tipping point presented both unsustainable challenges for parenting and caregiving faculty and opportunities for collective support and organizing as parents and caregivers. We participated in collective organizing with other academic parents and caregivers, most of whom are mothers, as we shared our struggles and organized to respond to changing conditions. We examine the ways in which undervalued, gendered, and racialized labor in the workplace merged with unpaid gendered labor in the home, highlighting how the pandemic brought caregivers-those providing care through their undervalued paid labor and unpaid household labor-to a crisis point. We also highlight the ways in which the organizing that began around parenting and caregiving faculty, who have been disproportionately overburdened during the pandemic, was in addition to and in the context of ongoing activism around other forms of structural violence. Finally, we conclude with a call for structural change at the institutional level to address the exacerbated racialized and gendered equity gap caused by the pandemic.

Troubling gender norms on Mumsnet: Working from home and parenting during the UK's first COVID lockdown

This article examines the troubling of gender norms that unfolded on the social networking site, Mumsnet, at the beginning of the UK's first lockdown response to the COVID pandemic. Using an analysis of 7144 contributions which included the acronym ‘WFH' (=working from home), posted from March 1, 2020 to April 5, 2020, the article examines how Mumsnet members talked about working from home while caring for toddlers and home‐schooled children. Mumsnet discussions about everyday moral dilemmas create a discursive space for examining the situated rationalities and normative judgments that shape expectations of how to behave as a working parent. Drawing on post‐structuralist discourse theory, the article shows how Mumsnet contributors generated alternative sub‐categorizations of ‘good mums', and destabilized discourse assumptions of intensive motherhood, such as always ‘being there' for their children, thereby ‘working the weakness in the norms' (Butler, 1993) and creating potential for change.

Mothering load: Underlying realities of professionally engaged indian mothers during a global crisis

The current global crisis has had a significant impact on professionally engaged mothers and the proliferation of the invisible nature of the work that they are engaged in on a daily basis. Several research studies have indicated how mothers seem to have been particularly affected. Mothers experienced an exacerbation in their domestic household and child-care responsibilities due to the absence of househelp and other child care arrangements while balancing their professional careers. These challenges crystallized the existing gender inequalities and the gendered nature of parenting. Using a feminist lens, this study explores the experiences of mothering load during COVID-19 against the backdrop of urban India. A total of two themes and six sub-themes were identified through the process of thematic analysis-Triad of work included increased care work, increased formal work, and increased worry work and Mothering experiences: Burdens and Biases included the lack of support, parental role overload, and gendered nature of parenting. This study adds to the limited empirical evidence of working mothers in India while straddling the worlds of feminism and mental health activism. Findings indicate the need to explicitly highlight the invisibilized phenomena of unpaid care work, worry work, and the gendered nature of parenting that contribute to the larger experience of mothering load. The findings also point toward acknowledging the importance of maternal mental health and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 to establish and enforce stronger policies around recognizing and appreciating unpaid care and domestic work to promote gender equality and empowering women at all levels. This may be enacted through the encouragement of shared responsibilities within the household and family units as contextually feasible and through the development of appropriate infrastructure, social protection policies, and the delivery of public services. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

The cost of good mothering: Associations between intensive mothering, maternal well-being, and parenting experience

This three-paper dissertation aims to contribute to the growing literature of intensive mothering by providing empirical evidence on the links between endorsement of intensive mothering ideology on parenting-specific psychological well-being and parenting experiences. The first paper focuses on understanding the associations between the endorsement of intensive mothering, involvement in childcare, mental health symptoms, and parenting-specific psychological well-being, and whether mothers' demographic characteristics moderate these associations. Findings of this study illuminate how the message that mothers should engage in parenting behaviors that align with intensive mothering beliefs in order to achieve the status of "good mother" is linked with parenting experiences of mothers of young children. The second paper aims to extend previous studies on intensive mothering and maternal well-being by investigating the existence of different patterns of endorsement of intensive mothering beliefs and whether those different patterns are associated with maternal demographic characteristics, parenting guilt and parental burnout. This study employs Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify intensive mothering profiles based on mothers' endorsement of the five sub-beliefs of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ;Liss et al., 2013). Findings of this study highlight the heterogeneity of endorsement of intensive mothering beliefs and help understand who may be at greater risk of experiencing poor psychological outcomes linked with intensive mothering. The third paper investigates longitudinal associations between intensive mothering and self-reported changes in mothers' parenting behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, including examining parental burnout as a potential mediator of these associations. Findings of this study provide insight into how feelings of burnout may serve as a risk pathway that explains the impact of subscribing to intensive mothering on parenting behaviors during stressful times, such as the global pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Emotions of burden, intensive mothering and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy

Addressing mothers' vaccine hesitancy, which is a state of indecision rather than refusal, may become critical to public health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Extant research separately examines how intensive mothering ideology and emotions interact with childhood vaccine hesitancy;however, little is known about the emotions at the intersection of motherhood and vaccine hesitancy. To address this, we seek to understand the emotions experienced by COVID-19 vaccine hesitant mothers who experience the societal pressures arising from the ideology of intensive mothering. Interviews (n = 30) were conducted with women in Australia who identify as mothers and self-report to have concerns about COVID-19 vaccination of their children. The findings suggest 'emotions of burden', specifically fear of being a 'bad mother' and anticipated guilt about failing to be a 'good mother', are experienced by mothers striving to meet societal expectations of intensive mothering though their vaccination decision. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of mothers' experiences in making vaccination decisions for their children and lends further empirical support to critiques of intensive mothering ideology as well as public perceptions of vaccine hesitant mothers. Practically, public health campaigns that avoid intimations of 'bad mothering' and acknowledge how emotionally burdensome the COVID-19 vaccination decision can be for vaccine hesitant mothers are indicated.Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The Burdened Burdensome Woman: A Poststructural Feminist Analysis of Discussions of The New York Times' Homeschooling Gender (Dis)Parity Article

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept America in 2020, schools closed and families shifted to children learning online from home. This labor was dominantly covered by mothers, many of whom still had careers to maintain. A 2020 New York Times article reporting on the homeschooling shift concluded with the polarizing declaration that while women did most of the labor associated with homeschooling, men did not perceive the gender imbalance. Guided by a critical feminist lens, the authors examined the comments posted in the article's comment section to unpack the discourse. Western society places pressure on women to flawlessly perform motherhood and other tasks simultaneously;as such, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a context rich for further subjugation and subordination of pink-collar work. © 2022 Southern States Communication Association.

Chicana Motherscholar and the Rise of the Resistance During Times of COVID

For motherscholars, M(other)work cannot be disjointed. I use the Chicana M(other)work framework to chart juxtapositions of my mothering and scholaring. I rely on testimonios that deepen the coexistence of mother and academician identities. I examine the ways that these responsibilities overlap and strengthen to give rise to my resistance stance of Chicana M(other)work in a COVID-19 context. I draw on Chicana M(other)work to elucidate the entanglements of mother-scholar and the discomforts that arose from attempting to segregate identities, working against what I developed to be my identity as a mother in the workforce. I explore the ways in which I was participating in a separatist social narrative and how these testimonios highlight the false belief that I was a mother-scholar rather than a motherscholar.

Poems Upon Reading "Say Goodbye to the Toddler Stars of the Pandemic Office Zoom" in Bloomberg Law.

I wrote the poems that comprise this work after reading a news article about the changing expectations of remote work and childcare. The article is ostensibly about negotiating the terms and expectations of remote work, yet it also read to me like a manual of maternal erasure. The message quickly evolves into making first care-work and then mothers disappear. The poems span from free verse, to limerick, to villanelle, concluding with a poem that, as its title announces, is not a poem at all. All are meant to speak(back) to discourses around mothering, care, and labor in the United States.

The Burdened Burdensome Woman: A Poststructural Feminist Analysis of Discussions of The New York Times’ Homeschooling Gender (Dis)Parity Article

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept America in 2020, schools closed and families shifted to children learning online from home. This labor was dominantly covered by mothers, many of whom still had careers to maintain. A 2020 New York Times article reporting on the homeschooling shift concluded with the polarizing declaration that while women did most of the labor associated with homeschooling, men did not perceive the gender imbalance. Guided by a critical feminist lens, the authors examined the comments posted in the article's comment section to unpack the discourse. Western society places pressure on women to flawlessly perform motherhood and other tasks simultaneously;as such, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a context rich for further subjugation and subordination of pink-collar work.

The cost of good mothering: Associations between intensive mothering, maternal well-being, and parenting experience

This three-paper dissertation aims to contribute to the growing literature of intensive mothering by providing empirical evidence on the links between endorsement of intensive mothering ideology on parenting-specific psychological well-being and parenting experiences. The first paper focuses on understanding the associations between the endorsement of intensive mothering, involvement in childcare, mental health symptoms, and parenting-specific psychological well-being, and whether mothers' demographic characteristics moderate these associations. Findings of this study illuminate how the message that mothers should engage in parenting behaviors that align with intensive mothering beliefs in order to achieve the status of "good mother" is linked with parenting experiences of mothers of young children. The second paper aims to extend previous studies on intensive mothering and maternal well-being by investigating the existence of different patterns of endorsement of intensive mothering beliefs and whether those different patterns are associated with maternal demographic characteristics, parenting guilt and parental burnout. This study employs Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify intensive mothering profiles based on mothers' endorsement of the five sub-beliefs of the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ;Liss et al., 2013). Findings of this study highlight the heterogeneity of endorsement of intensive mothering beliefs and help understand who may be at greater risk of experiencing poor psychological outcomes linked with intensive mothering. The third paper investigates longitudinal associations between intensive mothering and self-reported changes in mothers' parenting behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic, including examining parental burnout as a potential mediator of these associations. Findings of this study provide insight into how feelings of burnout may serve as a risk pathway that explains the impact of subscribing to intensive mothering on parenting behaviors during stressful times, such as the global pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Stuck between Mother Earth and a mother’s womb? On women, population policy and ecological sustainable development

This article considers how the metaphor of Mother Earth, for women, concerns a dual stance of both belonging and distance. The link between women, nature and Mother Earth is problematised by considering the possible, or contested, link between population growth and climate change, and the South African population policy specifically is considered as an example. Ecofeminism’s challenge to the perceived connection between women, motherhood and Earth, that is the ‘distance’ stance, is considered and a response to that is offered by reflecting on Mercy Oduyoye’s notion of mothering, which represents the ‘belonging’ stance. In this regard, an intercultural approach to the definition of motherhood is implied. It is ultimately indicated that for women to reclaim their own agency regarding a perceived responsibility towards nature, it is necessary to deconstruct and reconstruct ‘motherhood’ to free themselves from being stuck between Mother Earth and a mother’s womb. Contribution: This article makes a contribution to feminist studies at the intersection of gender roles and the climate crisis, as it relates to population growth and an intercultural definition of motherhood. It contributes to UN’s sustainable development agenda as it relates to both SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 13 (climate action).

Maternal self-conception and mental wellbeing during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative interview study through the lens of "intensive mothering" and "ideal worker" ideology.

Mothers tended to be responsible for most of the (additional) caregiving and domestic tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously having to pursue their work duties. Increased role conflicts, parenting stress, and exhaustion predict adverse mental health. We aimed to examine how women referred to and made sense of dominant gender norms in their arrangements of pandemic daily life and how these beliefs impacted their maternal self-conception. Qualitative interviews with 17 women were analyzed through the lens of "intensive mothering" ideology and "ideal workers" norms, emphasizing notions of maternal guilt rising from a perceived mismatch between the ideal and actual maternal self-conception. We found that mothers' notions of guilt and their decreases in health link to dominant discourses on motherhood and intersect with "ideal worker" norms. As such, these norms amplify the burden of gendered health inequalities.

Impact of COVID-19 on Women Who Are Refugees and Mothering: A Critical Ethnographic Study.

Refugee women often experience trauma and social disconnection in a new country and are at risk of experiencing reduced physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Globally, COVID-19 has affected the health and well-being of the population at large. This critical ethnographic study aimed to explore the effects of COVID-19 on women who are refugees and mothering in Saskatchewan, Canada. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 27 women who are refugees and mothering young children aged 2 years and under. This study suggests that during COVID-19, refugee women are at high risk of experiencing add-on stressors due to isolation, difficulty in accessing health care, COVID-19-related restrictions in hospitals, limited follow-up care, limited social support, financial difficulties, and compromised nutrition. During COVID-19, collaborative efforts by nurses, other health-care professionals, and governmental and non-governmental organizations are essential to provide need-based mental health support, skills-building programs, nutritional counseling, and follow-up care to this vulnerable group.

‘The children, the family, the household, and myself, these made the quarantine up for me, and I was really happy with it’ – positive evaluations of the first COVID-19 lockdown among middle-class Hungarian mothers

During the first COVID-19-related lockdown in the spring of 2020, working parents of young children were in difficult situation when having to manage the multiple burdens. In the studied societies, unpaid household tasks are considered to be primarily female responsibilities, intensive mothering ideals are widespread, and the access to flexible-work arrangements is marginal. In present study, we demonstrate how the above characteristics, created a context, in which – despite the difficulties – participants could evaluate this period overall positively during the first lockdown. Fifty-two interviews were conducted with partnered Hungarian mothers living in Hungary and in Transylvania (Romania), in May–June 2020. Since the home-sphere became the main scene of life during the lockdown, women’s caregiving role has increased in worth. Performing it well provided them an increased wellbeing benefit, and it helped them to evaluate the lockdown period positively. They appreciated having the longed-for opportunity to telework, which enabled enacting intensive mothering in a better accordance with social expectations than before the pandemic. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Family Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Motherhood in Academia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An International Online Photovoice Study Addressing Issues of Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education.

Combining motherhood and academic work in higher education has been discussed for decades with the pandemic further exposing the inequalities. This crisis has significantly impacted the daily life of mothers in academia as they devote more time to keep their careers on track, produce papers, and take on other parenting and schooling responsibilities. This paper employs photovoice as an online methodology to document the real-life experiences of 68 women from nine countries who work and parent children in the sudden transition to remote working and learning environments. By explaining the photographs from their perspective, the participants in this study were able to capture their lived experiences, discuss working from home while guiding children in online learning, and create suggestions for ways academic institutions can alleviate gender inequality. The article explores the critical issues of academic work and childrearing drawing international attention to address issues of equity and inclusion in higher education among researchers, policymakers, and institutions.

"The workload is staggering": Changing working conditions of stay-at-home mothers under COVID-19 lockdowns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the home as a work environment, but the focus has centered on the experiences of paid workers. Stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs), for whom the home was already a workplace, have received little attention. This article explores how pandemic-induced lockdowns impacted SAHMs' working conditions and their experiences of childrearing. Combining a Marxist-feminist conceptualization of domestic labor with a labor process framework, we performed a qualitative content analysis of vignettes SAHMs shared about their day-to-day domestic labor in an online mothering community. Our findings show that, under lockdown conditions, the primacy given to partners' paid work combined with children's increased demands for care and attention reduced SAHMs work autonomy and exacerbated gender inequalities in the home. Combining labor process theory with literature on motherwork illuminates the home as a gendered work environment and enhances understanding of how changing conditions of domestic labor can intensify gender inequalities (and workers' awareness of them) that typically remain "hidden in the household."

When home becomes classroom: The shifting roles of Korean immigrant mothers in the management of children's education during COVID-19 in the US.

COVID-19 has disrupted women's lives by increasing their childcare and household labor responsibilities. This has detrimentally affected immigrant women with limited resources, who invest in their children's education for upward mobility. Based on a content analysis of 478 posts on the MissyUSA website, this study explores the ways in which Korean immigrant mothers in the U.S. navigate the management of middle and high school children's online education during lockdown. Before the pandemic, mothers' tasks were largely limited to scheduling and coordinating private-paid after-school programs that occurred outside the home. However, the pandemic transformed mothers into active coordinators of public middle and high school classes and of private online tutoring, and de facto schoolteachers at home. This breakdown of boundaries between the home and tasks normally relegated to the outside world has burdened mothers with augmented roles managing the ordinary functioning of their children's education during the pandemic.

Are there any changes in mothers' attitudes? Analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 quarantine on child-rearing attitudes.

The present study aims to examine the impact of the time spent by mothers at home with their children during the quarantine period that was implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic on the mothers' child-rearing attitudes, taking into consideration some variables and the experiences of mothers. The study was designed using embedded mixed design, in which qualitative and quantitative research methods were used together. The quantitative research group consisted of 673 mothers and the qualitative research group consisted of 16 mothers. The research data was gathered online using the Lime Survey platform, and the interviews with the mothers were also held online. Demographic information form, the Child Rearing Attitude Scale, and a semi-structured interview form were used as data collection tools. Moderator variable analysis was used for the quantitative research data and descriptive analysis was used for the qualitative research data in support of the quantitative data. The findings revealed that the mothers' child-rearing attitudes changed depending on the variables concerning the children; however, the quarantine period instituted due to COVID-19 had an impact on the mothers' child-rearing attitudes depending on the variables of age and number of children. The qualitative findings obtained from the interviews supported the quantitative findings. However, it was revealed that the mothers' attitudes towards their children underwent changes during the quarantine period under COVID-19.

Mothers' and fathers' parenting attitudes during COVID-19.

Attitudes about parenting are derived from early socialization of gender role norms and often include intensive parenting beliefs, which give mothers an outsized role in parenting. This study examined the differences in intensive parenting beliefs among cisgender mothers and fathers during the United States COVID-19 response. Data from a sample of 1048 mothers and fathers were collected during March and April 2020 to understand parenting beliefs. Results indicated that some demographic factors, including gender and ethnicity, impact intensive parenting beliefs. Additionally, the number of COVID-19 cases in a state, along with school closure length, was related to intensive parenting beliefs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01605-x.