Mothering without smothering

Mothering to death.

Three families are described in which the healthy only child was, from early childhood, put to bed and treated as if ill, dependent, and incapable. This abnormal mothering continued for 28, 45, and 48 years, respectively, and the children died as disabled adults. In each case, the three mothers evaded medical, educational, and social services. The origins of their behaviour are examined, and th...

Mothering Your Unborn Baby

Shading and Smothering of Gamma Ray Bursts

The gamma ray burst (GRB) 980425 is distinctive in that it seems to be associated with supernova (SN) 1998bw, has no X-ray afterglow, and has a single peak light curve and a soft spectrum. The supernova is itself unusual in that its expansion velocity exceeds c/6. We suggest that many of these features can be accounted for with the hypothesis that we observe the GRB along a penumbral line of si...

Mothering Here and Mothering There: International Migration and Postbirth Mental Health

Over 125,000 women immigrate to Canada yearly-most in their childbearing years and many having given birth before immigrating. We sought to (1) examine the background characteristics and mental health profile of women separated from their children due to migration and subsequently giving birth in Canada ("dual-country (DC) mothers") and (2) contrast these with those of "non-dual-country" migran...

Prosodic smothering in Macedonian and Kaqchikel

This paper deals with a so-far unnoticed phenomenon in prosodic phonology, which we dub prosodic smothering. Prosodic smothering arises when the prosodic status of a clitic or affix varies with the presence or absence of some outer morpheme. We first illustrate prosodic smothering with novel data from two genetically unrelated languages, Macedonian (Slavic) and Kaqchikel (Mayan). We then provid...