Prior research linking family structure with parenting often confounds the effects of family structure with the effects of family instability. In this analysis, I use data from the Fragile Families Study (N= 3107) to answer two main questions: (a) Are there differences in maternal stress and mothering behaviors across stably married, cohabiting, visiting, and single-mother families? and (b) Doe...

The article brings together the fields of mad studies (LeFrancois et al.), matricentric feminism (O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism) and critical disability (Goodley, “Dis/entangling Critical Disability Studies”). aim is to expose challenge “relations ruling” (Smith 79) that both produce discipline “mad mothers disabled children.” analysis begins by exploring un/commonalities emerging histories t...

Drawing upon the concept of culture as a “tool kit” from which social actors draw pragmatically, this paper explores the relationship between cultural definitions of good mothering and breastfeeding among middle-class, urban Chinese women. We argue that an emerging culture of “intensive mothering” that focuses on infant feeding is taking shape among privileged urban women. Based upon interviews...

ing from these five main categories, we found that “mothering is overwhelming” is the core experience of PPD symptoms for low-income women. The demands of parenting small children, along with mothers’ ambivalence, isolation, juggling, and real-life worries, converged to produce an understanding of PPD as feeling overwhelmed by both the material and emotional demands of mothering in the context ...

Quality of mothering relies on the integrity of multiple physiological and behavioral systems and on two maternal factors, one proximal and one distal, that have a great impact on how a mother mothers: postpartum depression and early experiences. To mother appropriately requires the action of systems that regulate sensation, perception, affect, reward, executive function, motor output and learn...

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...