- Title
- (M)other love: cultural difference and gendered practices in Queensland, Australia
- Creator
- McCallum, Toni
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- This thesis seeks to extend existing understandings of mothering practices, behaviours and beliefs in contemporary Australia; the research provides an account of the meanings a culturally diverse group of women and men drawn from different class backgrounds ascribe to their ‘mothering’ practices. Samoan and Burundian mothers and working-class mothers living in the Brisbane suburb of Logan; privileged, White, middle-class mothers living in Ascot; and stay-at-home fathers, drawn from across the Brisbane region describe, in their own words, their lived experience of mothering. The project employed grounded theory and a broadly ethnographic approach, underpinned by a feminist epistemology. The data was gathered from 32 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with the three groups of participants over a period of three years, combined with ethnographic immersion in the research sites over extended periods. The findings show that in the Logan community, mothering and ‘othermothering’ are prevalent in Samoan, Burundian and working-class families and function as a kind of social citizenship: obligation and duty are the main underpinnings of this mothering work and women define themselves through others in this work. In contrast to the communal mothering at Logan is the much more singularised form of mothering practised by the White, privileged mothers of Ascot who practice an upper-middle class form of ‘intensive mothering’. The Ascot stay-at-home mothers show evidence of a “re-traditionalisation” of their gendered role as mother and wife within their marriages in terms of taking primary responsibility for raising children and running their households. This is contrary to the “detraditionalization of marriage” in the discourse of “individualization”, the theory of social change in late modernity in Western contexts, that proposes that individual agency rather than traditional ties and family obligations propels individuals to act. The thesis compares and contrasts patterns of work and attitudes toward work among the women in Logan and Ascot. Work is found to be an extension of, as well as complementary to, their mothering; and, thus, not an antithesis to it. The financial and cultural resources available to the professional, middle-class working mothers in Ascot and the extensive extended family support given to mothers in Logan support this integration of a work and mothering identity. Attitudes toward work and the women’s relationship to work and family responsibilities are examined with particular emphasis given to Hakim’s preference theory (2000) on women’s work and care choices. The findings from the research into stay-at-home fathers asks whether men ‘mother?’, and the findings demonstrate the ways in which men build gendered constructions of their stay-at-home father identity. Men argued that this identity is undervalued and stigmatised. It is suggested that a new conceptualisation of stay-at-home fathering is required to do justice to this life choice and parenting style. Overall, it is argued that within the diverse practices of mothering in contemporary Australia the structures of culture, class and gender continue to strongly affect the kinds of mothering women and men engage in, and the attitudes they have toward it. Integration of paid work and mothering in women’s identities and the desire for a new type of fathering identity add to our understanding of contemporary childrearing practices.
- Subject
- motherhood; stay-at-home father; Queensland; stay-at-home mother; maternal practices; childrearing; othermothering; communal mothering; Black mothers; community mothering; working-class mothers
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1386316
- Identifier
- uon:32395
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Toni McCallum
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 4 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 64 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |