Many employers assess their workforces with gendered and racialized imagery that can put groups of workers and applicants at a disadvantage in the labor market. Based on 78 interviews with white employers in Atlanta, the author reveals that some employers use a complex but widely shared stereo-type of Black working-class women as single mothers to typify members of this group. These employers use this single-mother image to explain why they think Black women are poor workers, why they (...) think Black women are reliable workers, and why they think Blacks are poorly prepared for the labor market. In focusing on these white employers' claims, the author concentrates not on the well-documented out-comes of labor market discrimination, such as differential rates of pay and promotion, but on how employers construct and use the images that may from the basis of it. This is especially relevant amid current attacks on affirmative action programs. (shrink)

Today, the business world has embraced increasing uncertainty and abrupt changes. The concern for business owners is business sustainability, which is crucial for their business to remain relevant and flexible in unpredictable business environments. The process of change forces business owners to be ready for any consequences that affect their business. Due to overwhelming tasks and responsibilities, single mothers may need help to succeed in business. The present research offers a comprehensive review of business continuity from the perspective (...) of single mothers. Within the scope of this research is an exhaustive and methodical investigation of the business acumen of single mothers as entrepreneurs. A literature review was conducted, and the findings may offer a comprehensive discussion of several dimensions of entrepreneurial competency. The findings contribute new information to the existing body of knowledge regarding entrepreneurial competency, which has been a recurrent topic of discussion among earlier academics who have explored the subject matter to investigate. At the end of this paper, practising entrepreneurial competency with single-mother entrepreneurs has several implications. These findings can be applied and utilized by single-mother entrepreneurs, as well as by the government, industry, and the community. (shrink)

Aurora P. Jackson and Richard Scheines. Single Mother's Efficacy, Parenting in the Home Environment, and Children's Development in a Two-Wave Study.

This article offers a feminist deconstruction of legitimacy regarding the intentional decision by midlife independent single women to enter solo parenthood. Data collection involved interviews with 26 single mothers by choice and two years of participant observation in two Single Mothers by Choice support groups. Their accounts indicate that SMCs feel entitled to enter solo motherhood because they possess four essential attributes: age, responsibility, emotional maturity, and fiscal capability. SMCs use economic, moral, and religious justifications (...) to further legitimize their decisions. These justifications allow SMCs to present themselves as competent, ethical, and mainstream mothers. (shrink)

Single mothers spark what Nancy Fraser calls “needs talk,” the language for translating daily life into professional practice and social policy. The author analyzes expert needs talk in 709 case vignettes, published in the United States between 1900 and 1988, in which experts turn single mothers into “file persons,” the basic unit of bureaucratic welfare management. The author shows how expert needs talk in these sources determines single mothers' worthiness for philanthropic or government support (...) according to their conformity with historically specific notions of proper womanhood. Demographic, political, institutional, and especially professional changes help explain the observed shifts in expert needs talk and the social construction of single motherhood. (shrink)

This article examines the uneven welfare support accorded to Black and white women at the end of the twentieth century. The author analyzes the generosity of Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits in the 48 contiguous U.S. states in 1970, 1980, and 1990 to determine if the state is less supportive of Black than white women. The author argues that the race-biased policies and procedures implemented with the inception and expansion of the welfare state remained throughout the program, resulting (...) in uneven levels of support for Black and white families. More specifically, the author demonstrates that the generosity of AFDC is lower in states with a larger proportion of Black single mothers and higher in states with a larger proportion of white single mothers. These findings are relevant in the current period because such institutionalized race inequalities perpetuate white privilege and Black women's poverty. (shrink)

A single mother is a person who is accountable for raising their children alone because they do not have a husband or live-in partner. Single mothers claim to have no co-parenting relationships at all, comparing single parents to those who are married, cohabiting, or without children, single parents experience the worst work-life balance. A single parent may feel overwhelmed by the demands of juggling child care, a career, paying bills, and maintaining household responsibilities. (...) class='Hi'>Single-parent households frequently deal with several extra obligations and possible complications that other families would not. The study also emphasizes the difficulties and coping mechanisms faced by contractual single parents as well as their lived experiences. The study's findings, which were based on an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, were as follows: (1) Work-life balance can be difficult for single parents. They struggle to keep their jobs while taking care of their family because they are the only ones in charge of the children. (2) Single contractual mothers face particular difficulties due to a lack of resources for basic expenses. (3) Contractual single women lean on their kids, the good people in their lives, and their faith in God to get through problems. (shrink)

Relative to gender, race, and class, age relations are undertheorized. Yet age, like gender, is routinely accomplished in daily life. Grandmothers and adult daughters simultaneously do age and gender as they support one another in managing paid work and domestic responsibilities. Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with 90 single mothers and 30 grandmothers in Russia, I explore intergenerational negotiations for support. Both single mothers and grandmothers are held accountable for doing gendered age, but labor and (...) marriage markets tip the balance in favor of single mothers. Single mothers re-create youth privilege, finding their lives simpler with a babushka. Some grandmothers embrace newer discourses of femininity, challenging assumptions about age and family status that oblige them to perform care work. But most grandmothers do whatever they can to help daughters, feeling more dependent than ever on them because of the uncertainties of capitalism and the state’s retrenchment. I contribute to theories of age and gender intersectionality by making visible both single mothers’ youth privilege and grandmothers’ unpaid, often devalued, care work. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to gain an in-depth understanding of the eating lives of low-income single mothers in Japan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine low-income single mothers living in the three largest urban areas (Tokyo, Hanshin [Osaka and Kobe] and Nagoya) in Japan. Framed by the capability approach and sociology of food, their dietary norms and practices, as well as underlying factors that impact the norm-practice gap were analysed across nine dimensions: meal frequency, (...) place of eating, meal timing, duration, persons to eat with, procurement method, food quality, meal content and pleasure of eating. These mothers were deprived of various types of capabilities, extending not only from the quantity and nutritional aspects of food, but also to spatial, temporal, qualitative and affective aspects. Aside from financial constraints, eight other factors (time, maternal health, parenting difficulties, children’s tastes, gendered norms, cooking abilities, food aid and local food environment) were identified as influencing their capabilities to eat well. The findings challenge the view that food poverty is the deprivation of economic resources required to ensure a sufficient amount of food. Social interventions that go beyond monetary aid and food provision need to be proposed. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of (...) adult-level household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

ObjectivePrevious research has shown that adolescents in single-mother households are at heightened risk for adjustment problems. However, limited studies have investigated the mechanisms leading to adolescent problem behaviors in single-mother households. To address this research gap, this study applied the Family Stress Model to examine how single mothers’ material hardship is linked to adolescent problem behaviors, focusing on the mediating roles of mothers’ depression and mother-adolescent closeness. The moderating role of adolescent school connectedness in the (...) relationships between mother-adolescent closeness and school connectedness and between mothers’ depression and school connectedness was also investigated.Materials and methodsThe study analyzed data from 1,384 adolescents and their single mothers who participated in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study at Wave 6. The associations between study variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling by decomposing the direct, indirect, and total effects of material hardship on adolescent problem behaviors. School connectedness’s interactions with mother-adolescent closeness and mothers’ depression were also examined.ResultsResults showed a significant indirect relationship between material hardship and adolescent problem behaviors through sequential mediation of mothers’ depression and mother-adolescent closeness. Mothers’ depression also significantly mediated the relationship between material hardship and problem behaviors. Lastly, school connectedness moderated the relationship between mother-adolescent closeness and adolescents’ internalizing behaviors. The association between mother-adolescent closeness and adolescents’ internalizing behavior was weaker for adolescents with higher levels of school connectedness.ConclusionThe results indicate the important indirect effect of economic strain on adolescents’ problems behaviors in single-mother households, which has been less emphasized compared to the effects in earlier childhood. High rates of material hardship and adolescent problem behaviors in single-mother families call for multifaceted interventions focusing on family processes and protective factors, including school environment. (shrink)

This paper draws on data from Work and Care During COVID-19, an online survey of Australians during pandemic lockdown in May 2020. It focuses on how subsamples of lesbian, gay, and bisexual mothers and fathers in couples and single mothers subjectively experienced unpaid work and care during lockdown compared with heterosexual mothers and fathers in couples, and with partnered mothers, respectively. During the pandemic, nonheterosexual fathers’ subjective reports were less negative than those of their heterosexual (...) counterparts, but differences between heterosexual and lesbian/bisexual mothers were more mixed. Unlike their partnered counterparts, more single mothers reported feeling satisfied than before with their balance of paid and unpaid work and how they spent their time overall during the pandemic, perhaps because they avoided partnership conflicts and particularly benefited from relaxed commuting and child care deadlines. (shrink)

In heterologous artificial insemination, the donation of gametes from a third person allows infertile and same-sex couples to become parents. Therefore, the child is genetica...

This paper examines the ways Israeli law differentiates betweensingle and married women. The first section explores the littlewe know of single women and single mothers' realities. The secondsection analyses Israeli laws related to military service,housing assistance, homemakers' status in the social securitysystem, ways of becoming a mother, and public support formothers. The legal analysis reveals complex distinctions betweensingle and married women ranging from ignoring single women whenthey have no children and encouraging them to marry, toambivalence towards (...) single women who want to conceive, and ontosubstantial public support for single women who are alreadymothers. The article points to directions of change needed so thelaw will adequately address single women's choices and needs. (shrink)

Social scientists have provided rich descriptions of the ascendant cultural ideologies surrounding motherhood and paid work. In this article, I use in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of 40 employed mothers to explore how they navigate the “intensive mother” and “ideal worker” ideologies and construct their own accounts of good mothering. Married mothers in this sample construct scripts of “extensive mothering,” in which they delegate substantial amounts of the day-to-day child care to others, and reframe good mothering as (...) being “in charge” of and ultimately responsible for their children’s well-being. Single mothers describe extensive mothering in different ways, and their narratives suggest less accountability to the “intensive mothering” model. Mothers in this sample also justify employment in novel ways: They emphasize the benefits of employment for themselves—not only their children—and they reject the long work hours imposed by an ideal worker model. The article ends with the implications of extensive mothering for the motherhood and employment literatures and for gender equality. (shrink)

Until 1996, poor single mothers in the United States could claim welfare benefits for themselves and their children under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program if they had no other source of income. With the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), paid work and work-related activities became a mandatory condition for receiving aid. At the same time, the law promotes marriage as a route out of poverty. Using a feminist reinterpretation (...) of Althusser’s concept of interpellation, I turn to Job Clubs, mandatory week-long workshops that teach job search skills, to analyze the citizen-subject generated by front-line representatives of the state in the context of this new legislation. Based on participant-observation, I conclude that while PRWORA ostensibly promotes both marriage and paid employment, Job Club trainers enforced a masculine worker-citizen subject through the deployment of three discursive strategies. These discursive strategies 1) promoted paid work over welfare-receipt as both a pragmatic and moral choice, 2) posited an individual-psychological account of women’s welfare receipt, and 3) portrayed parenting skills as marketable skills. In the conclusion, I speculate that current welfare reform efforts require the generation of a self-reproducing worker-citizen and that workshops like Job Club become a site in which the existence of this autonomous citizen is affirmed. (shrink)

“Ethical dilemmas…are rarely simple and stark but are, instead, multifaceted, complex, and gut wrenching for parents and care givers alike.” This is never more the case than when one must treat vulnerable babies who are not, nor ever can be competent to offer us some guidance about that treatment. The ethical problems are heightened when the parents, or the single mother, are incompetent to make decisions themselves, for example, because of drug addiction. In such cases, when the baby is (...) premature and suffering the effects of the drugs the mother has taken, and the mother herself is either no longer available for consultation or so damaged by her own addiction that she is not a reliable decisionmaker, the usual trend In the United States is to initiate treatment and continue until it is virtually certain that the infant will die. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article considers how five single mothers, who used adoption or donor conception to bring children into their lives, negotiate a persistent and pervasive discourse of ‘problematic single motherhood’ in their interview talk. Tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall [2005]. Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4–5), 585–614.), especially the overlapping strategies of distinction, authorisation and illegitimation, are shown to be particularly salient for these parents, as they work to legitimise their routes to (...) motherhood by distancing themselves from widely stigmatised positions such as young motherhood, working-class motherhood and unplanned motherhood. I argue that these single women’s intersubjective positioning serves to protect them against stigma and discrimination, but often relies on the reproduction of other polarising and discriminatory discourses, which feed into idealised constructions of mothers as responsible, middle-class, and appropriately aged citizens. Overall, the analysis suggests that it is difficult for these single mothers to challenge the multiple and intersecting discriminatory discourses, ideals and stereotypes that converge in exclusionary and limiting constructions of single motherhood, whilst maintaining a recognisably legitimate social position for themselves. (shrink)

This article argues that individuals paradigms have predominated social scientific explanations for gendered behavior in intimate relationships but that a microstructural paradigm adds necessary additional information. The results of a study designed to test the relative strengths of individualist and microstructural explanations for “mothering behavior” are presented. The microstructural hypothesis is that single fathers will adopt parental behavior that more closely resembles that of women who mother than that of married fathers. Parenting behaviors of single fathers, single (...) mothers, married parents with mothers at home, and married two-paycheck couples are compared. Overall, the hypothesis is supported. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the microstructural perspective for social change in a feminist direction. (shrink)

This article examines several key aspects of maternity homes for ‘unwed mothers’ in order to understand the overwhelming phenomenon of single mothers giving up their babies for adoption in South Korea and its naturalization as a common practice. Drawing upon Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, this article recasts maternity homes as an institution of biopolitical welfare and highlights two features of social governance that the maternity home extends over the population of single mothers and their children. (...) First, I argue that this unique, non-governmental social service agency functions as a hub of biopolitical technologies, where multiple social, legal, economic, and political forces work in concert to curb single motherhood through the promotion of adoption via (1) containment, (2) classification, and (3) circulation. Second, attending to the intricate dynamics of maternity home practices, this article observes the ways in which a single mother relinquishes her motherhood via adoption and, in so doing, becomes a birthmother, a self-regulating and self-governable subject. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Circumcision and Regrets from the Mother of Three SonsMaría Viola SánchezI am a psychologist and a radio talk show host for 25+ years. Both of my parents spoke English as their second language. I was raised by immigrants who demanded that "we speak English because we are Americans." I have four adult children, three sons, and a daughter.I gave birth to my children in the mid-80s. They are very (...) close in age and remain dear friends to this day. While I was a professional with a career when my children were born, I took a leave to work part-time and largely, to be a stay-at-home mother for nearly ten years. I was very involved with all their academic and extracurricular activities. I became a single mother when they were 2, 4, 6, and 7 years old, which served to redouble my parenting efforts to compensate for the absence of their father.My dirty secret is that I circumcised my three sons. I did so out of sheer ignorance. I am ashamed and deeply saddened by my decision at the time of their births. This is a burden that I will live with for the rest of my life. Something that I took away from them and that I can never repair.Here's the justification for my ill-informed decision. My father was circumcised, my two brothers were circumcised, and my then-husband was circumcised. I blindly assumed all males were to be circumcised. Further complicating the circumstances surrounding their births and the decision to circumcise them is the fact that their father is Jewish. He most likely would have given me pushback on not circumcising our sons, even though we had agreed to raise our family as Roman Catholics, my religion.After delivering my sons, I was asked, "Who would you like to circumcise your son?" My reply was, "Who has performed more of these procedures? And please bring my son to me to nurse after you have finished." Not one person, not one family member, not my son's father, any healthcare providers, not my pediatrician, or my OB/GYN asked me, "What are your thoughts about circumcising your son?" Had I been asked that question, I might have pondered the concept that there was a decision to be made, not a procedure that was necessary, as is the case with cutting the umbilical cord. When my infant sons were brought to me to nurse, they were sobbing so violently that they were unable to latch on to my breast. One can only surmise that no numbing agents were applied or anesthesia given, further compounding my burden of responsibility. Imagine their trauma!Over the course of my radio career, I hosted a program for an American non-profit national media organization, and one of my guests, Steven Svoboda, was scheduled to promote his newly founded organization, Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC). Steven has remained a colleague. I've interviewed him a dozen times over the decades to promote ARC's amazing work. Steven is the one that first opened my eyes to the ridiculousness of male circumcision. Subsequently, I now understand that circumcision is unnecessary, not medically mandated and that the procedure denies males their [End Page E1] right to genital integrity. What I have also learned is that the removal of the foreskin is the most important sensory component and it is comprised of thousands of Meissner's corpuscles as well as branches of the dorsal nerve and in between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings of several types.I have since apologized to my adult sons for the uninformed and ignorant decision I made after they were born. Two of my three sons have gracefully accepted my apology. The other son says that he's glad that he resembles both his father and most of his male peers.I have become such an "intactivist" that I earned my Ph.D. in Psychology, and my dissertation concerns itself with Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and its eradication. To know that 200 million females who are alive today have experienced FGM is another responsibility... (shrink)

Drawing on findings from an original national survey experiment, we unpack Americans’ views on the employment of mothers and fathers with young children. This study provides a fuller account of contemporary attitudes than is available from surveys such as the General Social Survey. After seeing vignettes that vary the circumstances in which married mothers, single mothers, and married fathers make decisions about paid work and caregiving, the respondents’ views swing from strong support to deep skepticism about (...) a parent’s work participation, depending on the parent’s specific job conditions and family circumstances. When a mother, whether married or single, is satisfied with her job and her family depends on her income, respondents overwhelmingly support the option to work. Conversely, when a father is dissatisfied with his job and the family does not depend on his income, respondents generally support the option to stay home. These findings provide insight regarding the “gender stall” thesis by showing that Americans’ views depend heavily on the circumstances they believe parents are facing. This more nuanced view highlights the importance of social context in the allocation of paid work and caregiving for both mothers and fathers. (shrink)

This article examines changes in employed African American mothers' use of relatives for child care. Data from nationally representative pooled cross sections show that the proportion of Black mothers relying on extended kin for care of their preschool-age children declined significantly between 1977 and 1994. Multivariate analyses reveal that the decline characterized all subgroups of employed African American mothers but was less pronounced for young, single, mothers living outside the South. Thus, by 1994, employed Black (...) mothers who most needed relatives' child care support received it, while those who could manage without such help did so. This change suggests that African Americans' use of kin-provided support responds to shifts in broader social and economic conditions that affect the balance of resources and needs within extended families. (shrink)

Work—family policy strategies reflect gendered assumptions about the roles of men and women within families and therefore may lead to significantly different outcomes, particularly for families headed by single mothers. The authors argue that welfare states have adopted strategies based on different assumptions about women's and men's roles in society, which then affect women's chances of living in poverty cross-nationally. The authors examine how various strategies are associated with poverty rates across groups of women and also examine more (...) directly the effects of specific work—family policies on poverty rates. They find that while family benefits and child care for young children unequivocally lower poverty rates, particularly for families headed by a single mother, long parental leaves have more ambivalent effects. The findings suggest that it is critical to examine the gendered assumptions underlying work—family policies rather than viewing all work—family policies as the same. (shrink)

Parental influence plays a crucial role in shaping children’s behaviors. While several studies have examined parents’ roles in fostering children’s sustainable habits, they often treat parental influence as a single construct, overlooking the distinct roles of fathers and mothers, as well as the influence of cultural values and norms. This study explores the distinct roles of Chinese fathers and mothers in shaping children’s waste reusing and recycling behaviors. Using Bayesian Mindsponge Framework analytics, the study analyzed responses from (...) 516 children and their corresponding caregivers (either fathers or mothers) from 23 elementary summer schools across five major urban cities in China. The analysis revealed that mothers were central agents of influence, with their recycling behavior and mother-child engagement showing positive and highly reliable associations with children’s waste reusing and recycling practices. The impact of mothers’ recycling behaviors was further amplified by children’s frequency of perceiving their mother’s waste reusing and recycling actions. Meanwhile, fathers’ direct engagement and role modeling (when their actions were frequently perceived by their children) also positively influenced children’s behaviors. Still, these effects were less reliable than those of mothers. These findings suggest that policymakers and educators should design interventions that leverage mothers’ natural role as influencers while actively encouraging greater involvement from fathers in environmental education. (shrink)

The primary goal of this study is to identify patterns in the ways mothers adhere to, reject, and combine intensive mothering attitudes and behaviors. Mothers often face immense pressure to devote significant physical and mental effort toward childrearing, referred to as intensive mothering. At the same time, many mothers do not follow the actions or beliefs that gender norms suggest they should. It remains unclear how mothers holistically approach intensive parenting across many different facets. Using the (...) 2014 Child Development Supplement from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examined how a sample of mothers fell into intensive mothering profiles, or latent classes, and how class membership varied by demographic characteristics. Results showed four underlying latent classes of intensive motherhood: Relaxed Mothers, High Investors, Essentialist Mothers, and Strained Mothers. No group was intensive across all measures, contrary to common narratives in previous research and theory. Class membership varied by several characteristics, including education, age, income, race, single parenthood, and employment. By revealing how mothers are selectively intensive, this study expands on the ways mothers simultaneously “do” and “undo” gender norms in their parenting, as well as the sociodemographics that may predict these patterns. (shrink)

Russell’s use of incomplete symbols constituted progress in philosophy. They allowed Russell to make true negative existential claims, like ‘the present King of France does not exist’, and to analyse away logical constructs like tables. Russell’s view rested on the availability of complete symbols, logically proper names, which single out objects which we know by acquaintance, which we are committed to, and to whose existence discourse about apparent complexes can be reduced. Susan Stebbing enthusiastically embraced incomplete symbols for use (...) in negative existentials and in her innovative theory of metaphysical analysis. Yet she also raised trenchant objections to Russell’s assumption that complete symbols are purely referring expressions, equivalent to mere demonstration or pointing. Stebbing thought it could not be assumed that analysis terminates in objects of acquaintance. In this chapter I lay out Stebbing’s arguments and argue that they bear a striking similarity to those made by Stebbing’s former college’s Mistress, Constance Jones, whose influence on Russell is now largely forgotten but worth recovering. Jones defended a sense-reference (signification-denotation) distinction before Frege. Russell’s objections to that distinction in ‘On Denoting’ appear to borrow from Jones’s presentation of it. In Russell and Jones’s 1911 exchange at the Aristotelian Society, Jones’s arguments that names have signification and are more than mere noises or shapes, and that unless both signification and denotation are taken into account, all identity statements reduce to the trivial ‘a=a’ form, foreshadow Stebbing’s later arguments against complete symbols. (shrink)

Serum prolactin has been measured in single blood samples collected within the first 22 post-partum months from 97 nursing mothers from an urban area (Bukavu) of Zaïre. Nursing mothers are hyperprolactinemic, higher serum prolactin levels being associated with more frequent suckling episodes per day. Furthermore, serum prolactin declines rapidly in mothers who are giving the breast less than four times per day: the levels are within the normal range found in non-lactating women after the 6th post-partum (...) month. Among mothers giving the breast more than six times per day, serum prolactin does not decline significantly during the 1st post-partum year. (shrink)

In this paper, we will discuss the prospect of human reproduction achieved with gametes originating from only one person. According to statements by a minority of scientists working on the generation of gametes in vitro, it may become possible to create eggs from men’s non-reproductive cells and sperm from women’s. This would enable, at least in principle, the creation of an embryo from cells obtained from only one individual: ‘solo reproduction’. We will consider what might motivate people to reproduce in (...) this way, and the implications that solo reproduction might have for ethics and policy. We suggest that such an innovation is unlikely to revolutionise reproduction and parenting. Indeed, in some respects it is less revolutionary than in vitro fertilisation as a whole. Furthermore, we show that solo reproduction with in vitro created gametes is not necessarily any more ethically problematic than gamete donation—and probably less so. Where appropriate, we draw parallels with the debate surrounding reproductive cloning. We note that solo reproduction may serve to perpetuate reductive geneticised accounts of reproduction, and that this may indeed be ethically questionable. However, in this it is not unique among other technologies of assisted reproduction, many of which focus on genetic transmission. It is for this reason that a ban on solo reproduction might be inconsistent with continuing to permit other kinds of reproduction that also bear the potential to strengthen attachment to a geneticised account of reproduction. Our claim is that there are at least as good reasons to pursue research towards enabling solo reproduction, and eventually to introduce solo reproduction as an option for fertility treatment, as there are to do so for other infertility related purposes. (shrink)

Despite the 1970s middle-class feminist dream that women could have it all—families characterized by equitable distributions of household labor and interesting careers—the decades since have told a different story. In the U.S. context of a neoliberal labor market and privatized systems of family care, mothers still struggle to negotiate the conflicting demands of family and employment, particularly when caring for children with disabilities. Though an extensive literature examines labor market participation for mothers of children with disabilities, few scholars (...) have examined the emotional impact of their altered career plans. Drawing from a sample of 40 single- and two-parent families, the author examines mothers’ accounts of care for children with disabilities, focusing on their emotional experiences of their changed employment trajectories. (shrink)

Rationale, aims and objectives This randomized controlled trial was designed to evaluate the 2-year costs and effects of a proactive, public health nursing case management approach compared with a self-directed approach for 129 single parents (98% were mothers) on social assistance in a Canadian setting. A total of 43% of these parents had a major depressive disorder and 38% had two or three other health conditions at baseline. Methods Study participants were recruited over a 12 month period and (...) randomized into two groups: one receiving proactive public health nursing and one which did not. Results At 2 years, 69 single parents with 123 children receiving proactive public health nursing (compared with 60 parents with 91 children who did not receive public health nursing services) showed a slightly greater reduction in dysthymia and slightly higher social adjustment. There was no difference between the public health and control groups in total per parent annual cost of health and support services. However, costs were averted due to a 12% difference in non-use of social assistance in the previous 12 months for parents in the public health nursing group. This translates into an annual cost saving of $240 000 (Canadian) of costs averted within 1 year for every 100 parents. Conclusions In the context of a system of national health and social insurance, this study supports the fact that it is no more costly to proactively service this population of parents on social assistance. (shrink)

This study focuses on women who define themselves as being undecided about becoming mothers. It addresses the question of how these women navigate their lives between two main conflicting cultural directives and perceptions: pronatalism and familism entwined in perception of linear time on one hand; and individualism and its counterpart, the notion of flexible liquid society, on the other. The research is based on group meetings designated for these women, which were facilitated by the first author. Ten women participated (...) in the study—of whom, most were heterosexual, half were single, and half were partnered. Data were collected using (1) questionnaires completed during individual interviews that preceded the group encounter; (2) transcripts of the discussions held during the ten group sessions; and (3) questions regarding the status of the women’s doubts about motherhood asked 4 years after participating in the group. Our findings expand the existing typology of women’s reproductive decision-making, and demonstrate how categories that are commonly perceived as binary intersect when one challenges the rigid classifications of “active decisions” and “passive decisions”; “motherhood” and “non-motherhood,” and “want to be a mother” and “do not want to be a mother.” The findings also suggest that after becoming mothers, women can change their maternal status from “non-mother” to “mother,” yet still continue to view themselves as indecisive regarding motherhood. Based on our findings, we will argue that while indecisiveness about motherhood derives from individualized neoliberal rhetoric, it simultaneously undermines that same rhetoric and contradicts the injunction to “know, to decide, to strive.” It opposes the expectation in post-feminist discourse, that women will make choices about their bodies and exert them, while also opposing the pronatalist rhetoric, and the temporal linear discourse positing that women should “move forward” toward motherhood along with the ticking of the “biological clock.” Whereas some women sought to resolve their indecisiveness, other women found that the indecisiveness leaves all options open in a manner that expands their boundaries of autonomy in a society that seeks to limit it. (shrink)