Knowing Mothers

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. A Psycho-Social Research Project Example: Introducing Principles, Methods and Practices

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Knowing Mothers, Researching Becoming

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 3-28

   3. Empirical Psycho-Social Research: Design and Psychoanalytically Informed Principles

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 29-56

   4. The Reality of Being a Young Mother: Agency, Imagination and Objectivity

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 57-75

3. Three Psycho-Social Perspectives on Knowing and Becoming: Psychoanalytically Informed Theorising in Mothers’ and Researchers’ Knowing

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 77-77

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   2. Weird Beyond Words: The Transgressive Corporeality of Pregnancy and Compassion-Based Ethics

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 79-100

   3. How Does Zelda Know and How Is Zelda Known? Psychoanalytically Informed Data Analysis

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 101-121

   4. Scenic Writing and Scenic Understanding

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 122-136

4. Analysing the Politics of the Maternal Psycho-Socially

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 137-137

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   2. ‘I’m Not the Mother Type’: Gender Identity Upheaval

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 139-162

   3. Theorising Maternal Becoming Psycho-Socially

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 163-182

5. In Conclusion

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-183

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   2. Unfinished Business

      • Wendy Hollway

      Pages 185-192

6. Back Matter

   Pages 193-216

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How do women experience the identity changes involved in becoming mothers for the first time? Throughout in depth case examples, Wendy Hollway demonstrates how a different research methodology, underpinned by a psychoanalytically informed epistemology, can transform our understanding of the early foundations of maternal identity.

• ethics
• gender
• methodology
• psychoanalysis
• women

“Hollway delves into the complexity of maternal identity to shed light on a deeply subjective time of human existence gravely overlooked in the masculine research domains of mental and physical health and medicine. … Hollway offers researchers and helping professionals a place to start in the development of a psychosocial approach to researching the less evident realms of human intra-and intersubjectivity. … Hollway’s book is remarkable and ground breaking.” (Aparna Mishra, Univeristy of Durham, Centre for Medical Humanities, centreformedicalhumanities.org, January, 2016)

'In Knowing Mothers, Wendy Hollway reflects deeply about the connection between how we live mothering and how we think about it. She invites us to witness her journey of discovery as she develops an innovative, multi-layered research approach that integrates psychoanalytic insights with qualitative empirical methods. In the process, she portrays the women whose lives she explores in ways that are textured, moving, and real.' - Daphne de Marneffe, author of Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life

'Wendy Hollway's is a singular voice in psychosocial studies: lucid, provocative, pedagogic and accessible. Working with a unique data set of psychoanalytically informed observations and interviews documenting the first year of new motherhood, this book provides a series of exemplars showing how theory and method can be put to work in the project of knowing mothers and researching maternal becoming. Essential reading for all those interested in psychoanalytically informed social research methods as well as the growing interdisciplinary field of maternal studies.' - Rachel Thomson, University of Sussex, UK

• The Open University, UK

  Wendy Hollway

Wendy Hollway is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at The Open University, UK. She has written extensively on empirical psycho-social methods using psychoanalytically informed interviewing and observation, as well as on mothering, care and subjectivity. The project on which this book is based was funded by the British Economic and Social Research Council, part of the Identities and Social Action programme.

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