Main description:

This interdisciplinary book explores the affective dimensions of becoming a parent, traversing the life-cycle journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenting. Bringing together researchers from sociology, history, feminist studies, cultural studies, general medicine, and psychiatry, Paths to Parenthood analyses rich narratives that represent a diverse cross-section of parents, including migrants, same-sex couples, and single parents.

Contents:

Acknowledgments.- Chapter 1: The complex and contradictory emotional paths to parenthood.- Part I: Journeys into pregnancy and childbirth.- Chapter 2: Postnatural families: Refiguring intimacy through assisted reproduction.- Chapter 3: Embodying pregnancy and self-surveillance.- Chapter 4: Pain and suffering in labour and birth.- Part II: Journeys into early parenthood.- Chapter 5: Same-sex attracted parents' emotional transitions to parenthood.- Chapter 6: The turbulent emotions of early parenthood.- Chapter 7: 'What have I done?': An exploration of the ambivalent, unimaginable emotions of new motherhood.- Chapter 8: Narrating and disrupting postnatal depression.- Chapter 9: 'One of the most vulnerable times in your life': Expectations and emotional experiences of support in the early postnatal period.- Chapter 10: Labour after labour: Negotiating caring for children and paid work.- Appendix 1: Emotional Experiences of Early Parenthood in Australian Families Project: Participant demographic characteristics.- Index.