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This is exploratory research on the Bruneian sense of motherhood. The pre-socially established religious definition of motherhood is unformulated where; the analysis is located in the inner context of experience. The Western feminist idea defined motherhood as such reality as the “otherness” whereby its common sense justifies sexuality and feminism. The religious significance gives meaning to its spiritual connection, embodying a foundational knowledge of Bruneian proper personhood – being a good, spiritual and respected person. This relates to the importance of the body as an entity of both culture and symbol that has drawn attention to its sociological significance.

The argument here is how religious experience influences the meaning of motherhood in Brunei Darussalam, which underwent a transformation scheme to empower women. Participants were interviewed, and the transcribed interviews were analysed using the reflexive methodology to find out the natural phenomena of motherhood.

The findings indicate that the Bruneian sense of motherhood is regulated through natural norms of femininity, an unformulated knowledge of spirituality, religion and the influence of cultural and religious rituals, such as prayers, consuming pure food, concoction and reciting holy verses from the Quran.

This study reveals to codify and extend the sense of religious obedience through generations. Religion rationalises the spiritual experience and provides the basis of obedience towards a proper development of personhood Bruneian. The idea of motherhood itself recreates a role to empower women, which will initiate opportunities for further studies in Brunei context.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a novel storytelling approach that investigates lived experience at the intersection of motherhood/caregiving and Ph.D. pursuits. The paper contributes to the feminist tradition of writing differently through the process of care that emerges from shared stories.

Using a process called heartful-communal storytelling, the authors evoke personal and embodied stories and transgressive narratives. The authors present a composite process drawing on heartful-autoethnography, dialogic writing and communal storytelling.

The paper makes two key contributions: (1) the paper illustrates a novel feminist process in action and (2) the paper contributes six discrete stories of lived experience at the intersection of parenthood and Ph.D. studies. The paper also contributes to the development of the feminist tradition of writing differently. Three themes emerged through the storytelling experience, and these include (1) creating boundaries and transgressing boundaries, (2) giving and receiving care and (3) neoliberal conformity and resistance. These themes, like the stories, also became entangled.

The paper demonstrates how heartful-communal storytelling can lead to individual and collective meaning making. While the Ph.D. is a solitary path, the authors' heartful-communal storytelling experience teaches that holding it separate from other relationships can impoverish what is learnt and constrain the production of good knowledge; the epistemic properties of care became self-evident.

To delve further into the phenomenon of psychological pressure on single mothers, the purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that affect the psychological state of single mothers in Vietnam.

Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) interviews were conducted and analysed with the aim of understanding the psychological state of single mothers sampled from a social group in Vietnam.

Single mothers lack direct support needed to improve their confidence, job opportunities, income levels and social status. The absence of interventions increases the psychological pressure on single mothers in Vietnam.

A future study can explore the psychological state of single mothers using a more expansive data set.

Understanding the psychosocial and socio-economic risk factors of postpartum psychological pressure in single mothers may have important implications on preventative and support measures, as well as laying the groundwork for social protection interventions and informing welfare policy-making at a national level.

Social constructs in Vietnam compound the effect of postnatal depression on Vietnamese single mothers (in contrast to their counterparts in developed Western nations). This means that researchers and policymakers need to reconstruct stigmas that cause psychological pressures on single motherhood, and in doing so, help to change the view held about single motherhood.

This study is the first to explore psychological state of mothers in Vietnam using IPA.