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Past research suggests that whether pregnancies are wanted, unwanted, or mistimed may influence breastfeeding behavior. The purpose of this chapter is to develop a more precise understanding of this relationship. Specifically, this chapter asks three questions: first, do pregnancy intentions matter most in sustaining breastfeeding for long or for short durations postpartum; second, at what time postpartum are rates of breastfeeding discontinuation most differentiated by pregnancy intentions; and third, how does poverty (measured here by Medicaid receipt) moderate the relationship between pregnancy intentions and breastfeeding duration.

Logistic regression analysis of survey data from a national sample representative of US mothers is used to determine the relationship of pregnancy intentions to whether breastfeeding continues for various durations and through various intervals after birth. Interaction terms between pregnancy intentions and mother’s Medicaid status are used to test for relationships specific to poor or nonpoor mothers between pregnancy intentions and breastfeeding duration.

Results show that pregnancy timing matters most for sustaining breastfeeding for durations past 6 months and that differences in rates of breastfeeding discontinuation between mothers with wanted, unwanted, and mistimed pregnancies are most pronounced in the 3–7 months postpartum period. In addition, findings show that Medicaid recipients (but not nonrecipients) are less likely to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months when their pregnancies are mistimed.

The literature on fundamental causes of health disparities typically suggests that poverty impairs access to resources necessary for effective planning to achieve desirable health outcomes. This study’s results, however, show that planning of pregnancies is more critical for poor mothers to sustain exclusive breastfeeding. Further research is needed to explain this relationship. The results also suggest that policy interventions to help mothers with unplanned pregnancies to sustain breastfeeding should target the period from 3 to 7 months postpartum.

These findings can help shape policies for facilitating the continuation of breastfeeding for durations recommended by health authorities and advance our understanding of the effects of poverty on health behaviors.

To study how twenty-first-century fairy tale retellings recombine villainy and motherhood, this chapter analyses two mother figures in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019): Aurora's godmother, Maleficent, and Aurora's soon-to-be mother-in-law, Queen Ingrith. I argue that Mistress of Evil attempts and fails to trouble the Good/Terrible Mother binary, ultimately reconfirming traditional notions of the Good Mother, by juxtaposing two mother villain characters. Ingrith first appears to be the epitome of the Good Mother, but the film quickly reveals that she is actually the stereotypical evil mother-in-law who uses the Good Mother image to mask her villainy. By exposing Ingrith's lie, the film debases the myth of perfect motherhood, suggesting that the image of the ‘Good Mother’ is only used to vilify other women in order to control people, but it also uses the Good Mother image to highlight how Terrible Ingrith is. Maleficent, on the other hand, vacillates between twenty-first-century images of the Terrible and Good Mother, specifically the aberrant and supermother. Rather than balancing these images and depicting a more nuanced motherhood, the film switches Maleficent completely between these two extremes, making her seem more villainous when she is aberrant and more motherly when she steps into the role of supermother. Whereas the representation of Ingrith highlights the lie of the Good Mother, Maleficent is forced into becoming a variation of that image. I argue that while Mistress of Evil attempts to reveal the pernicious nature of the Good Mother myth, it ultimately reconfirms it for a new generation of women.

This study is a radical interactionist analysis of family conflict. Drawing on both a negotiated order perspective and Athen's theory of complex dominative encounters, this study analyzes the role that domination plays in conflicts among intimates. As the family engages in repeated conflicts over roles, the family also engages in negotiations over the family order, what role each party should play, interpretations of past events, and plans for the future. These conflicts take place against a backdrop of patriarchy that asymmetrically distributes power in the family to determine the family order. The data from this study come from a content analysis of mothers with substance use problems as depicted in the reality television show Intervention. The conflicts in these families reveal that these families develop a grinding family order in which families engaged in repeated conflict but also continued to operate as and identify as a family. These conflicts are shaped by and reinforce patriarchal expectations that mothers are central to family operation. The intervention at the end of each episode offered an opportunity for the family to engage in a concerted campaign to try to force the mother into treatment and reestablish the family order.

By using ethnographic data and family interviews from eight families in Taipei, Taiwan, this paper aims to delineate how multigenerational families implement parents’ child-rearing values, and how these strategies vary by social class. The primary focus is the child’s mother and her relationship with other family members. I ask the following question: How does a mother in a three-generation family implement her ideal parenting values for her child while being encumbered by the constraints of her parents-in-law? Additionally, how does this intergenerational dynamic vary with family socioeconomic status? To conceptualize this process in such a complex context, I argue that we must understand parenting behaviors as acts of “doing family” and “intensive mothering.”

From 2008 to 2009, I conducted a pilot survey in two public elementary schools to recruit the parents of sixth-grade students. All eight cases of multigenerational families in this paper were selected randomly after being clustered by the parent’s highest education level and family income levels. This paper utilized the mothers’ interviews as the major source to analyze, while the interviews of other family members served as supplementary data.

Two cases, Mrs Lee and Mrs Su’s stories, were selected here to illustrate two distinctive approaches toward childrearing in multi-generational families. Results indicate that white-collar mothers in Taiwan hold the value of concerted cultivation and usually picture the concept of intensive mothering as their ideal image of parenthood. Yet, such an ideal and more westernized child-rearing philosophy often leads to tensions at home, particularly between the mother and the mother-in-law. Meanwhile, blue-collar mothers tend to collaborate with grandparents in sharing childcare responsibilities, and oftentimes experience friction over child discipline in terms of doing homework and material consumption.

Via this analysis of three-generation families in Taiwan, we are able to witness the struggle of contemporary motherhood in East Asia. This paper foregrounds the negotiations that these mothers undertake in defining ideal parenting and the ideal family. On the one hand, these mothers must encounter the new parenting culture, given that the cultural ideal of concerted cultivation has become a popular ideology. On the other hand, by playing the role of daughter-in-law, they must negotiate within the conventional, patriarchal family norms.

Mothers – The Silent supporters focus on the potential role of the mother in the restorative justice (RJ) process. This chapter provides a contextual framework for the research highlighting debates pertaining to RJ and parents, especially mothers. This was made possible with a grant from the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants. The research provided a holistic understanding of social backgrounds and links between theory and the practice of RJ. The workshop provided a multi-perspective analysis of the interactions within significant relationships between mothers and sons. The author’s focus was on the role of the mother prior to the RJ process. The workshops were held in a safe space in a northern region. The mothers were from different economic and social backgrounds.