Journal articles on the topic 'Childcare Ideologies'

Purpose – This purpose of this paper is to examine how working mothers understand childcare practices and perception on existing childcare centres in a different social context like Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach – A thematic analysis approach is used to analyse mothers’ narratives, drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews, along with data from some representative secondary sources. Findings – The paper considers women professional and managerial employees in Sri Lanka, and demonstrates that working mothers use diverse childcare arrangements to harmonise their work and family life, strongly believing their own mother as the best caregiver for their small children. Research limitations/implications – This study represented only middle-class mothers, therefore the research suggested that different mothers (professional and managerial) take their decisions differently. Based on this argument, it can be expected that mothers of different occupations are more likely to take different decisions as they believe what is “right and proper”. Thus, extensive research is warranted. Practical implications – This paper discusses the implications while extending the geographical scope of the literature on mothers’ gender ideology on childcare and existing practices in childcare centres. Social implications – State and private organizations should consider investments in childcare support and other flexible work options so that women continue to remain in their careers. Originality/value – The paper extends the geographical scope of the literature on mothers’ gender ideology on childcare and existing practices in childcare centres. This would be the first research article directly focused on the impact of working mothers’ gender ideologies on childcare and perception on existing childcare centres in Sri Lanka. Thus, the present study provides a number of new research avenues for future researchers to use.

This article explores the complexities and ambiguities in Norwegian families’ interaction with the public childcare system. Public childcare is a cornerstone in the ‘double dividend’, that is, social policies that equalize children’s life chances and support gender equality. The dual earner/dual carer family model interacts with full-time participation in the labour market, gender equality at home and universal access to childcare, and has made contemporary childhood multi-local and mobile. As part of their everyday organization of care, parents have to establish connections between home, work and childcare. Here, we use the concept of ‘care loops’ to analyse how local families ‘do’ combinations of welfare services, family resources, gender ideologies and the labour of migrant care workers. Drawing on empirical research on migrant care workers in Norwegian families and discussing recent studies of majority families’ care practices, the article discusses the paradox that egalitarian norms and ideals might generate extra workloads that in turn create demands for migrant care workers and trigger geopolitical inequality.

This paper describes some of the powerful cultural ideologies which inform reactions to instances of sexual abuse at childcare facilities. Subtle and persistent beliefs and assumptions about mothering, families, children, and sex influence social, political, and legal reaction to this problem. The author argues that these beliefs can distort our vision of reality and possibility. She proposes goals to keep in mind when evaluating legal, political, and social proposals which arise out of concern for the health and safety of children in childcare centers.

Dominant ideologies about poverty in the USA draw on personal responsibility and beliefs that a ‘culture of poverty’ creates and reproduces inequality. As the primary recipients of welfare are single mothers, discourses surrounding welfare are also influenced by dominant ideologies about mothering, namely intensive mothering. Yet, given the centrality of resources to intensive mothering, mothers on welfare are often precluded from enacting this type of parenting. In this paper, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of 69 interviews with Ohio Works First (USA) program managers to examine how welfare program managers talk about and evaluate their clients’ mothering. My findings suggest three themes regarding expectations and evaluations of clients’ mothering: (a) enacting child-centered mothering, (b) breaking out of the ‘culture of poverty’ and (c) (mis)managing childcare.

PurposePolitical analyses of the East Asian welfare state development often stress the importance of the power resource model, in which vibrant coalitions between the leftist party, interest groups, civil society and working-class unions have become driving factors in producing generous welfare outcomes. Challenging such analyses, this article discusses the convergence of the political attitude between political actors who are increasingly homogeneous (supportive) when it comes to the universal welfare state notion by focussing on childcare in South Korea.Design/methodology/approachBy using desk review of the peer-reviewed literature and reports, this article investigates the causation for why political parties with different political ideologies were keen on extending childcare programs and its outcome in addressing the existing demographic problems in Korea.FindingsAlthough the collective movement, especially in the 1990s and 2000s, had given important contributions to the early development of childcare in South Korea, more breakthroughs in childcare features were precisely and rapidly developed after politicians from different spectrums of political affiliations converged in their supportive attitude of the universal welfare. The driving factors of political convergence itself are not merely due to electoral competition or political activism; furthermore, it can be linked to the increased global institution involvement in domestic policy with extensive permeability, which, have ruined domestic policy development maintained for ideological reasoning and bring in more popular policy setting.Originality/valueThis article contributes to the growing literature on the political aspect of East Asian social policy studies, which goes beyond the traditional power resource analysis and makes a novel contribution to the childcare policy studies.

The author investigates the transformation processes of family values, preconditions that have influenced the emergence of the familism in Hungarian society. The article deals with the analysis of the main characteristics of neo-familism as the dominant social phenomenon of the present, which directly impacts the Hungarian family policy and determines the further direction of the family support system formation. It has been noted that familism is a complex concept and can be interpreted from different perspectives. This term is revealed through the prism of personal and family values, norms, interpersonal and social relations, as well as governance systems strategies. In this article, familism is discussed mainly as a system of governance measures, disclosed through the demonstration of social, in particular, family policy strategies, as well as instruments of its regulation. Hungarian family policy and the effects of familism on it are described and analysed in several characteristics, such as types of financial support, supporting measures to facilitate parents' participation in the labour market and the social services systems. It is proved that, in comparison with other European Union countries, the parental support system of childcare in Hungary is one of the most comprehensive. On the basis of the analysis, it has been concluded that the Hungarian family support system was formed under the influence of the consequences of historical events and political ideologies. The key factors, which are determining the direction of the system transformation today, are both post-socialism and Europeanisation at the same time. The analysis of the historical preconditions of the family policy formation and its modern regulatory instruments classifies the Hungarian support system as optional familism, which provides universal financial support to families, a comprehensive system of parental leave and childcare allowances, tax deductions, public nursery and kindergarten services. The author also underlines the significance of analysing the Hungarian welfare system and social services which support not only families in difficult life circumstances but also middle-class families.

Background and objective: Globally, men are at greater risk of mortality and serious physical consequences from COVID-19 infection than women, but are less impacted by the pandemic’s impact on labor force participation and increased childcare responsibilities. Outside of gender identity, however, it is unclear whether men’s beliefs about gender may be related to the kinds of COVID-19-related impacts they report. This study sought to describe the employment, income, and household responsibility-related impacts of the pandemic on a sample of young men in the U.S. and to examine relationships between the men’s gender ideologies andattitudes toward gender equity with self-reported stress impacts of the pandemic. Methods: The data are from an online survey of 481 young men from across the U.S. Measures included scales assessing masculinity ideology, modern sexism, support for traditional divisions of labor by gender, and attitudes toward gender equity. New items developed for this study assessed COVID-19-related changes in employment, household responsibilities, and childcare duties as well as levels of stress. Hierarchical regression examined the relative roles of demographic characteristics, changes in employment and household work, and gender-related attitudes on COVID-related stress. Results: Descriptive findings showed that under 50% of the men in the sample experienced negative COVID-related impacts on employment, but that a majority of the men reported at least some COVID-related stress. Results of the hierarchical regression suggest that higher levels of stress were predicted by having a minori-tized sexual identity, less religiosity, experiencing employment or household responsibility-related changes, and not endorsing modern sexism or a traditional, gendered division of labor. Conclusions: Experiencing COVID-19-related stress was normative in this sample of young men. However, endorsing traditional notions of a gendered division of labor was slightly protective against higher levels of COVID-related stress. These findings add to existing evidence that gender analysis must be a central compo-nent of ongoing COVID-related policy and programming development.

This introduction to the Special Issue Local loops and micro-mobilities of care: Rethinking care in egalitarian contexts argues for the importance of analysing local organizations of care. This is a necessary addition to current scholarship which has focused on the globalization of care. Yet, in many parts of the world, such as the Northern and Eastern European countries, on which this issue focuses, care provision continues to be mainly local and migrant care workers are complementary. Nevertheless, the daily organization of care can be as complex as in the global care chains. To address this local complexity, we propose two concepts: the notion of local care loops and care as patchwork. The concept of local care loops is a sensitizing one that emphasizes routine, daily practices and micro-mobilities of care that create loops around daily practices of care. Patchwork refers to practices that are simultaneously routinized activities but that are also changing from day to day, depending on the available resources and constraints (of time, money, and caregivers), as well as the local geographies and distances that need to be connected in the loops. The introduction also presents the six articles that make up this Special Issue. The articles identify similarities and differences in processes related to the commodification of childcare and transforming gender ideologies in post-socialist and social-democratic welfare societies.

Contemporary ideologies surrounding motherhood do not appear to reflect the experiences of many women. Motherhood is often idealised as a joyful experience, however a large proportion of women experience psychological distress, often receiving a diagnosis of postnatal depression. Current psychiatric systems may not adequately represent mothers’ experiences or reflect the range and complexity of emotions experienced. Most psychological research explores mothers’ emotions through the lens of a medical model, with a focus on depression; the exploration of emotions beyond depression has been under-researched. This study explored the range of emotions mothers experience during early motherhood. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six women who experienced post-natal distress; data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results showed a conflict between the mothers’ aspired and idyllic representations of motherhood and their lived experiences; three themes were identified: when idyllic notions of motherhood are not realised; when motherhood is not instinctive; and when prioritising childcare is not easy. Mothers who were unable to live up to the identified notions of motherhood, experienced emotional distress, from resentment and guilt, to feeling broken and insecure. The amalgamation of emotions experienced created a complex emotional landscape they had to negotiate, and their experiences were not represented in the psychiatric categorical systems; they did not identify with having postnatal depression and were left unsupported. This study explored ways counselling psychologists could offer support to this sub-clinical group and viewing their experiences as a normal response to motherhood as opposed to pathologising them.

The fourth season of Netflix's award-winning The Crown was released during a moment of crisis, when the UK was under a second lockdown to stem the Covid-19 pandemic. National restrictions, and the pandemic more generally, have exposed a 'crisis of care' in the UK and around the world. With schools closed and many working at home, people, particularly women, have been faced with the 'double burden' of childcare, domestic care, other caring responsibilities and paid work. The pandemic also drew further attention to classed, gendered and racialised polarities, with symbols of privilege (like access to a garden) made spectacular as lockdown restrictions were tightened. Enter The Crown. Series 4 focuses on the 1970s and 1980s, particularly centred around intimacies of three well-known female figures: Margaret Thatcher, the Queen and Princess Diana. The Crown's representation of Thatcher and the Queen speaks to broader issues of failed femininities, the collapsing of private/public and home/work, specifically through mothering and unpaid care work/paid labour; class privilege and cultural capital; the politics of 'wokeness'; and moral responsibility. The Queen is portrayed as the guardian of moral responsibility, the mother of the nation and the British empire, while Thatcher is shown to push forward neoliberalism and free market ideologies. But ultimately these representations are two sides of the same coin. Through the oppositional representations of the Queen and Thatcher the show raises contemporary critiques of neoliberalism, gender and the aristocratic imperial state, only to empty its political potential because such representations are spoken by these elite women, in the context of their families and the home. Such issues have a particular cultural and collective resonance at a conjuncture of lockdown and the pandemic.

This study examines how multidimensional gender and fathering beliefs of fathers may explain their relative involvement in childcare after considering paid leave uptake. We draw on cross-sectional survey data from one German state, which allow us to distinguish three belief dimensions: (1) gender traditionalism and essentialism, (2) fathering attitudes, and (3) fathering self-concepts and self-efficacy. By means of multiple linear regression models we investigate how the different dimensions of gender and fatherhood beliefs relate to fathers’ relative involvement in basic and indirect childcare tasks. Our results show that gender (essentialist) ideologies and fatherhood attitudes were strongly associated with fathers’ relative involvement in both childcare domains. The higher fathers perceived self-efficacy in fathering, the more involved they were in basic but not indirect care. All belief dimensions mediated the positive association of fathers’ uptake of paid leave with their involvement in basic childcare.

This study investigates the conceptual argument that constructive and explicit couple communication may reduce gender inequalities in couples’ division of family work. We focus on the transition to parenthood which for most couples in Germany results in a shift towards a more traditional division of labour. Using 314 first-time parents from the German Family Panel, we apply growth curve models to assess whether partners’ prenatal characteristics explain the division of housework and childcare around the time of childbirth and in the following years. After controlling for gender ideologies and economic resources, male partners’ frequency of positive communication is associated with greater father involvement in housework and childcare from the start. However, neither men’s nor women’s communication behaviours dampen the shift towards a more traditional division of housework and childcare in the first years after childbirth. The frequency of negative communication does not correlate with the division of family work.

AbstractThe present work investigates how the increased domestic responsibilities created by the Spring 2020 lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway and gender ideologies relate to the well-being of mothers with elementary school children. In June 2020, we conducted a cross-sectional online study including current and retrospective measures with 180 mothers (Mage = 39.96 years, SD = 6.11) of elementary school children across Norway. First, in line with earlier research on the strain of the pandemic on parents, and especially mothers, we found that Norwegian mothers’ well-being during the lockdown significantly declined compared to before the lockdown (both measured retrospectively). Furthermore, mothers’ well-being after the Spring 2020 lockdown did not immediately return to pre-lockdown levels. Finally, we predicted that gender ideologies (i.e., essentialist beliefs about parenthood) would exacerbate the negative impact of increased domestic responsibilities (i.e., childcare and housework) on mothers’ well-being (i.e., higher standard-higher stress hypothesis). As predicted, for mothers who more strongly endorsed the belief that mothers are instinctively and innately better caretakers than fathers, perceptions of increased domestic responsibilities were associated with lower well-being post-lockdown. These findings point to the specific challenges mothers face in times of crisis, and the importance of addressing and confronting seemingly benevolent ideologies about motherhood that place additional burdens on women.

Objective: This paper analyses how men who became fathers to a newborn during a 2020 lockdown in France reacted to spending longer time at home than intended. Background: Previous research found that fathers taking longer leave are more involved at home, but men who plan these working arrangements are more oriented towards gender equality. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, fathers with diverse gender ideologies were forced to stay home with their baby. Method: 42 longitudinal interviews were conducted with 23 fathers, before and after the birth of their child. 10 of these fathers unexpectedly stopped their paid work for the first two months post-partum because of distancing measures. This group is compared with 10 others who took at most their 14 days of paid leave before returning to paid work and 3 others who deliberately planned to take a month off. All mothers were on maternity leave. Results: Lockdowns isolated couples from the help of extended family and fathers had to assume a caregiving position. However, staying home involved different things for different fathers. For some, it meant sharing unpaid work equally. For others, it was more about bonding with the baby, whereas intensive childcare was considered the mother’s role. Conclusion: Drawing on an integrative approach, the findings suggest that changes at the institutional level, such as lockdowns, impact fathering trajectories differently depending on gender ideologies at the individual level.

Prior research highlights how mothers across social classes express similar beliefs that good parenting adheres to the tenets of intensive mothering by being child-centered, time-consuming, and self-sacrificing. Yet intensive mothering ideologies emphasize parenting tactics that assume children’s basic needs are met, while ignoring how mothers in poverty devise distinctive childrearing strategies and logics to perform carework demanded by deprivation, discrimination, and a meager social safety net. I theorize inventive mothering that instead highlights the complexity and agency of poor mothers’ innovative efforts to ensure children’s access to resources, protect children from the harms of poverty and racism, and present themselves as fit parents in the context of intersecting gender, class, and race stigma. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 70 mothers who experienced diaper need, I conceptualize diaper work as a case of inventive mothering that involves extensive physical, cognitive, and emotional labor. These findings show how focusing on childrearing practices experienced as “intense” from the point of view of more affluent, white mothers perpetuates inequalities by obscuring the complex labor poor mothers, especially poor mothers of color, perform when there is limited public support for fundamental aspects of childcare.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how professional men in dual-career relationships craft and enact their fatherhood role ideologies during the transition to fatherhood. In particular, the authors focus on the impact that the development of a more involved approach to fatherhood has on the mother's ability to combine career and family.Design/methodology/approachThis study utilizes a longitudinal, qualitative methodology. Pre- and post-natal interviews were conducted with 18 professional men in dual-career heterosexual relationships.FindingsAlthough the traditional mode of fatherhood that is rooted in breadwinning continues to be the dominant approach among working fathers in the US, new modes of more involved fathering are emerging. The results of the study indicate that a general shift away from a strict, gendered division of household labor is taking place in today's dual career couples, and this is leading to an increase in men's involvement in childcare. Further, although much of the extant research conceptualizes fatherhood as a role typology, the results reveal that all fathers are involved in caring for their babies, though to varying degrees. Thus the authors propose a continuum of involvement. Finally, the authors discovered how men are finding creative ways to use official and unofficial workplace flexibility to be more involved at home.Originality/valueThe findings offer novel insights into the factors that encourage involved fathering. The authors encourage organizations to create more supportive environments that foster involved fathering by extending paid parental leave benefits to men and providing more access to flexibility.

Introduction In the following self-reflexive (examining my own experiences) piece I discuss the methodology of my PhD thesis which, completed in 2014 (Johnson On a Tightrope), focused on how women negotiate, reject and embody the expectations associated with contemporary pregnancy and mothering. In this qualitative research project I examined the types of pregnancy and parenting practices (defined as those practices undertaken to manage and maximise the success of women’s pregnancies and parenting) women engage in with reference to contemporary sources of information. Central to this, I studied the changing nature of pregnancy and mothering practices in the context of increasing digitalisation, with a particular focus on whether and how technologies enable new spaces for experiential learning and health responsibilisation. This also allowed me to query how various discourses work to inform particular ideas of ‘good’ or ‘appropriate’ mothering behaviours and mothering ideologies, and the expert patient ideal (Johnson Maternal Devices). An examination of the different resources and technologies women draw on during their transition to first-time motherhood reveals how dominant discourses are resisted, negotiated or differentially embodied by women facing first-time pregnancy and motherhood. Since the time I began my research, there has been an explosion of applications (apps) into the market. Pregnancy and mothering have been ‘appified’. Apps offer a unique way to order, engage with and reshape our bodies and biology today. They reflect wider cultural and social changes in the understanding of our identity, our ‘lifestyle’ and our body. In my study I drew on characterisations from participants in attempting to understand the affordances of apps and the role they may play during both pregnancy and new motherhood. I found that apps format motherhood and pregnancy in new ways, instituting new rules into new devices and offering templates which actively shape meanings and practices. They provide new ways to imagine or create foetal/child identity, to monitor child activity from a distance, to gather and interpret data and the enactment of “digital” helicopter parenting (Johnson Maternal Devices). Apps also represent a ‘tidbitisation’ of information which is delivered directly into the user’s intimate sphere, sometimes ‘pushed’ into this intimate sphere, no matter where they are. This ‘device-ification’ of mothering purports to turn it into an administrative and calculable activity, valuing data over subjective experiences and changing the meaning of what it is to mother and be a mother. Apps also represent the contemporary intersection between social media, medical advice, expectations of self-management and notions of convenience. They also creates new social relations and valuing practices, such as ‘likeability’ on Facebook, which have the potential to alter our understandings of health and identity. Increasing numbers of health initiatives are adopting apps in their promotional marketing campaigns and the appification of health means that medical knowledge is being increasingly incorporated into new sorts of social interactions. Ongoing research must consider the multiplicity of women’s engagement with these apps across the transition to first-time motherhood and for parents who are trying to manage child health. It would be productive to direct focus onto the lived experiences associated with apps rather than lauding or criticising the content of apps. Background The initial question that motivated my research was: ‘How do women draw on, weave together, and reject aspects of the dominant advice which configures contemporary perceptions of maternal subjectivity, encompassing specifically the transition to first-time motherhood?’ I was interested in what women in the transition to first-time motherhood experienced and how they reflected on and interpreted these experiences. The subjective accounts of women tell a particular story, so, rather than administering a survey to a large group of women I focused on in-depth, semi-structured but flexible interviews as a way of discovering participant experiences as expressed in their own words. Having only a small number of interview participants meant that I was able to analyse my data closely in a way that would be difficult with a larger sample. In total, I conducted twenty-two interviews with twelve women during January and September, 2012. This included two interviews with ten participants and one interview with the remaining two participants. The first interview was conducted during the third trimester of pregnancy, ranging from 32 to 38 weeks. The second interview was undertaken postnatally when the babies ranged from 3 to 7 months of age. For participant demographic information, please refer to earlier publications (Johnson Maternal Devices; Intimate Mothering Publics). Interviewing late in pregnancy and early in new motherhood provided a realistic sense of the changes, both positive and negative, which occur during this transition as well as the – at times – deep rift between experience and expectation. The time between interviews was important as it allowed women time to adjust somewhat to life as a new mum, allowed time for reflection on both the pregnancy and the early months of mothering. The interviews were conversational and relaxed in nature and allowed to flow in the direction the participant chose to take. The women were generous in sharing intimate details of their experiences from conception through to motherhood. Their responses revealed different ways of being pregnant, being supported and responsibilised during pregnancy, and the different ways women cope with stress, anxiety and more. The stories also demonstrate the amount of work, thought and often deliberate self-transformation which occurs throughout pregnancy, and as a new mother. I believe my personal biography influenced the data that I collected during the interviews. My age and sex advantaged my position as an interviewer. Being a relatively young female researcher it was easy to develop rapport with the participants. In addition, being a woman likely increased my access, as a researcher, to the intimate experiences women shared throughout the interviews, especially considering the gendered and personal nature of the research. It was also apparent that my absence of first-hand experience of pregnancy and mothering enhanced the depth of interview data, encouraging participants to provide access to details and feelings that they may have believed were unnecessary to discuss had I also been a mother. Rebecca Horn discusses a similar experience in her research with prison inmates and police staff, which she describes as being due to her projected image as an “innocent abroad” (96). It also meant that participants were more likely to share details because my lack of experience meant that I was not in a position to judge these experiences against my own. Throughout the interviews, the participants often wanted to know more about me, asking me questions like: How old are you? Have you ever been pregnant? Do you have a partner? Does doing this research turn you off having children? Does doing this research make you want to have children? What do you plan to do after you’ve finished your thesis? Similar to other researchers who discuss their interview experiences in self-reflexive pieces Edwards, Finch and Oakley, I found that by sharing some of my own personal experiences I was able to establish trust and develop rapport with the participants. Like Kasper I worked with the assumption that each interview is a collaborative and consensual enterprise among women. I focused on earning trust, displaying sensitivity and fairness, and showing support. The participants expressed genuine interest in my research and the findings it was generating, with most women keen to read any published findings from the research. Many participants asked to have a copy of their interview transcripts for posterity or to reflect on with friends or in future pregnancies. ‘Getting Personal’ Now that I am contemplating the extension of my research into the future I must think about how my position as a researcher has changed. As one of my key interests is the ways in which digital technologies impact on parenting I have to ask myself whether I will use this broad range of technologies myself, as a parent. If I do use these technologies, will I insert myself into my research asking questions about my own user experiences and considering whether my partner uses these technologies in a different way to myself? If so, how, and what are the implications of this? I also need to consider my child amongst this, as both a parent and a researcher. Am I comfortable with my child having a digital life from a young age? I have already contemplated this question and made the conscious decision not to discuss or mention my pregnancy on social media, Facebook in particular. This question will again be important when my partner and I make decisions around the different ways we choose to announce the birth of our first child. These questions will continue to be important to me as a parent in an increasingly digitalised world. Until I become a mother, (some time in the next five weeks) I believe I cannot answer these questions. Rather, this article functions as a sounding board, allowing me to begin contemplating these questions in my future dual role as a mother and a researcher. Becoming a mother will change my position as a researcher in other important ways. I will no longer be the inexperienced, childless researcher. I will continue to treat my participants as partners in my research but being a mother myself, intersubjectivity, “the acknowledgment of the reciprocal sharing of knowledge and experience between the researcher and the researched” (Shields and Dervin 67), will become all the more essential to my approach. In this way I would hope to continue to de-emphasise the conventional hierarchies and dichotomies of research by focusing on the dialectical relationship between myself and my research ‘partners’. It will be imperative that I not only listen to these women without judgement but that I also share the intricacies of my research project and my own experiences as a maternal subject. These women are the experts of their own lives (Kasper) and I am sure this research would benefit from their involvement from an early phase where they would be invited to share in the design of research questions and the collection and interpretation of results. This is particularly important when designing research on new technologies where the only experiences I can currently draw from are my own and perhaps those of friends, family and colleagues. Digital research methodologies are still in their infancy, as this special issue attests, and although research into the use of apps is growing, there continues to be little research into the user experiences of apps. Apps as Tools of Convenience? As noted above, apps create a “tidbitisation” of information (Johnson Maternal Devices), where information is convenient and accessible in small ‘tidbits’ that anyone can access anywhere, anytime on their smartphone. This is something I have already utilised during my pregnancy (checking symptoms, reading about baby’s development) and I am sure this will be useful for me as a new mum. I have also been using my smartphone for other baby-related resources such as gathering lists of lullabies and nursery rhymes. These few examples indicate that smartphones do offer a great number of conveniences to new parents. But, they could also appear worrisome – raising questions around smartphones as distractions from parenting or relying on smartphones to track health conditions or baby habits, and perhaps even the deferral of responsibility, for example, busy parents using apps to entertain children. At this stage we actually know very little about the user experience of apps for mothers and new parents and new research in this area needs to ask questions such as: Who uses apps and why? What are users paying attention to and what is ignored or ‘switched off’? Do push notifications actually work? Do they create a new form of responsibilisation and if so, what are the repercussions of this, particularly if these apps are directed towards women as new parents, rather than men? This last question is particularly important for a scholar such as myself in the field of Gender and Cultural Studies where questions of gender and gendering are often central to our research. I have found that, as apps continue to be developed at an alarming rate, those specific to parenting are, more often than not targeted to women rather than men. Those that are targeted to men are often patronising and poorly executed, lacking detailed information and emphasising gendered stereotypes (for examples, see Johnson Maternal Devices). This is important to note because I found in my study that app use constitutes part of the intimate relationship of parents-to-be and new parents. Male partners rarely read guidebooks or significant detail from other information sources and so apps played a role in their day-to-day gathering of knowledge, usually via their partner. Rather than reading a chapter of a book or googling a pregnancy symptom, quiet time chatting on the couch after work often included the sharing of information from apps or regular email updates on a variety of topics. Men used the same apps as women but this was usually on their partner’s phone, rather than their own. This raises another important question. How do we research indirect use of apps? Is this even possible? The obvious way to answer this question would be through the use of qualitative interviews. This is made difficult through the mere fact that we first must know who uses these apps indirectly before we recruit them into our research. Researching Digital Technologies through Discourse Analysis In my PhD the use of smartphones and apps only emerged as a theme of interest late into the research project. The constant mention of various apps during the interviews prompted me to examine a number of key pregnancy and parenting apps in terms of the discourses they mobilise and their functionality (Johnson Maternal Devices). As Dorothy Smith attests, we live in a textually mediated world. Pregnancy and parenting books, magazines, technologies such as apps and other forms of popular advice represent a mediated version of motherhood, parenthood and fatherhood. If these texts can influence and be influenced by patterns of parenting discourse then critical discourse analysis can contribute to an understanding of the ways in which mothering can be influenced or constructed by popular media and discourse. Thus, in my PhD research I applied discourse analysis to the study of apps. Discourse analysis examines how language constructs social phenomena and investigates the ways in which it produces certain social realities and expectations (Sunderland). Discourse analysis is valuable because of the questions it enables us to ask about the constructed nature of our experiences and the texts that we are exposed to. Smartphone apps, social media and the Internet are growing resources for women in the transition to first-time motherhood. These technologies require further research as they represent a particular way for women to engage with the neoliberal project of responsibilisation. Targeting first-time mothers and parents research allows access to users of digital technologies who most likely have a vested interest (i.e. the health and development of their children) in understanding the way new technologies are increasingly intervening in our everyday lives. Maternal subjects are likely to view such technologies as a means to monitor her pregnancies and her children’s health and development. A central aim of my research is to render visible the enduring nature of ideologies and expectations of motherhood – which include the ways in which women as mothers are responsibilised – and the ways in which different variants of mothering are inserted in new ways into tools of self-help, social media and new ‘pushy’ technologies (apps). This will reveal how discourse is constituted by mothers and how mothering discourse can work to constitute particular maternal practices and beliefs or expectations. Thus I argue that discourse analysis is central to the research of pregnancy/parenting apps. My research demonstrates how women draw on new technologies in rebellious, ironic or affirmative ways to enact different technologies of the self (Foucault). The texts can be viewed as disciplinary in a Foucauldian sense, and by analysing these different forms of advice it is possible to provide an ongoing demonstration of the difficulty of complying with the various demands of motherhood. Women’s interactions with a range of parenting discourses and attempts to create their own version of motherhood can be seen to constitute one component of the work of motherhood and the ways women practice and enact motherhood (this is discussed in detail in an article currently under review). Although researching the potential affordances of apps is important this research must be connected to user experience. In other words, are apps used in the ways we think they are? In order to move forward and ask questions such as: “Are women responsibilised and their conduct shaped in a new way via their smartphones in what I have characterised ‘push responsibilisation’?” we must move beyond discourse analysis and ask questions that focus on the user experience of apps. It would be useful to draw on existing research in other fields, which have started to develop a range of ethnographic methods and tools for research into computer-user interactions, applications and social media including Tinder, Grindr and Instagram. Other questions I wish to include in a future empirical study include: Who adopts these apps and why? Are there variations in the ways different generational users adopt apps? Who rejects these apps and why? Are push notifications ignored, considered obtrusive or do they prompt specific practices or actions? How are apps used? How do apps maintain already existing gender inequalities in parenting? In asking these questions I believe we could also begin to interrogate a much broader question, that is: “What can the use of devices during this particular ‘life stage’ tell us more broadly about mapping, tracking and quantifying the self?” This brings me again to the central question in this piece: How do we do this research? In this article I have not attempted to answer this question but rather to provoke discussion and encourage debate. In particular, I would like to consider new research methodologies which have the potential to extend our research capabilities and those whom we are able to involve in our research. An example would be conducting research online through pre-existing discussion forums. 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