ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the wider social ramifications surrounding the conception, birth and care of the children, focusing on the role of medical interventions and the allocation of responsibility. The scale of the task of attempting to meet the diverse needs and demands of mothers who were caring for their triplets and higher-order multiple-birth children, and some of the difficulties of voluntary agency involvement were all too evident in the responses. The impact of caring on the physical and mental well-being of parents, especially mothers, was high. Mothers in particular have to be seen to be caring, and this can generate a pressure to be seen to be coping. Mothers wrote and spoke of the need to get some sleep, and to ensure that their children were fed with the minimum of stress. The 26 Home-Start organizers who reported their volunteers' experience with mothers of triplets and quads described the help provided as, in the main, practical.
