ABSTRACT
This book has explored women’s experiences of separation from their adult children at the time of the latter’s leaving home, an aspect of motherhood that I have argued has to date received little academic attention. The data produced was grounded in the meanings of child-and mother-hoods for my twenty-five research participants prior to, during and following the time their daughters and sons left home. In focusing on motherhood during a particular stage of the life course, I am exposing the need to reconceptualise the mother/child relationship to encompass within it women’s relationships with their children once they become adult. To conclude the book, I summarise the contribution my argument offers to contemporary understandings of motherhood, absence and transition.
