ABSTRACT
Although ways into motherhood are increasing in their diversity (Sawicki, 1991; Sistare, 1994; Stanworth, 1987; Teman, 2009) and are no longer predominantly attached to heterosexual coupledom, at the time my research participants gave birth their individual transition was more clearly framed, and between the years 1979-891 each participant produced at least one biological child within a heterosexual married relationship.2 Elly Teman (2009: 50) comments that pregnancy is ‘a bodily site upon which identity-work is undertaken’, thus the visibility of the pregnant body provided clear outward signs of a changing social status for each of my participants. The delivered baby is the embodied proof of a completed transition to the identity ‘mother’, dependent as this is on the presence of a ‘child’.3 As Janet Draper (2001: 23) notes, pregnancy and labour provide ‘the framework of women’s transition to motherhood [whilst] social process[es] structure this transition’.
