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    International Responses to Regretting Motherhood


    Heffernan, Valerie and Stone, Katherine (2021) International Responses to Regretting Motherhood. In: Women’s Lived Experiences of the Gender Gap. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Springer, pp. 121-133. ISBN 978-981-16-1174-2

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    Abstract

    Recent debates about maternal regret, prompted by the publication of Israeli sociologist Orna Donath’s (2015) research with mothers who admit to regretting their motherhood, have manifested differently in different cultural contexts. This chapter situates Tiina Sihto and Armi Mustosmäki’s analysis of a discussion of regret among contributors to an online forum for mothers in Finland (see Chap. 10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_10 ) within the international context by comparing the Finnish discussion to similar media debates in Spain and the Anglophone countries. Our analysis reveals that while the idea that a woman might regret her motherhood is more readily accepted in countries where institutional support for mothers is lacking, there is a general acceptance that the inordinate pressures placed on mothers in neoliberal societies to negotiate the competing demands of family and paid employment make it inevitable that some women will experience regret. Moreover, we find evidence that the open conversation about regret triggered by Donath’s research is perceived as a further step towards destabilizing traditional attitudes towards gender roles.
    Item Type: Book Section
    Keywords: International Responses; Regretting Motherhood;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures > German
    Item ID: 20060
    Identification Number: 10.1007/978-981-16-1174-2_11
    Depositing User: Valerie Heffernan
    Date Deposited: 24 Jun 2025 10:49
    Publisher: Springer
    Refereed: Yes
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/20060
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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