The project runs from February 2025 to September 2029 and is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Background
In the last decades of the 20th Century, Professor Ann Oakley's ground-breaking 'Becoming a Mother' project:
- reshaped thinking about motherhood
- established a multi-disciplinary area of academic research, and
- provoked a sea-change in practice and policy around maternity care.
In a time of accelerating social change, this project takes forward that legacy.
Methodology
We take an inter-generational, longitudinal, and historically comparative approach. We will understand better the:
- lasting implications of women's transition to motherhood, and
- continuities and changes in women's experiences over the last 50 years in the UK.
We will do this through both the re-analysis of Oakley's previous research and new data-collection.
Aims
This project will be carried out in a phased process and by a team based at the leading UCL Social Research Institute (including Oakley herself). It has the following archival, methodological, data collection and engagement-based aims.
Aim 1
To compile, digitise, transcribe, catalogue, archive and re-analyse data from the original Becoming a Mother study (and associated studies). This will be in collaboration with the British Library (our official partner) as part of their acquisition of Oakley’s archive.
Aim 2
Based on (1), conduct follow-up interviews with those original mothers (and any grand/daughters who have become mothers). This will identify intergenerational changes in the transition to motherhood, potentially over three generations.
Aim 3
Based on (1) and (2), in combination with a historical policy review, develop a new interview schedule. We will conduct a methodologically similar study with an intersectionally diverse sample of mothers recruited via the same hospital in London. This will reflect and reveal historical change in the experience of first-time motherhood ‘50 years on’.
Aim 4
Drawing on (1) (2) and (3), to develop and share our findings with a wide audience through:
- academic and non-academic publications, including policy briefs
- an embedded television documentary and podcast, and
- a launch event (in the House of Lords) and dissemination event (at the British Library) publicised across a variety of media platforms.
Substantively, this project will contribute to understanding the transition to (and experience of) motherhood and contextualised by changes to parenting culture.
It will also:
- strengthen social science methodology,
- showcase ways of collecting and analysing qualitative data over time, and
- ensure the legacy of historically important data-sets.
In curating a research-ready data-set for re-use, the project serves not only as a study of motherhood, but as a study of the study of motherhood.
We anticipate our ‘50 years on’ study will be equally impactful as the original. It will provide landmark evidence, enhancing the capacity of social science to inform policy and shape the development of equitable and efficient services.
In addressing early motherhood holistically (rather than through ‘maternity care’ or ‘Early Childhood Education’), we hope to offer an innovative perspective on women’s well-being and fertility trends. Improvements in this area have an unusual capacity for far-reaching effects, such as:
- promoting family and community health,
- encouraging responsible citizenship, and
- the potential to enhance human flourishing.
We hope that this project will produce significant and wide-ranging outputs for a variety of users and generate new knowledge around motherhood. This will have a lasting impact on public discourse and social policy, offering us a timely portrait of how motherhood – and indeed Britain – have changed.
Team
Project leaders
Collaborating partner
Related links
Contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about our research.
Image
Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels.