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A Sociological Approach to Understanding First Time Motherhood: The Early Months

Making Sense of Motherhood presents the first time journey into motherhood from a narrative, qualitative, sociological perspective. Do not read this book expecting to learn about the experience of motherhood beyond early infancy. The focus is entirely on the prenatal period, birth, and immediate postnatal period. Rather than focusing on the cultural demands of motherhood, as a spate of recent popular books have done, Miller’s work focuses on women’s internal sense of self as they move into motherhood. The work is not self-described as feminist, but the author utilizes feminist constructs and research methods. Early chapters orient the reader to the sociological terms employed throughout the book and the theory and research grounding the work. Miller spent time living in Bangladesh and the Solomon Islands, and early chapters offer reflections on the cultural understandings of motherhood and the experiences of individual women from these cultures. Later chapters focus on longitudinal qualitative interviews that Miller conducted in her native United Kingdom with first-time mothers in the preand postnatal periods. Her sample consisted primarily of women from middleclass, majority culture backgrounds. She also interweaves her own experiences of motherhood as appropriate, and the concluding chapter offers insightful reflections on ways in which participating in the research may have influenced her participants’ thoughts and feelings about motherhood. Miller raises important issues around ways in which minority culture women are treated within the majority culture around childbirth. Through analysis of interview transcripts, she weaves her narrative to show that many minority culture women (e.g., Bangladeshi) in the United Kingdom do not have their own experiences validated, and in turning themselves over to the perceived superiority of the Western medical establishment, they question and perhaps devalue their own internal knowledge of the pregnancy and childbirth process. Miller believes this is a disservice to women, yet does not propose solutions, such as education of medical professionals, to bridge some of the gaps between minority and majority cultures. In her efforts to validate and equalize all women’s “ways of knowing” about the birth process, Miller strives to equally value each culture’s traditional approaches to motherhood, holding up all cultures’ traditions around childbirth as equally valid (with the exception of the Western medical establishment). Although not directly stated, the book implies that women’s reliance on medical “experts” in the pregnancy and birth experience detracts from women’s awareness of and connection to their own mothering intuition and capacity. Several times throughout the book, she makes the point that experts and hospital births have contributed to “women becoming further separated from their bodies” (p. 149). Presentation of this issue is fairly one-sided. There is no contrasting information about health and safety issues that may place women in danger when giving birth in the context of their “cultural ways of knowing.” In holding up traditional cultures and devaluing the medical establishment, Miller does not address the marginalization, discrimination, or health consequences women may experience as a result of being immersed in cultures which find birth to be an inherently unclean and dirty process. One might conclude from this book that there are no potential advantages to routine prenatal care or hospital birth. In her introduction, Miller says this book is intended for a social science and health professional readership. Parts of this book may be used to augment the study of gender and motherhood in social science classrooms. Her use of narrative interviews and qualitative research may also be of interest to those in social science. This book will likely not engage the busy health care practitioner, however. In addition, there is great use of sociological jargon throughout the book, and there is not a clear presentation of hypotheses, research findings, or suggestions to health care professionals. There is no summary chapter where conclusions and implications are presented. Miller’s presentation of findings is somewhat different from other books in psychology, as it is grounded in her sociological qualitative research and focuses entirely around the birth period. However, these are not new ideas and are presented more clearly elsewhere. Upon finishing this book, I have taken away two key findings from Miller’s work. The first is that not enough attention is paid within medical settings to the experiences of individual women, be they from minority or majority cultures. Many women who were interviewed experienced a lack of sensitivity and understanding from their health care professionals. The second is that many middle-class women have so embodied the cultural myths of motherhood that it is very hard for them to acknowledge any difficulties they may have in the new mother role. This theme emerges from the individual interviews, as well as Miller’s summary, in which she notes that only in the final interview did some women in her study acknowledge the difficult period they had encountered immediately after birth. One woman, for example, talked about insisting to the nurse that she was not suffering from postpartum depression, while at the same time recounting that she was constantly in tears. Miller is adept at placing the participants’ lack of honesty with the researcher (and themselves) within the cultural context of motherhood expectations in the United Kingdom among the middle class.