Paths to Parenthood

Renata Kokanović is Professor of Medical Sociology and Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne,Melbourne, and Adjunct Professor, Monash Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Monash University. She works at the intersection of the critical social sciences, humanities, psychiatry, cultural studies, and social theory. Her current research is focused on the phenomenology of psychosis and borderline personality disorder, and on emotional responses to trauma. Professor Kokanović is Director of Healthtalk Australia, a digital repository of narrative accounts of health and illness experiences in Australia, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Mental Health. Paula A. Michaels is Associate Professor of History at Monash University. She is the author of two prize-winning books: Lamaze: An International History (2014) and Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (2003). Focusing on the intersection of medical and political history, her work has been supported by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia,  the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council. Kate Johnston-Ataata (Editorial Associate) is a Research Fellow in Sociology at RMIT University, Healthtalk Australia Coordinator, and was lead researcher on the project underpinning this book. Dr Johnston-Ataata’s research interests include the relational context of individual health and illness experiences, women’s health, and the social, cultural and emotional dimensions of life-course transitions in late modernity.

Acknowledgments.- Chapter 1: The complex and contradictory emotional paths to parenthood.- Part I: Journeys into pregnancy and childbirth.- Chapter 2:  Postnatural families: Refiguring intimacy through assisted reproduction.- Chapter 3: Embodying pregnancy and self-surveillance.- Chapter 4: Pain and suffering in labour and birth.- Part II: Journeys into early parenthood.- Chapter 5: Same-sex attracted parents’ emotional transitions to parenthood.- Chapter 6: The turbulent emotions of early parenthood.- Chapter 7: ‘What have I done?’: An exploration of the ambivalent, unimaginable emotions of new motherhood.- Chapter 8: Narrating and disrupting postnatal depression.- Chapter 9: ‘One of the most vulnerable times in your life’: Expectations and emotional experiences of support in the early postnatal period.- Chapter 10: Labour after labour: Negotiating caring for children and paid work.- Appendix 1:  Emotional Experiences of Early Parenthood in Australian Families Project:Participant demographic characteristics.- Index.