First-Time Parenting Journeys
Expectations and Realities

Presents stories of Australian heterosexual couples to explore social norms about reproduction in the transition to first-time parenthood.

Damien W. Riggs (Author), Clare Bartholomaeus (Author)

9781316513989, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 March 2023

172 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.6 cm, 0.49 kg

'Riggs and Bartholomaeus turn the spotlight on the taken-for-granteds of heterosexual parenthood, which goes beyond the usual 'transition to parenthood' scholarship. They use innovative theory to investigate the affective dimension of first-time parenthood; and, along with an intergenerational perspective, the book makes a highly novel and thought-provoking contribution to scholarship on kinship and belonging, parenthood and reproductive decision-making.' Tracy Morison, author of Queer Kinship and Men's Pathways to Parenthood

All too often heterosexual first-time parents are treated as the unmarked norm within research on reproduction. First-Time Parenting Journeys maps out what it means to be situated within the norm, while providing a critical account of how social norms about parenthood shape, regulate, and potentially delimit experiences of new parenthood for heterosexual couples. Based on qualitative longitudinal research, this book tells the story of journeys to parenthood, highlighting the impact of gender norms, moral claims, emotion work, and generativity. While drawing on Australian data, the critical conceptual framework has broader applicability across Western contexts in terms of understanding normative family structures and parenting practices. By focusing on expectations about, and the reality of, new parenthood, it explicates the ways in which institutionalised norms about parenthood are internalised and explores what this can tell us about the broader contours of parenthood discourses.

1. Introduction
2. Undertaking a Qualitative Longitudinal research study with intending parents
3. Motherhood moralities
4. Birthing experiences
5. Emotion work in the transition to motherhood
6. Development of a parental identity
7. Views about having more children
8. Changes in the couple relationship over time
9. Grandparents navigating shifts in relationships and identity
10. Reflecting on the study findings and experience.

Subject Areas: Psychology of gender [JMG], Child & developmental psychology [JMC], Psychology [JM], Sociology: family & relationships [JHBK], Sociology: birth [JHBF], Sociology & anthropology [JH]