Lunch Hour Lecture - '50 Years Of Becoming A Mother'

In this lecture, Prof. Charlotte Faircloth present an engaging overview of the ‘50 Years of Becoming a Mother’ project.

This Lecture will present an engaging overview of the ‘50 Years of Becoming a Mother’ project, currently underway in the UCL Social Research Institute.

This involves following up with the women she interviewed between 1974-76, many of whom are now grandmothers. The team are also conducting a ‘repeat’ study at the same London hospital, 50 years on, to explore how things have changed, or not, for women making the transition to motherhood.

In the Lecture, we will share some of the early findings from the study, including archive material from the time to highlight how public health advice around caring for babies has changed between the 1970s and the present day. This event will appeal to those interested changing ideas of motherhood and gender, as well as the history of sociology more broadly.

This will be a team presentation, led by Charlotte Faircloth but featuring Rachel Arkell and Kate Errington - see here for full details: https://www.becomingamother50.co.uk/team

About the speakers:

Rachel Arkell: Dr Rachel Arkell is a socio-legal researcher with an LLM in Medical Law and Ethics, MA in Methods of Social Research, and LLB in European Legal Studies from the University of Kent. She completed her SeNSS (ESRC) funded doctoral research at the University of Kent, exploring the communication of risk with regards to medication use during (potential) pregnancy post Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015]. To date, her research has focused on the social and legal treatment of ‘contentious’ behaviour during pregnancy, including alcohol and medication use. Throughout her doctoral studies, Rachel worked at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the UK’s largest independent abortion provider, as a Projects and Research Officer

Charlotte Faircloth: Professor of Family and Society at the UCL Social Research Institute leads the BAM50 project. She is a key contributor to Parenting Culture Studies, a ground-breaking inter-disciplinary field that situates ‘parenting’ as a key topic for understanding contemporary society. Her anthropological research, focusing on reproduction and parenting, has covered topics including infant feeding, couple relationships, inter-generational relations, and most recently, the impact of coronavirus on family life.

Kate Errington: An interdisciplinary researcher with a background in Medical and Health Humanities. Her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, investigated public communication and understandings of risk during pregnancy, 1948-present. Alongside this research, Kate co-founded the Broadly Conceived research network for scholars interested in reproduction. Prior to joining the BAM50 project, Kate worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Blizard Institute at Queen Mary University of London, delivering public engagement work about maternal vaccination.

About the chair:

Professor Katherine Twamley is a sociologist and founding Programme Director of the UCL BSc Sociology undergraduate programme (2018-2022). She chairs the UCL Sociology Network - the cross-university group for sociologists at UCL - and is an editorial board member of The Sociological Review and editor of the Routledge Sociological Futures Book series.