Kirsty Budds
“Risky Business”: Constructing the “choice” to “delay” motherhood in the British press
Budds, Kirsty; Locke, Abigail; Burr, Vivien
Abstract
Over the last few decades the number of women becoming pregnant later on in life has markedly increased. Medical experts have raised concerns about the increase in the number of women having babies later, owing to evidence that suggests that advancing maternal age is associated with both a decline in fertility and an increase in health risks to both mother and baby. In recognition of these risks, experts have warned that women should aim to have their children between the ages of twenty and thirty-five. As a consequence, women giving birth past the age of thirty-five have typically been positioned as “older mothers.” In this paper we used a social constructionist thematic analysis in order to analyse how “older mothers” are represented in newspaper articles in the British press. We examined how the topics of “choice” and “risk” are handled in discussions of delayed motherhood, and found that the media position women as wholly responsible for choosing the timing of pregnancy and, as a consequence, as accountable for the associated risks. Moreover, we noted that newspapers also constructed a “right” time for women to become pregnant. As such, we discuss the implications for the ability of women to make real choices surrounding the timing of pregnancy.
Citation
Budds, K., Locke, A., & Burr, V. (2013). “Risky Business”: Constructing the “choice” to “delay” motherhood in the British press. Feminist Media Studies, 13(1), 132-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.678073
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Apr 18, 2012 |
Publication Date | 2013-02 |
Deposit Date | May 30, 2023 |
Journal | Feminist Media Studies |
Print ISSN | 1468-0777 |
Electronic ISSN | 1471-5902 |
Publisher | Routledge |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 13 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 132-147 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.678073 |
Keywords | Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Communication; Gender Studies |
You might also like
The Study of Identity in Health Psychology
(2021)
Book Chapter
Empowering women through the positive birth movement
(2018)
Journal Article
Regendering care or undoing gendered binaries of parenting in contemporary UK society?
(2017)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Keele Repository
Administrator e-mail: research.openaccess@keele.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search