panel 11Layers of Loss and Care: Navigating Motherhood, Fertility, and Unintended Pregnancy
“Becoming-Motherhoods”: Crafting Care in the Context of Child Removal
Faye Green
The UK care system is in crisis; the number of children removed from their birth families continues to increase, as does the number of women subject to successive child removals. Child removal is undoubtedly a traumatic experience, yet it is also deeply stigmatised, and support for birth parents is often limited. The scarcity of research into the experiences of women who have children removed is perhaps also indicative of the societal attitude towards this group. Care is central to conceptualisations of parenthood, reinforcing the profound loss of identity for mothers who lose practical and material means of caring for their children. In this paper, drawing on participatory craft research in a women’s drop-in, I focus on working with a participant to make a patchwork blanket for her child following removal. I explore the loss of maternal identity through feminist ethics of care and new materialist approaches to subjectivity. Framing selfhood as an ongoing and emergent process, entangled in material-discursive relations, I develop the concept of “becoming-motherhoods,” to surface multiple and contingent maternal identities enacted and embodied through care-ful creative practice. Making the blanket engages practices of care across temporalities, offering a counter to what Morriss (2018) described as the “haunting” effect of child removal, wherein past, present, and future motherhoods are intertwined and under threat. In this paper, I explore the creative processes of 1) re-membering shared histories, 2) present practices of care, and 3) collective forms of hopeful futuring. I argue that the participant was able to enact becoming-motherhoods through material practices and symbolic acts of care, and to be cared for, through the shared experience of making in the drop-in. This paper contributes insights from work with women who are repeatedly marginalised, considering the reparative possibilities of creative practice to enact care in the context of child removal.
Faye Green is a PhD researcher in the School of Design at Northumbria University. She is interested in creative approaches to therapeutic work in community settings, and completed a Master’s degree in Dance/Movement Psychotherapy at the University of Derby. Her doctoral research is in collaboration with the UK charity Changing Lives and explores the use of craft in trauma-informed drop-in support services for women. Her work is rooted in feminist and queer approaches to trauma, mental health, and social justice.
Existential Repair in Uncertain Fertility Trajectories
Annelies Hommens-van de Steeg
Becoming a parent is considered a major life-event, full of meaning. Relatedly, the failure to conceive can raise serious questions concerning the meaning of life. One in six people of reproductive age experience infertility in their lifetime, they do not conceive after “12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse” (WHO, 2023). Infertility has generally been considered a social stigma (Sharma et al., 2018; Archetti, 2017). Medical Assisted Reproduction (MAR) and Artificial Reproduction Techniques (ART), however, have changed the experience of infertility profoundly. The medical paradigm views infertility as a physical problem that can be solved (cf. Duffy et al., 2021). We know, however, that only 50 percent of all couples will end up parents after three cycles of ART (the number of treatments covered by the Dutch health insurance system) (Freya, 2018). This alone makes undergoing fertility treatment ambiguous: it is by no means certain that a couple will see their desire fulfilled.
In line with Archetti (2017), who states that the prevailing medical paradigm obscures the existential crisis of infertility, my research focusses on this crisis, where patients question their sense of self, identity, and meaning and purpose in life. Although research shows that patients report existential needs (Schmal, 2016; McCarthy, 2008), to date no studies are known on the nature of these needs. I will argue that a deeper understanding of these needs will help to respond to care needs of patients in a more holistic, reparative way. Accordingly, I will present an autoethnographic memory of a failed fertility treatment, where I navigated alternating hope and despair. Care-ethical insights on embodiment, narrative identity and meaning and sense will then be used to gain a deeper understanding of the existential needs in this experience. For this, the input of the participants in the workshop is warmly welcomed.
Annelies Hommens-van de Steeg (1981) is an external PhD student at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht (NL). Her research focusses on the existential care needs of patients undergoing fertility treatments and consists of both conceptual and empirical research from a care-ethical and narrative theory perspective.
Since 2010, Annelies has worked as a spiritual counselor in healthcare institutions. She has obtained a master's degree in theology at Utrecht University (2006) and a vocational degree from the Protestant Theological University (2007). Besides that, she is a licensed Moral Deliberation facilitator.
Layers and Voices in Decision-Making About an Unintended Pregnancy
Eline Dalmijn
Per year, one in 16 people are faced with an unintended pregnancy. It is a life experience which oftenconfronts a pregnant person with a difficult, stressful and irreversible decision to carry out or terminate the pregnancy. It is important for a person with an unintended pregnancy to make their own decision; the more it is their own choice the better they can move forward and give it a place in their life story. The importance of making a well-informed decision is clear, but insights into how people with an unintended pregnancy come to a decision are lacking. Research so far is limited in applying a mere rational framework and focusing solely on the outcome of the unwanted pregnancy, i.e. reasons for and certainty about abortion, and not, for instance, continuation of the pregnancy.
We conducted a narrative literature review to gain insights into what is currently known about the major elements involved in the decision-making process of all persons with an unintended pregnancy. This study provides the insight that the decision-making process about an unintended pregnancy consists of navigating entangled layers instead of weighing separable elements. The layers – a sense of knowing, feelings and beliefs, interrelatedness, providers and policy, and norms and social pressure – are both internal and external to the pregnant person. The sense of knowing seems to play an important part. This shows that a rational frame is inadequate, and a more holistic frame is needed to capture this dynamic and personal experience.
In two subsequent empirical studies we are collecting the experiences of people with decision-making regarding an unintended pregnancy. We use a mixed method approach with a writing assignment, interviews and a questionnaire to learn more about the layers and voices that play a part in the decision-making process. I will present the outcomes of my studies so far and create an interactive space to introduce the audience to the layers, voices and ethical dilemmas in decision-making of people with an unintended pregnancy.
Eline Dalmijn, Msc., is a clinical and developmental psychologist with expertise on reproductive health and rights. She has coordinated (inter)national projects concerning empowerment of women, reproductive health care and decision-making. She currently holds the position of program manager Unwanted Pregnancies at Fiom, Centre of Expertise in Unwanted Pregnancy and Ancestry in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, and is conducting her PhD on decision-making regarding an unwanted pregnancy at the Department of Care Ethics of the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Location
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
23-25 January 2025
Kontakt der Kontinenten, Amersfoortsestraat 20
3769 AS Soesterberg
Online
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