Title: The Making of Modern Motherhoods: Storying an Emergent Identity
Abstract: The increasing participation of women in further and higher education and the labour force since the Second World War has transformed the shape and meaning of women's biographies reflected in a trend towards later motherhood (Lewis, 1992). Yet stagnation in social mobility and widening inequality has also heightened differences between women, reflected in differential patterns of family formation depending on educational and employment status (Crompton, 2006). The transition to motherhood is not only an important site of identity change for women but also an arena where socio-economic differences between women are defined and compounded through the creation of distinct cultures of child-rearing (Byrne, 2006; Clarke, 2004; Tyler, 2008).