About the project

Women's sickness absence has increased in recent decades and is currently 7.4%, compared to 4.4% among men. In general, women experience greater conflict than men related to balancing work outside and at home. Mothers of young children experience fatigue, stress, unpreparedness and a bad conscience in the balancing act between professional activity and childcare, and studies indicate that such experiences can result in poorer health. When mothers of young children reduce their employment percentage or switch to less demanding positions, this can at the same time help to hide strain and illness for this group. From a health and equality perspective, knowledge about women's motherhood and work experiences is therefore important. These experiences are still only partially understood in the existing knowledge base on sickness absence and family life, and there is a need for studies that can contribute to a new and more comprehensive understanding of the vulnerability of mothers of young children to health burdens.

Life as a "lived body" has gained increased relevance when it comes to understanding health and gender in new and more holistic ways. Women have special bodily experiences through pregnancy and infancy, cultural expectations are attached to the mother's body as safe and close, and structural conditions such as leave arrangements, childcare facilities and working hours set premises for women's ways of experiencing and using the body. After pregnancy and infancy have been covered, bodily experience in the relationship between occupational activity and childcare has been investigated to a small extent.

The purpose of the study is to add new knowledge about the health of mothers with young children. The knowledge should contribute to addressing and making the individual and society at large aware of how relational and gendered bodily experiences are linked to health-related vulnerability and strain. This is an important contribution to a new discussion about how the experiences of the mother's body can be recognized, included and supported in preventive health work, in modern working life and in an equal society.

The study's main research problem is: "How do mothers of young children experience their bodies in everyday life, caring situations and working life, and how do these experiences shed light on health, vulnerability and gender?".

A combination of qualitative methods, in-depth interviews and micro-phenomenological interviews, will be used to gain knowledge about mothers of young children's bodily experience and to answer the research problem. The study will both utilize and contribute to phenomenological and gendered theoretical perspectives.

Background

Master in Interdisiplinary health-research, UiO

Researh group

Eksistensielle perspektiver i forskning og praksis (EXIST)