Social Support and Motherhood: The Natural History of a Research Project

Drawing on her long experience as an academic researcher and writer, Ann Oakley develops a sociology of the research process itself, telling the story of how a research project is undertaken and what happens along the way to both the researchers and those who are being researched. This remarkable book focuses on a topic of great importance in the provision of health services: caring and social support. Placing the widespread neglect of this topic in the wider context of an ongoing crisis in gendering knowledge, Social Support and Motherhood is now being reissued for a contemporary audience, to emphasize its resonance for social science researchers and others interested in the experiences of mothers, and in the relations between social research, academic knowledge, and public policy.