About the project

The first of its kind, the Becoming a Mother study explored the experiences of 55, largely white, middle class, first-time mothers in London, recruited via a West London hospital, from early pregnancy to five months after their babies were born. In four interviews with each mother (220 interviews), the study generated 550 hours of recorded material, largely transcribed by hand at the time. Amongst other publications, Oakley’s original research led to two books: Becoming a Mother (1979), later published as From Here to Maternity (1981), and Women Confined (1980).

33 years later, Oakley and colleagues (including Wiggins) carried out a historically comparative study of the experiences of a new, more diverse set of first-time mothers, based at the same hospital, with 58 women. This explored the impact of changes that had taken place in the services provided to mothers, and analysed the ways in which demographic and social changes in women’s lives had influenced their experiences. The study design, sample size and methods were similar to those used in the original, with the inclusion of an additional interview at 18 months post-partum, to capture the experience of women returning to work. The findings, pointing to medicalisation and anxiety as an enduring feature of women’s experiences, were congruent with a systematic review by the team at the time (Brunton et al. 2011).

37 years after the original study, Oakley and Wiggins carried out a follow-up study with 36 of the 55 original women from the Becoming a Mother project. The women by this point were in their mid-60s, and some had become grandmothers. With the aim of exploring the long-term impact of birth experiences, women were asked to reflect on what had happened to them, prompting interesting temporal comparisons as well as reflections on the sociology of memory (Oakley 2016).