Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- New Introduction
- Preface to the Original Edition
- 1 Childbirth and the ‘Position’ of Women
- 2 In the Beginning
- 3 Remember, Pregnancy is a State of Health
- 4 Journey into the Unknown
- 5 The Agony and the Ecstasy
- 6 Mother and Baby
- 7 Learning the Language of the Child
- 8 Menus
- 9 Domestic Politics
- 10 Into a Routine
- 11 Lessons Learnt
- 12 Mothers and Medical People
- Endnote – Being Researched
- Notes and References
- Appendix List of Characters
Endnote – Being Researched
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- New Introduction
- Preface to the Original Edition
- 1 Childbirth and the ‘Position’ of Women
- 2 In the Beginning
- 3 Remember, Pregnancy is a State of Health
- 4 Journey into the Unknown
- 5 The Agony and the Ecstasy
- 6 Mother and Baby
- 7 Learning the Language of the Child
- 8 Menus
- 9 Domestic Politics
- 10 Into a Routine
- 11 Lessons Learnt
- 12 Mothers and Medical People
- Endnote – Being Researched
- Notes and References
- Appendix List of Characters
Summary
Well, quite honestly, I said I hope this research is worth it. I said to my Mum I’ve got this lady coming to see me this morning. She said, what about? I said I hope it's not a load of old rubbish. Because there's been so much research on such rubbishy things I feel money's been wasted. So she said, oh it probably is. … Well, it's a bit indulgent isn't it, really, just talking about yourself all the time?
The accounts of motherhood given in this book were obtained from sixty-six women in 233 interviews, which yielded a total of 545 hours 26 minutes of tape-recorded material. The point of the interviews was to gather material for a sociological research project, and it was for this purpose that interviewer and interviewee came together: to construct a conversation that would provide a series of full, vivid and comparable first-hand accounts of the process of becoming a mother.
But how does it feel to interview - and, more important, to be interviewed? Textbooks of sociological methods describe the research interview in mechanical terms as simply an instrument for the production of sociological data. For example:
Regarded as an information-gathering tool, the interview is designed to minimise the local, concrete, immediate circumstances of the particular encounter - including the respective personalities of the participants - and to emphasise only those aspects that can be kept general enough and demonstrable enough to be counted. As an encounter between these two particular people the typical interview has no meaning; it is conceived in a framework of other, comparable meetings between other couples …
Or:
The interview is not simply a conversation. It is, rather, a pseudo conversation. In order to be successful, it must have all the warmth and personality exchange of a conversation, with the clarity and guidelines of scientific searching. Consequently, the interviewer cannot merely lose himself* in being friendly. He must introduce himself as though beginning a conversation, but from the beginning the additional element of respect, of professional competence, should be maintained. … He is a professional researcher in this situation, and he must demand and obtain respect for the task he is trying to perform.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Here to Maternity (Reissue)Becoming a Mother, pp. 298 - 306Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2018