Solo motherhood and childcare: investigating the return-to-work experiences of families formed through donor insemination or IVF

自1978年路易丝·布朗出生以来，新的生殖技术使家庭能够以新的方式创造(Gurtin和FairCloth 2018)。一个例子是单亲母亲(或选择单亲母亲)使用捐赠者人工授精或越来越多的试管受精(HFEA 2020)组成的家庭。对这些新的家庭形式的工作和照顾做法的兴趣正在增长；然而，现有的关于单亲家庭的研究往往集中在通过分居或离婚形成的家庭。这往往强调儿童的结果较差，主要是由于经济困难(Amato 2005)。由于单身母亲通常在经济上有保障(Graham和Braverman 2012)，这个框架排除了她们的经历。因此，我的项目将探索这一未被研究的单亲家庭在离开父母后重返工作岗位时的育儿选择和实践。该项目定位于解释主义范式，并将采取定性的方法。我预计我的数据收集方法将是重复的半结构化访谈：这种方法已经被用来解决类似的研究问题(例如Graham 2018和Bock 2000)。这个多学科项目位于ESRC教育研究领域，也将利用社会学、儿童研究和育儿文化研究领域。该项目将产生概念上的影响，有助于理解与新家庭形式的育儿和育儿假有关的政策问题，并重新构建单亲家庭的赤字模式。这将符合ESRC的任务，即产生对社会和经济做出明显贡献的研究。

Since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978, new reproductive technologies have enabled families to be created in new ways (Gurtin and Faircloth 2018). One example is families formed by solo mothers (or single mothers by choice) using donor insemination or, increasingly, IVF (HFEA 2020). Interest in the work and care practices of these new family forms is growing; however, existing research into single parent families has tended to focus on those formed through separation or divorce. This often emphasises poorer outcomes for children, primarily due to economic hardship (Amato 2005). As solo mothers are usually financially secure (Graham and Braverman 2012), this framing excludes their experiences.My project will therefore explore the childcare choices and practices of this understudied sub-group of single parents as they return to work following parental leave.The project is positioned within the interpretivist paradigm, and will take a qualitative approach. I anticipate that my data collection method will be repeated semi-structured interviews: this approach has been used to address similar research questions (for example Graham 2018 and Bock 2000).This multidisciplinary project sits within the ESRC research area of Education and will also draw on the fields of sociology, childhood studies and parenting culture studies. The project will have conceptual impact by contributing to understanding of policy issues related to childcare and parental leave in new family forms, and by reframing the deficit model of single parent families. This will meet the ESRC remit of producing research that makes a demonstrable contribution to society and the economy.