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    'Feels a bit naughty when you're a mum' : alcohol use amongst mothers with preschool children : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Clinical Psychology, Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa/New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Pedersen, Michelle
    Over the past two decades, young New Zealand women have consumed alcohol in a culture of normalised intoxication, aligned with postfeminist and neoliberal values of autonomy, fun and freedom of choice. As these women transition into motherhood, they are exposed to contradictory messages on alcohol. Targeted by growing media and advertising messages encouraging alcohol use as a coping strategy for motherhood, they are also expected to conform to ‘good’ mothering ideology. With very little research in this area, the current study aimed to explore the way mothers of preschool children talk about their current alcohol use, their past alcohol use in young adulthood, other mothers’ alcohol use and their partner’s alcohol use. Using a gendered approach the goal was to develop an understanding of how these mothers accepted, resisted and negotiated meanings on alcohol use in early motherhood and how their drinking was negotiated with their partners and parental responsibilities. Following ethical approval, seven friendship discussion groups, involving 30 mothers between ages 28 and 41 were conducted in Wellington, New Zealand. Transcribed discussions were subject to Foucauldian discourse analysis, which showed that the women drew upon the ‘work hard, play hard’ and ‘developmental age and stage’ discourses to normalise excessive drinking and experimentation in young adulthood. In comparison, current drinking was discussed as routine and constructed as a ‘reward’, for ‘relaxation’ and as a form of ‘adult time out’, providing these mothers with a way to cope and a brief escape from the demands of mothering. Unlike fathers’ drinking, which was constructed as ‘masculine’, the mothers’ drinking was highly policed and sanctioned through public ‘surveillance’ and their own ‘self-monitoring’. Mothers who deviated from idealised expectations of ‘good’ mothering were seen as lower-class. Although a ‘considerate family man’ discourse was drawn upon, it was the mothers who still took on the primary caregiving role. They often instigated couple negotiations on who was drinking and it was frequently their drinking (rather than fathers) that was restricted due to parental responsibilities. Findings are discussed in terms of what this means for public health campaigns, women’s access to alcohol support as well as wider implications for gender relations.
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    Effects of anger management and social contact on alcohol and tobacco consumption: a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 1992) Alpass, Fiona Margaret
    Relationships between anger management, social contact, and alcohol and tobacco consumption were investigated to examine a number of issues: (1) That anger management and social contact would be correlated to each other and therefore possibly confounded, (2) that anger management and social contact would be independently related to alcohol and tobacco consumption, (3) that anger management and social contact would jointly influence alcohol and tobacco consumption, (4) that anger management, social contact and alcohol and tobacco consumption would vary across age, sex and socioeconomic status, (5) that age, sex and socioeconomic status would moderate the effects of anger management and social contact on alcohol and tobacco consumption, and (6) that alcohol and tobacco consumption would, in conjunction with psychosocial and sociodemographic variables, operate interactively on each other. A secondary analysis was undertaken on a sub-sample of 831 control subjects taken from the general population as a part of the Auckland Heart Study. Analyses revealed that anger discussion was positively correlated with social availability. No other significant correlations were found between anger management and social contact variables. Multiple regression analyses showed no independent effects of anger management and social contact variables on alcohol and tobacco,consumption, but revealed a number of significant interaction effects involving sociodemographic variables. Only one significant interaction effect was found involving both anger management and social contact on either alcohol or tobacco consumption. Analyses revealed that anger management, social contact and alcohol and tobacco consumption varied by age, sex and socioeconomic status. It was concluded that anger management and social contact were not confounded, and were not independently or jointly related to alcohol and tobacco consumption. Results were thus inconsistent with a mediating relationship for smoking and alcohol consumption between psychosocial variables and health outcomes. The number of significant interaction effects was supportive of the value of an interactive approach to health variables. Conceptual and methodological issues are discussed in view of the general lack of support for the research questions and hypotheses.
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    Alternative articulations : a post-structuralist reading of a programme to change New Zealand's drinking culture : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Sociology at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2006) Hanrahan, Shannon Te Ahu
    The field of alcohol regulation has been highly influenced by the new public health and its diverse attempts at influencing the conduct of individuals and populations to reduce alcohol-related harm. Dominated by objectivist and rationalist approaches, the new public health often fails to account for the critical role of knowledge, power and language in the construction of alcohol-related harm as an issue of governance. It is in response to the hegemony of the new public health approach, and the internal limit points of this discourse, that alternative understandings of the field of alcohol-regulation emerge. This study conducts a post-structural reading of one of those alternative understandings, that of the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand's (ALAC) programme of work known as the culture change programme. Employing the work of Michel Foucault, and in particular, his work on the art of government ("governmentality"), the thesis poses the question: how does ALAC negotiate the tension between those techniques and strategies that compel and coerce individuals and those regimes and frameworks of self-regulation that are calculated to guide individuals' behaviours? ALAC's attempt to govern the field of alcohol-regulation through its relationships with external agencies is examined for answers. Using the post-structural discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, this study examines ALAC's construction of the field of alcohol regulation, and its attempts to influence and engage external agencies in the culture change programme. The findings indicate that ALAC's liberal conceptualisation of the social world does not account for the struggles over meaning that play out through its relationships with external agencies. The study suggests that if ALAC were to reconceptualise its view of the world as an 'open social system,' where meaning is relational, contextual and historically located, a new set of tools becomes available for understanding the future prospects of the culture change programme.