Negotiating grandmothering, paid employment and regular childcare in urban Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

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dc.confidentialEmbargo : Noen_US
dc.contributor.advisorBreheny, Mary
dc.contributor.authorDay, Caroline
dc.date.accessioned2021-03-16T02:58:34Z
dc.date.accessioned2021-06-28T02:21:38Z
dc.date.available2021-03-16T02:58:34Z
dc.date.available2021-06-28T02:21:38Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.descriptionListed in 2021 Dean's List of Exceptional Thesesen
dc.description.abstractGrandmothers are increasingly called upon to provide regular childcare to enable parents to engage in paid employment. Many of these grandmothers are in paid employment themselves. Combining paid employment and regular childcare is managed in the context of their lives, which includes family relationships and broader societal expectations for older women. This thesis examined the experience of grandmothers living in Auckland City, who were in paid employment at least twenty hours a week and who provided regular weekly childcare of at least ten hours a week to their grandchildren. This research was based on feminist poststructuralism. Poststructuralism focusses on multiplicity and subjectivity, attending to the wider contexts in which language is located. Feminist poststructuralism focusses on gender and how gendered norms describe and establish the ‘right’ ways of behaving. These expectations contribute to assumptions that the accommodation of childcare and paid work is normal and natural for women. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with fifteen grandmothers and their accounts were analysed using narrative analysis. Narrative analysis focusses on the importance of stories as the primary way in which people make sense of their lives. These stories draw on wider social, cultural, political and gendered narratives. The analysis found that paid employment was particularly important in the participants’ lives, allowing for the construction of an identity which was different to a grandmother-focussed identity. This importance of paid employment also shaped participants’ understandings of the importance of paid employment in the lives of mothers; maternal paid employment was constructed as important for wellbeing and for enabling an identity different to that of ‘mother’. Two clear intentions for providing childcare were storied: supporting maternal paid employment, and childcare as a response to concerns about grandchildren’s wellbeing. Finally, holding multiple roles and balancing paid employment and childcare were storied as the juggling of identities rather than the juggling of the tasks involved in combining paid work and childcare. The research findings have contributed to how grandmothering is understood; it has contextualised participants’ experiences in wider societal expectations for how women can and should combine their paid employment and family lives in later life.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10179/16461
dc.publisherMassey Universityen_US
dc.rightsThe Authoren_US
dc.subjectChild careen
dc.subjectGrandmothersen
dc.subjectAttitudesen
dc.subjectWomen employeesen
dc.subjectNew Zealanden
dc.subjectAucklanden
dc.subjectDean's List of Exceptional Thesesen
dc.subject.anzsrc441009 Sociology of family and relationshipsen
dc.subject.anzsrc440502 Feminist methodologiesen
dc.titleNegotiating grandmothering, paid employment and regular childcare in urban Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealanden_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
massey.contributor.authorDay, Carolineen_US
thesis.degree.disciplinePublic Healthen_US
thesis.degree.grantorMassey Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophy (PhD)en_US
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