Occupational Science

Having a first baby is considered a major life event, due to significant role change impacting on the ordinary and familiar occupations the new mother performs every day. The aim of this small‐scale exploratory study was to explore changes in the occupational lives of first time mothers. A concurrent nested strategy of enquiry was used. Quantitative data collected via the Modified Interest Checklist and the Role Checklist were nested within qualitative data collected through semi‐structured interviews. Six first time mothers, who were two and a half years post motherhood and aged between 28 and 42 years, participated in this study. The findings indicate that ‘new mothers’ engaging in a pre‐motherhood lifestyle that comprised a balance of self‐care, leisure, productivity and rest occupations experience a period of occupational disruption before adapting into motherhood. These mothers’ lives are productivity dominant, with most of their time being spent in paid employment and/or performing homecare/family care tasks. Their lives are also obligatory dominant, for example, they are performing occupations they need to do to enable them to fulfil their role as mother, as opposed to those they choose to do.

Page 1. 146 Journal of Occupational Science, November 2003, Vol, 10, No 3, pp 146-149. Young Children s Comprehension of Picture Books Christopher J. Lee, Elizabeth Skarakis-Doyle & Lynn Dempsey The Contributions of Activity and Occupation to Young Children s ...

... and Aging in Women with Disabilities Wendy Pentland, Jan Walker, Patricia Minnes, Mary Tremblay, Brenda Brouwer ... Dr Jan Walker is Director of Research at West Park Hospital in Toronto, Canada and Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Toronto. ...

... Mary Tremblay, PhD Kristen Spring, BA Carolyn Rosenthal, PhD Page 2. 112 ... Married older adults are “advantaged” in terms of higher incomes, morale, life satisfaction, mental and physical health, social integration and social support. ...

In this chapter we discuss both social inclusion and participation broadly and consider multiple perspectives through which they may be understood. Most significantly, we draw upon the conceptual work of Sen and Nussbaum. To inform the discussion, we draw upon data from Pereira's study of poverty and participation to highlight the need for such work from an occupational perspective.