Not/belonging as health promotion
The affective potentialities of human and non-human relationalities in mother-baby-assemblages
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4589015 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eva Neely (0000-0001-9491-6631), Michaela Pettie (0000-0001-5466-8848) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 371 |
| Pages | 117865 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science & Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0277-9536 • E-ISSN: 1873-5347 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117865 |
| PMID | 40037151 |
| OpenAlex | W4407821303 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 57 |
Motherhood has life-long impacts on health and exacerbates health disparities. Birthing a baby changes life immensely with heightened affectivity and emotions posing risks and opportunities. Identity-focused maternal transition theory and dominant cultural narratives of neoliberal, nuclear, and heterosexual parenting have created a narrow framework within which to understand the responsibilities and challenges of motherhood. In this we paper propose an alternative path to theorising motherhood relationally through the concept of belonging-as-affect in mother-baby-assemblages. To achieve this we plug into posthuman feminism to explore mother-baby-assemblages as relational, embodied and affective sites of fleeting and enduring not/belonging. We develop a creative qualitative reviewing approach and draw on literature that examines motherhood and mothering across place, mobilities, people, bodies and things. We explore how tracing relationalities between human and non-human actants might help us learn about 'sticky' sites of not/belonging in mother-baby-assemblages as a more fluid way of understanding the journey into and through mother/parenthood. The sticky-ness of not/belonging as timebound glue offers insights into the vital emergence of maternal health and is articulated as a mode of inquiry for future work in this space. Our orientation to posthuman mothering works through porosity, permeability and vacillation by turning our attention to sites of affectivity, and tracing non/sticky not/belonging emerging in multiple and diverse pathways, embracing openness, and eliciting generosity towards collective parenting. Understanding belonging as emergent co-becoming may allow for hopeful and inclusive motherhoods that are diversely care-ing and care-full
Developmental psychology · Geography · Health promotion · Public health · Sociology · Anthropology · Children's Rights and Participation · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Medicine · Nursing · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Gender Studies
Walking as socio-material micro-structures for new parents
Tapestries of inquiry—digital diaries as an engaged affective method in collective knowledge-making
Embodied Paths to Belonging
What is 'normal' after birth? Situating the material everyday consequences of second-degree vaginal tears in relation to post-birth norms
Perinatal mental health
Becoming a Mother Versus Maternal Role Attainment
Social and Structural Determinants of Health Inequities in Maternal Health
The intergenerational transmission of inequality
Mātauranga Māori and Reproduction
What is an Assemblage
Post Qualitative Inquiry, the Refusal of Method, and the Risk of the New
Ashamed, Silent and Stuck in a System”—Applying a Structural Violence Lens to Midwives’ Stories on Social Disadvantage in Pregnancy
Determinants of maternal health four weeks after delivery
Precious cargo’
Place for being, doing, becoming and belonging
Mothering in Hindsight
Writing birthing bodies
The flows of things – exploring babies’ everyday space-making
Narrating Ambivalence of Maternal Responsibility
Venturing outside
Disabled people's embodied and emotional geographies of (not)belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand
Walking, mothering and care
Beyond voice
Walking‐with/worlding‐with in a global pandemic
The Embodied Chiasmic Relationship of Mother and Infant
Using ‘the body’ as an ‘instrument of research
Touching at depth
More-than-human, emergent belongings
Weak Theory in an Unfinished World
A visceral approach
From Mother/Fetus to Holobiont(s)
Together and Apart
Urban pram strolling
Maternal heritage
Motherhood, mobility and materiality
Maternal depression and economic well-being
Gender inequality, economic growth, and the intergenerational transmission of adverse health consequences at birth
There's no formula for a good mother
Mothercraft
Theorising mother-baby-assemblages
Matter beginning to matter
Travelling in your backyard
Domestic Geographies of Parental and Infant (Co-) Becomings
Experiencing Parenthood, Care and Spaces of Hospitality
The Wonder of Data
The role of the non-human in relations of care
Being a Good Mom
Fluidity and flexibility of 'belonging
Good green mothers consuming their way through pregnancy
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |