Mana mātua: Being young Māori parents

Abstract

Young Mäori parents strategically navigate Western parenting expectations, and issues of indigeneity in their construction of early parenting. A culturally based narrative approach to research with young Mäori parents revealed personal stories of early parenting located in wider expectations from family and peers, their Indigenous community and society. The application of a Mäori relational analytical framework reveals how young Mäori parents navigate and negotiate assumptions about being young and being Mäori. They draw on Mäori understandings about raising children to resist assumptions that having a child at a young age contributes to entirely negative experiences. Furthermore, identifying with Western attributes of good parenting helps to counter the negative social outcomes often attributed to Mäori parenting. Further strengthening of positive experiences of early parenting for Mäori requires a broader approach to developing positive representations of Mäori caregiving and Mäori identity and integrating these into parenting supports.

Towards a mother-centred maternal health promotion

“…Participants sought health services to be strengths-based and empowering and link identity and culture ( Te Ao Māori) to health services. Such sentiments resonate strongly with the desire and urgent need to orient maternal health services and systems to bicultural models with Indigenous leadership ( Came and Tudor, 2016 ; Stevenson et al , 2016 ; Ware et al , 2018 ).…”

“…Renkert and Nutbeam ( Renkert and Nutbeam, 2001 ) recognized over 20 years ago that antenatal education should shift towards antenatal literacy, however participants thought there was still a surprising scarcity of classes that meaningfully address information needs of the 21st century. Additionally, there is still much room to make antenatal education more gender-inclusive ( Ritchie and Lai-Boyd, 2022 ) and culturally specific ( Ware et al , 2018 ; Shrestha-Ranjit et al , 2020 ). Given that human connection and friendships are a core part of antenatal education ( Spiby et al , 2022 ), it is also essential to consider the effects a shift to online classes in the digital era could have.…”

“…Thus, while neoliberalism ‘appears to “emancipate” all people within a discourse of “equality”, in reality, it further entrenches inequalities by obscuring structural factors of poverty, gender and race’ ( Vandenbeld Giles, 2014 , p. 417). This emphasis on freedom of choice and self-fulfillment marginalizes mothers without the resources to ‘make it on their own’ ( Ware et al , 2018 ; Parton et al , 2019 ; Neely et al , 2023 ). Accordingly, the dominant approach to promoting mothers’ well-being emphasizes goal-oriented, individualistic and instrumental values.…”

Solo Motherhood and the State: Precarity, Agency, and Post-Development Discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…It challenged the fundamental interconnections between whānau, land and childrearing. As Ware, Breheny, and Forster (2018) explain:…”

“…As discussed earlier, comparisons could also be drawn to eugenic movements in Aotearoa New Zealand through the Family Allowance Act 1926 and how quantity and 'quality' of the population was core to the colonial mission (see Paul, Stenhouse, & Spencer, 2017). The racialisation of the 'good' and 'bad' mother is particularly apparent when considering portrayals of Māori motherhood in public discourse, of which tend to reinforce colonial discourses and vilify Māori women (see Provan, 2012;Ware et al, 2018). Dorothy (1995) illustrates this racialisation of 'good' and 'bad' mothers through the experiences of African American mothers, arguing that the State intervenes more frequently in Black homes in part because of its culturally biased understanding of motherhood and family.…”