title: The Emotional Experience of Motherhood in Planned Lesbian Families in the South African Context: "… Look How Good a Job I'm Doing, Look How Amazing We Are".
abstract: This article focuses on lesbian mothers' emotional experience of motherhood. It forms part of a larger qualitative and exploratory study with 10 lesbian couples in South Africa on their lived experience of planned motherhood. The study is located in a feminist phenomenological framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants described many different emotions associated with new motherhood: hope, joy, love, anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion, and feeling companionship and togetherness as well as feeling compromised and deprived. Mothers described these emotions but also focused on the development of a new identity, that of being a mother.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Stellenbosch University , Matieland , South Africa.
authors.forename: Jacquetta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Van Ewyk
authors.affiliation: b Department of Psychology , Stellenbosch University , Matieland , South Africa.
authors.forename: Lou-Marié
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Kruger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety; D044383:Black People; D004644:Emotions; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005260:Female; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008149:Love; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D000072339:Sexual and Gender Minorities / Q000523:psychology*; D013019:South Africa
keywords: Lesbian mothers; motherhood experience; planned lesbian families