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Mixed feelings about motherhood--uncertainty over having a child, fears of pregnancy and childbirth, or negative thoughts about one's own children--are not just hard to discuss, they are a powerful social taboo. In this beautifully written book, Barbara Almond brings this troubling issue to light. She uncovers the roots of ambivalence, tells how it manifests in lives of women and their children, and describes a spectrum of maternal behavior--from normal feelings to highly disturbed mothering. In a society where perfection in parenting is the unattainable ideal, this compassionate book also shows how women can affect positive change in their lives.

Bram Stoker's Dracula continues to fascinate and horrify audiences, inviting a psychoanalytic explanation. While previous interpretations have emphasized oedipal dynamics and perverse sexuality, this paper proposes that early developmental issues are central. Vampires and the state of being 'undead' are representations of intense oral needs, experienced in a context of passivity and helplessness. Aggressive invasion and possession of the other, with a colonization of body and soul, offer a solution to this dilemma but one devoid of true object-relatedness. The imaginative source of the Dracula fi gure is posited as Stoker's early invalidism and his later idealization of a powerful and charismatic actor. Implicit in the Dracula story are ideas of intrusively experienced 'monstrous' babies and intrusively controlling 'vampyric mothers'. The author offers studies of key passages from Dracula in support of this reading, followed by comparative material to illustrate the spectrum of vampyric mothering: a clinical example and excerpts from a modern novel. The horror of the vampire myth is located in the unending internal attachment to a deeply needed but problematic object.

PurposeClassification schemes make things happen. The Australian Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which derives its classification system from the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), legislates for adjustments to support the inclusion of people with disability. This study explores how students with disability enrolled in a university experience the systems intended to facilitate their studying “on the same basis” as students without disability.Design/methodology/approachThrough an online questionnaire and interviews comprising open and closed questions made available to students registered with the disability services unit of a university and follow-up interviews with a small number of students, students’ views of their own disability and effects on their participation in learning were gathered, alongside reports of their experiences of seeking support in their learning. Interview data and responses to open-ended questions were analysed using a priori and emergent coding.FindingsThe findings demonstrate that students are aware of the workings of the classification scheme and that most accept them. However, some students put themselves outside of the scheme, often as a way to exercise autonomy or to assert their “ability”, while others are excluded from it by the decisions of academic staff. Thus, the principles of fairness and equity enshrined in legislation and policy are weakened.Originality/valueThrough the voices of students with disability, it is apparent that, even though a student's classification according to the DDA and associated university policy remains constant, the outcomes of the workings of the scheme may reveal inconsistencies, emerging from the complexity of bureaucracy, processes and the exercises of power.

Purpose Design policy and regulations within our cities can significantly impact the accessibility and social participation of people with disability. Whilst public, wheelchair-accessible bathrooms are highly regulated spaces for this reason, very little is known about how wheelchair users use them or what wheelchair users think of current design standards. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory inquiry adopts an embodied approach to investigate the perspectives of powered and manual wheelchair users on public bathroom usage and design. The study encompasses twelve interviews, delving into how participants utilise accessible bathrooms based on mobility, disability, support levels, wheelchair types, urinary/bowel regimes and catheter use. Findings A thorough analysis of individual public bathroom elements (layout, toilet, handwashing and grab rails) discussed in the interviews reveals themes of safety, hygiene, planning/avoidance and privacy and dignity. Strikingly, many wheelchair users invest significant effort in planning for bathroom use or avoid public bathrooms altogether. The ongoing maintenance and regular cleaning of bathrooms, something not captured in regulatory standards, has been highlighted as something of critical importance to the ongoing accessibility and safety of public bathrooms for wheelchair users. This points to a relationship between the design and the maintenance of public bathrooms as influencers of health, well-being, community inclusion and the social participation of people with disability. Research limitations/implications This qualitative research is exploratory and contributes to a growing body of evidence that explores how public spaces are experienced by diverse members of our communities, including people with disability. To date, there have been very few investigations into the embodied perspectives of wheelchair users about public bathroom design. Practical implications The findings can potentially drive innovative and inclusive approaches to bathroom design regulations that include operational and maintenance guidance. Social implications The research aims to inform design regulations, standards development and practices of designers, architects, facilities managers, developers and planners, ensuring public spaces are designed to support more accessible, inclusive and socially sustainable cities. Originality/value Whilst wheelchair-accessible bathrooms have been designed and constructed for public use (in many countries) for many years, we know very little about how wheelchair users actually use them or what wheelchair users think of current design standards.

Ambivalence is a combination of the loving and hating feelings we experience toward those who are important to us. Maternal ambivalence is a normal phenomenon. It is ubiquitous. It is not a crime or a failing. This book is about maternal ambivalence. “Admitting to Mixed Feelings about Motherhood,” by Elizabeth Hayt, appeared as the lead article in the Styles section of theSunday New York Timeson May 12, 2002—Mother’s Day. Here was one expression of the current groundswell of revolt against the idealization of motherhood in the 1980s and 1990s resulting from the enthusiasm and perfectionism of the

AccompanyingNewsweek’s July 2, 2001, shocking headline, “‘I Killed My Children’: What Made Andrea Yates Snap?” was a photograph of a smiling family: Andrea, her husband, Rusty, and their four young sons. At the time this photograph was taken, Andrea was pregnant with her daughter, Mary. On June 20, less than a year later, Andrea Yates, exhausted and suffering from postpartum depression and psychosis, drowned all five of her children. The front page of theSan Francisco Chronicleof Thursday, October 20, 2005, carried a story about Lashaun Harris, a twenty-three-year-old single mother who threw her three sons, ages six,

Some children adopt a monstrous or negative identity, as a whiny brat, perhaps, or an unremitting troublemaker but basically as a needy and demanding person who can never be satisfied. Such people, as patients, usually prove to be caught up in a desperate bid for parental attention that was inadequate earlier in their lives and was often accompanied by a disruption in attachment. This bid can have a vengeful underside in the form of a stubborn claim that the problem can never be repaired.Monstrousmay seem an extreme term; perhaps I think of it in this way because several

Rachel was a woman who handled her ambivalence by blaming herself. From the outside she looked like one of those women who had it all—a good job in a respected profession, marriage to a fellow professional, a thin and attractive body, an active social life, and two bright, healthy children. She did all the things devoted mothers are supposed to do—reading to her children every night; planning play dates, birthday parties, excursions to the park and zoo; and arranging her work schedule to allow for visits to the pediatrician and meetings with her children’s nursery school teachers. But

My patient Amanda first alerted me to women’s fears of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering. My interest in her story sparked my investigation into Mary Shelley’s story, illustrated in her classic horror novel,Frankenstein. Now I would like to offer more clinical material to illustrate that it is not unusual to fear childbearing. The situations of other patients support different parts of my hypothesis about women’s reproductive fears. Although not all of them feared monster children, all did struggle with issues involving family relationships and various aspects of femininity. Their stories broaden our view of the problem. Sarah and Phyllis were

The spectrum of maternal ambivalence extends, as we have seen, from the normal occasional hatred of a demanding, inconsolable baby, a baby one otherwise feeds with pleasure, through various degrees and forms of maternal-child disturbance. At the end of this spectrum is vampyric mothering, which I consider to be, in its extreme forms, maternal ambivalence at its most destructive. I conceptualize this kind of mothering as having two divergent but frequently overlapping characteristics. The first is a feedingfromthe child to obtain gratifications the mother is unable to obtain in other ways. In its milder forms, this is the