A Good Start: Resilience in Families With a first Baby Irene de Haan BRCSS/SPEaR Colloquium

Participants 27 first time mothers aged interviewed twice 21 interviewed 3 times + 10 fathers & 4 grandparents

Resilience Resilience refers to a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within a context of significant adversity. (Luthar et al, 2000: 543) Family resilience describes the path a family follows as it adapts and prospers in the face of stress, both in the present and over time. (Hawley & De Haan, 1996: 293)

Resilience is a process Resilience is a process involving positive adaptation despite adversity as a result of the influence of protective factors

Adversity Isolation: ‘Nobody cares what I do with my day’ No time off: ‘The constantness of it’ Financial strain: ‘Not a dollar spare’ Going back to work: ‘Out of the haze’

Isolation “The lack of getting out and about and doing what I want to do for myself I’ve found quite difficult. I don’t know if it’s isolation or being on your own with the baby. Especially when he was about 2 or 3 months old I’d get up in the morning and think ‘What am I going to do with my day? Nobody cares what I do with my day’. When you work in an office you have somewhere to turn up to every day, you have meetings, people to meet, places to go. That kind of suddenly stopped and I found that really hard. It’s just different – you get treated totally differently” (Clare, aged 32)

The constantness of it “ It’s very busy. I was prepared for him to be time consuming, but I don’t think you can actually appreciate until you’ve got one, the constantness of it” (Jess, aged 31) “My dad used to come home and say ‘You haven’t done anything today’. And then he spent a day with [Baby] and I went ‘What have you done today?’ and he goes ‘Oh I had to put him to sleep and he kept waking up, and I had to feed him’. And I said ‘See how I feel? And he said ‘Yeah, I understand now” (Lucy, aged 16)

Financial strain “ I have to really budget. We’re on family assistance right now. It’s all based on the partner’s salary and he recently got a raise so it’s going to come down a wee bit - but that’s OK. I guess it would have been harder but being at home with Mum and Dad we’re saving a lot of money. Right now we’re saving up so we can get a place of our own, so Mum and Dad’s support is really helpful” (Leah, aged 28)

Going back to work “I would probably quite like to go back to work part time, but it’s probably a few months before I would think of doing that...I don’t want to be away from work for too long because it’s the kind of thing you can lose touch with - I don’t really want to lose touch for too long” (Rae, aged 34) “I was really concerned about how I would deal with being at home and not being in the workforce - but not a problem. The day goes so fast. I sort of feel like, we were fairly late to start, I’m 34 now, so I sort of feel like I’ve done my career so I feel like now I’m ready to be a mum, and I’m prepared to take out 10 years out of my life to focus on that really” (Cara,33)

Protective factors  Support from family and friends  Tailor made services  Adequate income

Tailor made support “At the antenatal group I just got put off, the way they sort of looked at me. I wasn’t much younger than some of them, but I might have looked a lot younger, and [Partner] too, though he was roughly the same age as the other guys. So it was so uncomfortable – like they wouldn’t talk to us, or interact. There were group things, but even then. There wasn’t much age difference, but the way you look, they judge you as if you were 15 or something” (Amy, aged 20)

Supporting young families “What doesn’t work is when people say ‘Do it like this, don’t do it like that’. So you’re wrong all the time. That’s not what a new mum needs to hear. Even though they don’t mean to make it sound so mean, in the new mum’s head it’s ‘I’m a bad mum’…. The Plunket nurse is very cool. She’d give me advice if she saw me doing something wrong - she’d just advise me, she wouldn’t tell me. She’d be like ‘This is a way to do it, or this way, or this way’. It’s like it’s all up to you. So if I thought something was wrong I’d ask her, she’d give me options” (Kirsty, aged 17)

Adequate income “I started thinking it might be financially worth while to go back to work when I started looking into the daycares. Then I found out that we were entitled to Working For Families, which we didn’t know - it wasn’t till my sister told me, 3 months after it had even been introduced she said ‘Oh, are you getting this?’ and I said, ‘No… No’, and she said ‘Well I’m sure you’re entitled to it’. And I was just ‘Wow’. We were so stoked” (Cara,aged 34)