Francis, Nina
(2025)
“Take the hope away from me… take away that horrible turmoil” beyond disappointment: conceptualising maternal disenfranchised limerence through mothers' lived experiences.
PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
Background: ‘Gender disappointment’ (‘GD’) is an emerging maternal mental health phenomenon (Groenewald, 2016; Hendl and Browne, 2019; Saccio, 2025; Young et al., 2021). It is thought to be experienced by parents who have a child or children of one sex, but long for a child of the opposite sex (McMillan, 2012). It has been argued that ‘GD’ arises from embedded gender essentialist views and notions of the ‘good’ mother in the Global North (Groenewald, 2016; Hendl and Browne, 2019). Mothers who suffer from maternal ‘GD’ have been said to experience emotions ranging from a simple ‘disappointment’ to intense maternal anguish, including loss, guilt, and shame (Duckett, 2008; Groenewald, 2016; Monson and Donaghue, 2015; Young et al., 2021). It is notable that some of the most research into ‘GD’ is not informed by the voice of women with the experience, and this drove the study design (Hendl and Browne, 2019; Winter, 2021).
Aims and objectives: This study aimed to develop a more informed conceptual understanding of the phenomenon known as ‘GD’ from the perspective of mothers. This was achieved by exploring the impact of maternal ‘GD’ on women’s emotions, well-being and help-seeking behaviours.
Method: The author has lived experience of ‘GD’ and it was the loneliness, confusion, and pain of this experience that led to the design of a study that collected data from women who had experienced ‘GD’. Although not a prerequisite but of analytical significance, all the mothers who contacted the author to enquire about taking part in the study were mothers to only sons. Data was primarily collected via walking interviews at a location chosen by the women. A semi-structured interview schedule guided how the women were invited to share their journeys of maternal ‘GD’. The interviews were analysed by adapting the listening guide (LG) to include structured reflexive thematic analysis. The LG generated a case study for each woman, which included the mother’s journey in her own words, an I Poem, and the identification of two contrapuntal voices. This allowed for a nuanced exploration of the multiple and sometimes contradictory voices within each mother’s account. Following the case study, there was an amalgamation of the LG with reflexive thematic analysis, which enabled systematic thematic coding of the data set and the identification of shared patterns and themes.
Findings: Analysis of the findings identified two overarching themes: i) hope, and ii) broken. Before the women became mothers, they had imagined themselves as mothers to a daughter and longed for a maternal relational experience they believed was only possible with a girl. This is understood through the lens of limerence, which is conceptualised as a state of obsession, idealisation and longing, thus allowing for deeper understanding of the mothers’ imagined daughters, which were the idealised figures of their longing and focus of their obsessive rumination. Consequently, this state of maternal limerence shaped the women’s investment in their long hoped-for daughter. The mother’s hope was what propelled them to seek out multiple pathways to attempt the conception of a female child. However, with the conception of each son, their distress at not having a daughter intensified, and the mothers’ hope became maladaptive, creating further complex layers of distress. The mothers’ imagined daughter was idealised and led to obsessive rumination, and as the daughter remained elusive, the mother's assumed future was ruptured, adding another layer of complexity to her experience. In contrast to the term “disappointment”, the women in this study experienced enduring grief and distress for their imagined daughter. This shaped their friendships, partner relationships, and decision-making processes; thus, “disappointment” fails to capture the depth of mothers’ experience. In moving towards acceptance, the women experienced a phase of action crisis; goal disengagement and finding new meaning in a different maternal path from the one they had expected. Significantly, the entirety of the mothers’ ‘GD’ experience was shrouded in disenfranchisement. These findings lead to the modelling of the journey as a negatively compounding and repeating cycle that was forward-moving, non-linear, and layered, comprising of seven dimensions: i) the imagined and hoped-for maternal experience, ii) preoccupation, iii) finding out the sex of the foetus, iv) loss, v) distress, vi) birth of child, vii) reaching “the line” and moving towards acceptance. The term ‘GD’ is therefore multidimensionally problematic, while the new term proposed here, maternal disenfranchised limerence (‘MDL’), more accurately reflects the complex and nuanced layers of distress experienced by the population in this study. This term and the accompanying conceptual model are provisional and positioned as a springboard for further exploration, offering a starting point for future research to refine and extend our understanding of this maternal phenomenon.
Conclusion: This study asserts that ‘MDL’ is a maternal experience shrouded in disenfranchisement and characterised by complex layered distress driven by the paradox of hope. It contributes new insights to how ‘MDL’ is theorised by identifying the key roles played by hope, limerence, grief, and biographical disruption as central to this experience. A novel terminology and model are proposed as a springboard for better understanding of the ‘MDL’ experience, while illustrating the forward-moving but non-linear dimensions of the distress experienced by the mothers in this study. These findings have implications for the terminology being used, timing, and type of support offered to mothers’, as well as supporting the wider recognition of the phenomenon as a complex, valid, and multidimensionally distressing maternal experience.
| Item Type: |
Thesis (University of Nottingham only)
(PhD)
|
| Supervisors: |
Edgley, Alison
Evans, Kerry
Borrelli, Sara |
| Keywords: |
Gender disappointment, Maternal mental health, Postnatal depression, Societal expectations, Sex preference, Boy preference, Girl preference, Social sex selection |
| Subjects: |
H Social sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
W Medicine and related subjects (NLM Classification) > WQ Obstetrics |
| Faculties/Schools: |
UK Campuses > Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > School of Health Sciences |
| Item ID: |
82789 |
| Depositing User: |
Francis, Nina
|
| Date Deposited: |
10 Dec 2025 04:40 |
| Last Modified: |
10 Dec 2025 04:40 |
| URI: |
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/82789 |
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