Motherhood Biographies and Health Over the Life Course

Mothers' health outcomes are often distinct from health outcomes of childfree women, yet how and why motherhood matters for health depends on one's history of becoming and being a mother across the life course, as well as the broader structural context in which the mother is embedded. We develop the motherhood biographies conceptual framework to understand links between motherhood and health throughout the life course and across social positions, drawing on theories from family and medical sociology, social psychology, and critical feminist perspectives. We advocate that social scientists interested in how and why motherhood matters for the wide range of health outcomes across mental, physical, cognitive, and behavioral health use this holistic motherhood biographies approach, which allows researchers to incorporate multiple components of motherhood transitions and experiences over the life course into a comprehensive and flexible motherhood construct. The motherhood biography construct further emphasizes the importance of intersectional differences and similarities across and within groups of mothers. We further provide a preliminary roadmap of methodological tools and data needs to leverage this concept, and we point to utility of the motherhood biography perspective in testing how, when, and why motherhood matters for all aspects of health.