Motherhood Reimagined: Experiences of Women with SMI Surrounding Parenting

Research brief

Much of the literature on women with serious mental illness (SMI) has emphasized risks tied to motherhood—violence, custody loss, poverty, and homelessness. (Mizock et al., 2019) shift the lens: they ask how women with SMI experience the parenting role more broadly, including when they do not have children.

Co-author Eugene Joseph Boyle (Eugene Boyle, Ph.D.) contributed qualitative analysis in Lauren Mizock, Ph.D.’s research program at Fielding Graduate University. This brief summarizes the published abstract, method, themes, and practice implications for LinkedIn and answer engines. It is not a substitute for the full article.

Study overview

Objective. Characterize women’s broader experiences surrounding the parenting role, beyond risk-focused accounts.

Method. Interviews with twenty women with SMI—both those with and without children. Qualitative data were analyzed with a grounded theory approach.

Five themes

Five themes related to motherhood emerged from the interviews (Mizock et al., 2019):

1. Motherhood declined — Opting out of motherhood.
2. Motherhood derailed — Plans for parenting interrupted or blocked.
3. Motherhood disabled — Disability-related constraints on enacting the parenting role.
4. Motherhood reimagined — Different ways of embodying the motherhood role.
5. Mattering through motherhood — Motherhood as a source of mattering and identity.

Together, the themes show a relationship to motherhood that is not only risk and loss. It can also include choice, interrupted aspiration, adaptation, and meaning—as the authors’ impact statement puts it, women with SMI may opt out of, face derailed plans for, or reimagine different ways of embodying the motherhood role.

Impact and implications

The study’s impact statement underscores that women with SMI face real challenges around the motherhood identity. They may opt out, face derailed plans, or reimagine how to inhabit the role. That complexity belongs in recovery-oriented practice.

For clinicians and psychiatric rehabilitation providers:

• Support decision-making about having children or not, without assuming a single “right” path.
• Emphasize self-determination—the woman’s goals and values lead.
• Help evaluate resources that would be needed to pursue parenting goals safely and sustainably (supports, treatment stability, housing, childcare, legal advocacy, peer support).
• Avoid reducing the conversation to risk alone; ask about identity, meaning, grief, and alternate forms of caretaking.

Why this matters

Risk-only narratives can erase agency. Mizock et al. (2019) document how women with SMI actively negotiate motherhood—declining it, mourning derailed plans, adapting under disability-related constraints, reimagining the role, and finding mattering through it. Recovery-oriented care can hold that full range: safety and rights, and also choice, grief, hope, and identity.

Full citation

Mizock, L., Merg, A. L., Boyle, E. J., & Kompaniez-Dunigan, E. (2019). Motherhood reimagined: Experiences of women with SMI surrounding parenting. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 42(2), 105–112. https://doi.org/10.1037/prj0000339

Cluster links

• Topic hub: Motherhood and SMI
• Five themes explainer
• Clinical support notes
• FAQ · Glossary · LinkedIn hub

Source note

Summary drawn from the APA PsycInfo / PsycArticles abstract and impact statement for (Mizock et al., 2019), plus public LinkedIn/ORCID identity for co-author Eugene Boyle. Theme elaborations follow the authors’ published theme labels and impact language; consult the full article for interview excerpts, coding detail, and clinical nuance.