Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

This book offers a novel approach to studying war and peace by foregrounding motherhood in times of conflict and peace processes from a sociological perspective. Through qualitative research resting on individual and focus group interviews with 55 mothers who had lived through the Northern Ireland conflict, this book examines the gendered nature of coping with conflict and its aftermath in peace processes. Drawing on the idea of everyday life peacebuilding, it discusses how the family is located in the processes of social transformation in conflict-affected societies, and illuminates that mothers play central yet largely unnoticed roles in maintaining and restoring sociability in a conflict-affected society. The book illustrates that mothers have been hidden and underappreciated 'everyday peacebuilders', as well as hidden and trivialised victims of the conflict.