Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemAn emergent exploration into the musical beginnings of parental identity across the neonatal journey( 2018)This thesis describes an emergent research project exploring the musical beginnings of parental identity in the neonatal unit setting. While scholarship is calling for parentally- inclusive practices that support optimal health and well-being of premature infants and their parents (Benzies, Magill-Evans, Hayden & Ballantyne, 2013), there exists little music therapy research exploring parents’ unique experiences of appropriating music with their baby in this context. Moreover, research highlights the need to foster the process of becoming a parent to a premature baby in the neonatal unit to support the critical development of the parent- infant relationship (Gibbs, Boshoff & Stanley, 2015). However, no studies have examined music therapy’s role in contributing to parental identity constructs in the neonatal unit. This project aimed to respond to this gap through exploring parents’ experiences of musical engagement with their baby in the neonatal unit through a phenomenological inquiry, followed by a grounded theory study. Parents were recruited from across two in-patient, neonatal hospital facilities in Melbourne. An initial inquiry, adopting Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009) methodology explored nine parents’ experiences and perceptions of singing and using their voice with their premature baby in the neonatal unit. Findings emerged across four waves of analysis. Recurrent themes included: the intrinsic role of singing and voice to support the developing identity of parents and act as a fundamental bridge of connection to their premature baby; the supportive role of voice to meet the emotional needs of parents; and act as a self-soothing coping tool. The concept of time across differing stages of the acute neonatal journey and its influence on parents’ experiences and perceptions of voice inductively emerged across cases. Findings also highlighted parents’ singing and voice interactions with their baby as a critical dialogical encounter of perceived connection and recognition. Finally, the role of the music therapist was acknowledged as supportively educating and facilitating parents to ‘find their voice’ and connect with their baby. The second study of this thesis expanded on an interesting aspect of these initial findings that illuminated singing and voice interactions leading to the validation of a parent’s identity through their baby’s perceived recognition of their voice (McLean, 2016a). This grounded theory study explored how parents’ musical engagement with their baby contributed to their parental identity across their neonatal journey. Interviews with nine parents of a premature baby across varying time points in their hospital journey took place. To generate theoretical understandings of this topic, a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach was employed (Charmaz, 2014), with influences from Strauss & Corbin’s (1998) approach to analysis. Findings in the form of a substantive grounded theory illuminated the contribution of parents’ musical engagement on their sense of parental identity. Specifically, the centrality of their baby’s response during musical interactions as influencing these parents’ capacity to engage in musical dialogue with their baby emerged. It was through these early musical encounters, involving their baby’s powerful response, that parents’ emerging sense of identity across their neonatal unit journey was supported. This enabled parents to ‘do something musical’ for their baby and receive an ‘identifying response from their baby’. Specific conditions that acted as both barriers and fosters in parents’ musical engagement across a high- risk pregnancy and hospital admission also emerged.