Public defence of doctoral thesis with Laura Lapinske, Gender Studies

Laura Lapinske defends her thesis ”Care to live: Everyday strategies among singles mothers in Lithuania”

Subject: Gender Studies
Research area: Critical and Cultural Theory
Graduate school: Baltic and East European Graduate School (BEEGS)
External reviewer: Redi Koobak, Dr., Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
Language: English

Abstract:
This thesis, “Care to Live”, offers an in-depth ethnographic study of well-educated single mothers navigating everyday life in Kaunas, Lithuania—a post-socialist semi-periphery marked by structural precarity. Through feminist activist ethnography, the author examines how these women develop material, emotional, and social strategies to survive and care within conditions shaped by neoliberalism, insufficient welfare systems, and societal stigma.

The thesis is grounded in Social Reproduction Theory and feminist critiques of neoliberalism. It highlights how care work – often unpaid and invisibilised – is central to single mothers' lives, constituting both a burden and a potential site of resistance. Lapinske interrogates how normative ideals of family, motherhood, and success intersect with class, gender, and labour to shape women’s lived experiences.

Divided into six main chapters, the thesis addresses: transformations in post-Soviet Lithuania; the stigma and material hardships faced by single mothers; coping mechanisms including informal support networks of kin, neighbours, and friends; and the redefinition of maternal “failure” as a political critique of neoliberal expectations. Drawing from interviews, diary notes, and observations, Lapinske documents how these women reclaim agency and community through care practices, solidarity, and creative resilience – often resisting imposed ideals of perfect motherhood, strength and self-sufficiency.

Ultimately, “Care to Live” argues that single motherhood in Lithuania must be understood not as individual deficiency but as a site where systemic inequalities – especially gendered and classed precarities – manifest and are resisted. The work contributes to feminist ethnography, post-socialist studies, and care politics by centring the voices and strategies of women at the margins of dominant narratives.

Keywords: single motherhood, precarity, post-socialism, Lithuania, neoliberalism, feminist ethnography, social reproduction, care, everyday life, failure, resistance