During research on changes in the reproductive desires of young Hindu Nepali mothers in the Kathmandu Valley, I encountered a theme of suffering or hardship, dukha in Nepali, in women's responses. My research, and thus my questions, were not designed to evoke stories of suffering; they asked about marriage, the differences between being a daughter in one's natal home and a wife in one's husband's home, women's experiences of pregnancy, of birth, and of the period of seclusion after birth known as sutkeri, and the transition to becoming a mother-in-law. A rich body of literature on South Asia describes how a woman's status fluctuates dramatically over the life course (Bennett 1982; Das 1992; Das Gupta 1995; Lamb 2000), and I was examining how changes in caste, gender norms, and family residence patterns were adding complexity to this model of women's life course trajectories.
Women's experiences of advanced breast cancer in a resource‐limited Arab context: A Stakian multi‐case study