Browsing by Subject "Motherhood"
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Item Between mountains and butterflies : searching for mythology in theatre making(2010-05) Brown, Marie Sevier; Douglas, Lucien; Dietz, Steven; Dorn, Franchelle; Kanoff, ScottAn in depth reflection of the development of my approach to directing theatre as seen through the production processes of co-creating and directing The Psyche Project, directing Our Town by Thornton Wilder, and the journey of becoming a wife and a mother.Item Beyond balance : examining work-family interface, role negotiation, and coping strategies for female caregivers in STEM(2016-08) Reilly, Erin Dawna; Awad, Germine H.; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Cokley, Kevin O; McCarthy, Christopher J; Walkow, Janet CThough the retention of female caregivers in STEM fields has become increasingly discussed, there is a lack of research investigating the major factors impacting their successful negotiation of work and family responsibilities and roles. This body of research examined the impact of societal roles, external support structures, and coping resources on work-family satisfaction and psychological well-being. In particular, this study investigated the following: (1) the relationships among work support, family support, coping, and satisfaction; (2) the relationship between family- and occupational-support, work-family conflict, and satisfaction; (3) coping resources as a mediator of the relationship between work-family conflict and work and family satisfaction, and; (4) the impact of internalizations of competing societal myths (i.e., the ideal worker myth and motherhood myth) as moderating the impact of work-family conflict on interpersonal guilt. Participants included 204 women in STEM fields who also reported caregiving responsibilities. The majority of the recruited sample identified as mothers, and reported approximately equal amounts of time spent on occupational responsibilities and caretaking work. Results indicate that women who reported higher levels of family support and occupational support tended to have higher levels work and family satisfaction, as well as greater perceived internal coping resources. In addition, women with greater perceived abilities to identify, predict, and plan for demands and possible stressors tended to have greater levels of family and work satisfaction. In terms of modeling work-family interface, women who reported higher levels of familial and career-climate support tended to also report greater perceived coping resources and abilities. However, the hypothesis that work-to-family and family-to-work conflict would significantly predict lower work satisfaction and family satisfaction was not supported when modeled alongside other variables (external support and coping). On the other hand, the hypothesis that the relationship between family-to-work conflict and work satisfaction was mediated by perceived coping resources was supported. Finally, results suggest that greater internalization of the motherhood myth, the ideal worker myth, and the presence of work-to-family conflict are associated with higher levels of guilt for female caregivers in STEM fields. Limitations, future research areas, and practical implications of these findings are discussed.Item Current attachment styles and attitudes toward motherhood of female college students(Texas Tech University, 2003-08) Bjorgo, LynThe issue of whether and when to have children is no longer a biological given or an unavoidable cultural demand, but a matter of individual choice. Numerous theories have been advanced to explain why women choose to become mothers. Recently, Bowlby's (1969) attachment theory has begun to be applied to populations other than mother-infant dyads. A major assumption of attachment theory is that the quality of individuals' early experiences with a primary caregiver impacts the models they develop of themselves and others in interpersonal relationships. In this study, questionnaires were administered to 127 female college students regarding thefr attitudes toward their parents, peers and motherhood. Correlational analyses, muhiple regression analyses and canonical analyses were used to explore relationships between female students' attachment styles and their feelings about having children. In addhion, relationships between self-esteem, gender role attitudes and feelings about motherhood were explored. Resuhs suggest that current level of peer attachment style is related to desire to have children and the ability to relate to children. Moreover, current level of peer attachment may be more predictive of the desire to have children and perceived ability to relate to children than is current level of parental attachment. The present findings lend partial support to previous findings regarding relationships of attachment style, the desire to have children, and perceived ability to relate to children. Implications of the present findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.Item Daughtering and daughterhood : an explanatory study of the role of adult daughters in relation to mothers(2016-08) Alford, Allison McGuire; Maxwell, Madeline M.; Donovan, Erin; Menchaca, Martha; Vangelisti, AnitaThis study investigated the role of an adult daughter in mid-life, a time in a woman’s life when she has a personal relationship with her mother based upon shared interests more than dependence for care. Using interactional role theory (Turner, 2001), this study explored the understanding a daughter has for her role as an adult daughter in everyday encounters with her mother. Participants in this study described that when in situations that call for daughtering, they enact the adult daughter role. For this study, adult daughter participants (N = 33) ranging in age from 25-45 years old participated in face-to-face interviews to discuss their role as an adult daughter to their mothers. All participants had a living, healthy mother age 70 or younger. From daughters’ discussions of everyday communication with their mothers, layers of meaning were uncovered which related to the adult daughter role. Using role theory as a guide, thematic analysis revealed six themes of meaning. These findings contribute to an understanding of the social construction of an important role, which daughters learn over a lifetime and which they use to communicate within a family. Discussions of daughtering were challenging to participants due to borrowed vocabulary for describing this role, narrow role awareness, and a low valuation of the work of daughtering. When sorting role influences, daughters noted their mothers and a variety of other sources that inform role expectations. This finding prompted a new manner for evaluating daughters as a daughterhood, or community of role players collectively enacting the same role. Finally, participant responses revealed new ways to conceive of the social construction of the adult daughter role and the practice of daughtering and daughterhood, with outcomes including a variety of comportments for performing daughtering. Implications for future research by communication scholars, as well as for practitioners who work with adult daughter-mother pairs, will be presented with other results from this study.Item Disciplining mommy : rhetorics of reproduction in contemporary maternity culture(2013-08) Mack, Ashley N.; Cloud, Dana L.In this dissertation, I argue that the maternal body is a chief site of discursive political and cultural struggle over gender, family, and work in a neoliberal America. I consider contemporary discourses of maternity, an aggregate I call maternity culture, as cultural products and rhetorical expressions of the antagonistic arrangements in contemporary capitalism since the neoliberal turn. The complexities of maternity culture discourses can therefore be better understood when they are historicized alongside changing economic and political realities. Using materialist feminism as my primary methodology, I contend that maternity culture discourses express the ethics of neoliberalism including the privatization of social/political responsibility and self-actualization through entrepreneurialism and labor, while simultaneously justifying the intensification of maternal labor and the continued surveillance of women's bodies. I argue that maternity culture discourses are, therefore, rhetorics of reproduction and reproducing rhetorics. That is to say, they are a part of a larger set of discourses about the reproductive function that are themselves caught in the logics of capital that may result in the reproduction of unequal arrangements in material and symbolic life. In order to illuminate how maternity culture operates in neoliberal public life as a reproducing rhetoric, I provide a historical analysis of rhetorics of women's health, and analyze two case studies involving discourses surrounding breastfeeding and natural childbirth, major sites of struggle within maternity culture.Item Identifying the Predictors of Female Project Managers' Salaries in the United States(2012-11-30) Kamranzadeh, AminehThis study seeks to explore the predictors of female project managers? salary in the construction industry, and to analyze their impacts on determining the salary. Experience, age, marital status, motherhood, having children at home, and the number of children at home were selected as the independent variables. Snowball sampling method was used to identify the potential participants, and surveys were sent to participants to collect data. 206 responses were collected and comprehensive descriptive and statistical analyses were performed on the responses. The study finds that experience and age have a positive relationship with female project managers? salaries. Being married and having children at home have significant negative impacts on female project managers? salaries. A regression model is also built to determine the prediction power of variables. Fifty-one percent of the variability in salary can be accounted for by the variables included in this model.Item La institucionalización del rol materno durante gobiernos Autoritarios : respuestas de escritoras argentinas y brasileñas a la construcción patriarcal de género y nación(2009-05) Arce, Emilia Isabel; Lindstrom, Naomi, 1950Women’s fictional narratives, besides influencing the process of nation building, also served to redefine the feminine gender and its incontrovertible contribution to the processes involved in imagining their communities. Although the systematic oppression suffered by women was effective, there were women writers who through negotiation gained access to male-dominated circles and achieved recognition. These women had a fundamental role in defying the stratification of gender in their society. They opposed every limitation imposed upon their gender, particularly the construction of the maternal role from a patriarchal perspective. In the works selected for this analysis, the authors reject the institutionalization of motherhood using as a narrative device motherless heroines who redefine femininity in their own terms and defy the patriarchal construct that confines motherhood to the seclusion of the home. Written in times of political upheaval, these novels emphasize the importance of women’s participation in the public sphere. In this dissertation I analyze four novels situated in or written during authoritarian regimes. The introduction provides the theoretical framework in which the definition of gender is discussed as well as the process of nation building in Latin America. I also include critical views on the topic of motherhood as women writers struggle with the representation of the maternal role and its implications in the construction of gender. In chapter one I discuss Argentinean writer Juana Manuela Gorriti’s La hija del mashorquero (1865); the second chapter analyzes Brazilian novelist Julia Lópes de Almeida’s A familia Medeiros (1892); chapter three is dedicated to the study of Argentinean Elvira Orpheé’s Uno (1961); the fourth chapter analyzes Brazilian Lygia Fagundes Telles’s As meninas (1973), so as to outline periods in which the patriarchal discourse concerning the role of women in society revolved around the traditional concepts of femininity and to reveal the insistence of women to obviate such concepts, specifically in terms of nation building. Through the detailed textual analysis of these novels, I aim to demonstrate the strategies used by these authors to openly defy the constructions of femininity through their critique of the socio-political systems of their times.Item The leaky pipeline of women in STEM: motherhood as a watershed for technical women(2009-12) Stropes, Adrianne Marie; Ambler, Tony; Amanatullah, EmilyThis research focuses on the experiences of technical (i.e. computer science, I/T and engineering) women. It starts with childhood and goes through professional, with the professional focus on motherhood as a potential conflict for women in technical fields. Results from an on-line study of India and U.S. are used for a comparative analysis. Many factors including demographic, burnout, enjoyment and family conflict are evaluated. Finally, the survey ended with a freeform section, which allowed respondents to share their thoughts on motherhood. Responses were varied but added great insight to the diverse views women hold. However, common themes still evolved, such as the role of the manager, spouse and the concept of motherhood.Item Long-distance mother-daughter communication: Identifying changes and maintenance behaviors when daughters leave home(2012-05) Faneca, Cheryl; Hughes, Patrick C.; Scholl, Juliann C.; Bichard, ShannonThe mother-daughter relationship goes through many transitions and changes as the daughter grows up. In particular, when the daughter transitions out of the home and geographical distance is increased between mother and daughter. How a mother and daughter dyad adapt to the changes that happen in their relationship during this transition are crucial to the effectiveness of their adjustment. The current study answers how mothers and daughters describe their experiences with long distance communication with one another after the daughter has transitioned out of the home. The results shed light on three specific adjustments to internal relational dialectics that the mother-daughter relationship and mother-daughter communication go through once the daughter has transitioned out of the home. The three adjustments to internal relational dialectics are connection vs. autonomy, openness vs. closedness, and certainty vs. uncertainty. Long distance mother-daughter communication is affected by how a mother-daughter dyad approaches these three adjustments. By examining the data based on the adjustments to internal relational dialectics certain themes emerged from the data set to further support Baxter and Montgomery’s (1988) notions of relational dialectics and therefore contribute to the field of communication. There are ways in which the findings of this study can not only add to the wealth of knowledge in the world of academe but also can be applied and implemented in everyday life.Item Monstrous motherhood : generic transformation of Korean horror(2006-08) Oh, EunHa; Schatz, Thomas, 1948-; Ramirez Berg, CharlesMotherhood has long been a celebrated virtue in Korea and a notable motif in many works of art, from traditional literature to modern cinema. While these works typically praise motherhood, modern Korean horror films are increasingly emphasizing its monstrosity. This thesis attempts to reconcile this seeming contradiction of depicting motherhood as monstrous in a culture where the virtues of motherhood are believed in absolutely and deeply worshipped. In the same vein as Robin Wood who defines horror as a cultural instance where society deals with a monster, the stand-in for what is collectively feared and denied in society, I characterize horror as a film genre that reveals the hidden and forgotten side of societal conflict through the representation of the monster. I attempt to demythologize the Korean conception of motherhood through discussing representations of motherhood as monstrous in two recent horror films, "Sorum" (2001, Jong-Chan Yun) and "The Uninvited" (2003, Soo-Yeon Lee), as well as some of their precedents. This analysis notes thematic changes in depicting motherhood as well as corresponding formal techniques appropriate to the thematic change.Item Motherhood, blackness, and the Carceral regime(2011-05) Cole, Haile Eshe; Vargas, João Helion Costa; Awad, GermineIn light of the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States, black women have become the fastest growing incarcerated population in the U.S. Given the fact that more than 75% of incarcerated woman are the primary caregiver for at least one child under the age of 18 the growing incarceration of black women results in the separation of many black mothers from their children. This assault on black motherhood is part of a historically persistent practice of subjugation, control, and maintenance over black women’s reproduction and bodies starting from slavery. This report will not only map this repressive trajectory into the present, but it will also focus on examining black motherhood through the lens of mass incarceration. Furthermore, this report will not only attempt to situate the enduring practice of black women’s subjugation within larger discourses around racism, sexism, oppression, state control, domination, and power but also within an understanding of manifestations of embodied blackness.Item Planning and knowledge : industrial agriculture, Grupo de Madres de Ituzaingó Anexo and gendered community organizing(2016-05) Torrado, Marla Judith; Sletto, Bjorn; Auyero, Javier; Lieberknecht, Katherine; Mueller, Elizabeth; Torres, RebeccaThis dissertation analyzes the planning discourse of a fragmented state and the local resistance to the expansion of genetically modified (GM) soybean production, focusing on the case of Barrio Ituazaingó Anexo in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. It illustrates how fragmentary forms of governance produce spaces for insurgent maneuvering through disjunctions in state practices. I focus on the gender-based strategies and representations that allowed a women’s group, the Grupo de Madres de Barrio Ituzaingó Anexo, to attain a degree of visibility unavailable to other groups and achieve political gains in the struggle against GM soybean. As a small, women-led community organization, the Grupo de Madres emerged more than 10 years ago when 15 women from the neighborhood grew alarmed by the great number of children and adults who were ill with cancer. Their struggle with different levels of government and the state’s vision for the planning and development of the agrarian sector as an important revenue generator is an example of the tensions between localized productions of knowledge vis-à-vis rational visions of planning. This dissertation discusses the consequences of top-down planning strategies and examines the steps needed to ameliorate negative impacts of development projects at the local level. It also presents a poignant example of gender-based organizing: despite the numerous groups that had formed in Argentina, it was this small group of women who finally was able to demonstrate how the production of genetically modified crops was literally poisoning people. The national and international visibility they gained through their struggle served to legitimize their experiences and daily routines as a valid source of knowledge. This examination of a fragmented state also reveals the opportunities bottom-up groups have when maneuvering through the system to gain access to political spaces not usually available to them. Additionally, this analysis points to the complexity of such fragmented state practices, as tensions arise when some state governmental agencies accept the situated knowledge presented by communities, while other still push against it. Lastly, this dissertation contributes to discussions on knowledge production in planning, particularly the disconnection between formal, institutionalized and science-based rationalities in planning versus informal, situated knowledge.Item Teaching mothers : normal schools as social policy in Brazil, 1880-1960(2007-12) Daniels, Anne Megan, 1986-; Garfield, Seth, 1967-This study examines normal schools in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Brazil and their deficiencies in producing competent primary school teachers. As normal schools became increasingly female, starting in Brazil around 1880, educational reformers saw in them the opportunity to mold society not only through the careful influence and training of future-teachers, but also of futuremothers. By the early twentieth century, the aim of producing ideal mothers had taken over many Brazilian normal schools, altering the make-up of their student bodies and curriculums, to the detriment of primary education throughout the country.Item Teen and adult mothers' attitudes and beliefs concerning infant feeding practices(Texas Tech University, 2003-08) Carroll, Sebrina RThis study examined whether there are distinctions between adolescent and young adult mothers' psychosocial factors and beliefs concerning breast- and bottle-feeding. A number of studies had found distinctions between breast-feeding versus bottle-feeding adolescents, but it was unclear whether these distinctions are unique to adolescents. Thus, respondents in the present investigation consisted of both teens and adults. The mothers were recruited shortly after delivery at a university hospital. Adolescent mothers were between the ages of 13 and 18, adult mothers were 20 to 32 years of age. Participants fell into 4 groups. • Breast-feeding adolescents, • Bottle-feeding adolescents, • Breast-feeding adults, • Bottle-feeding adults. All mothers were administered a short battery of questionnaires, including the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression inventory (CES-D), Profile for Mood States (POMS), and Fetal Attachment Questionnaire. In a short interview, mothers also responded to questions pertaining to their choice of feeding method. Results revealed similarities between teen and adult breast-feeding mothers. Both groups reported similarly low levels of depression and hostility and high levels of attachment to their infants. Concerns about other children and going back to work or school played a greater role in the decision to bottle-feed. Contrastingly, attitudes of bottle-feeding mothers differed between teens and adults. Notably, teen bottle-feeding mothers reported higher levels of depression and hostility. The findings have implications for policies geared toward the encouragement of breast-feeding, especially among adolescents. They point lo the importance of addressing breast-feeding teen mothers' need for social support. This may help maintain breast-feeding which is usually terminated very quickly among this group. The findings also point to the importance of addressing bottle-feeding mothers' feelings of depression and hostility, as these ma> be more fundamental to parenting behavior than issues regarding feeding methods.Item The motherhood myth in the works of Elisabeth Alexander: a feminist perspective?(Texas Tech University, 1986-05) Pierce, Paula JoNOT AVAILABLEItem Working mothers and gender inequality in Germany(2012-05) Collins, Caitlyn McKenzie; Williams, Christine L., 1959-; Glass, JenniferI investigate how women in Germany balance their professional and familial commitments given the generous welfare state support for work-family reconciliation. Drawing on interviews with 21 German mothers in white-collar occupations, I examine the cultural perceptions of working mothers, the impact of “family-friendly” policies, and women’s workplace experiences with their supervisors and colleagues. I argue that working mothers struggle to balance their work and home lives because gender inequality is still widespread in Germany, despite – and in some cases because of – this welfare state support. Women are frequently denigrated and stigmatized for being employed outside the home while raising children, and for their family status at work. Their identities as both mother and worker violate traditional understandings of femininity in Germany. Consequently, the women I interviewed feel like inadequate mothers and incompetent workers as a result of the gendered messages they receive from the state, businesses, and dominant culture. Until the responsibility for raising children and earning a living are shared equally between women and men, and the government and society support them in this endeavor, gender inequality will continue to be a central feature of our social world.