Integrated Motherhood: Beyond Hegemonic Ideologies of Motherhood

Existing research assumes that hegemonic mothering ideologies influence U.S. mothers' work and family decisions. These ideologies assume that childrearing is a mother's duty, that mothering occurs within a self‐sufficient nuclear family, and that paid employment conflicts with motherhood. Even when mothers do not conform to these ideologies, scholars find that they continue to influence mothers, as exhibited by mothers' efforts to reframe, redefine, or actively reject the ideal. This study expands on research that challenges the dominant influence of these ideologies on all mothers. Through analyzing the accounts of 24 middle‐ and upper‐middle‐class African American mothers employed in professional careers, three different cultural expectations about motherhood emerged. Participants assumed that they should work outside of the home, be financially self‐reliant, and use kin and community members as child caregivers. Together, these cultural expectations form the basis of an alternative ideology of mothering that the author terms integrated mothering.     

Determinants of informal employment among working mothers in Mexico

Whether women's informal employment is an involuntary marginal condition or a preferred alternative to formal employment has generated intense debate in academic and policy circles, particularly in view of women's disproportionate representation in the informal economy. We analyzed detailed interviews with 136 working mothers in Mexico to gain a better understanding of the factors leading to informal employment, as well as the impact of this work on these women and their families. Our results show that informal employment was not a choice for many women who entered the informal labor market due to human capital constraints and family responsibilities. Additionally, women commonly faced challenges in meeting the needs of both their employers and their families and earning adequate income. We suggest policy options to address the factors constraining women's employment opportunities and improve the situation of those women already working in the informal economy.     

Parental Authority in Divorced Families

This work examines the possible differences between divorced mothers and mothers of intact families in their inclinations to exert parental authority, and the possible relationship between the degree of parental authority and children's personal and social adjustment. For the purposes of the study, we developed the Haifa Parental Authority Questionnaire, which is a situation-depicted test based on a conceptual analysis of the construct of authority. The participants were 88 mother–child dyads, 56 from single (divorced) families and 32 from two-parent families. The results show that married mothers are more disposed than are divorced mothers to use their authority. Although adding family status and parental authority scores to the regression analysis yielded insignificant models for the two children's adjustment variables, the interaction between the variables was found to be significant. In the divorced family the more authoritarian the mother is, the worse is the child's personal adjustment, whereas in the intact family the more authoritarian the mother is, the better is the child's social adjustment. The results are discussed in the wider context of the mother–child relationship, the breakdown of the family's hierarchical structure following divorce, and the relationship of these factors with the exertion of parental authority.     

Young people's time use and maternal employment in the UK1

This paper analyses the relationship between young people's time use and maternal employment in the United Kingdom (UK). Two dimensions of young people's time use are important for understanding the impact of maternal employment. The first of these is family context. This concerns the time young people are near their parents or not. The second relates to young people's activity patterns. Combining information from both dimensions is necessary to provide a comprehensive overview of the impact of maternal employment on young people's time use. The paper demonstrates that young people's time use is associated with maternal employment both in terms of activity patterns and family context. Young people with employed mothers spend more time alone with a father, and more time with neither parent. More specifically, young people with mothers employed fulltime (FT) spend significantly more time watching TV than those whose mothers are not employed, especially when they are not near any parents. There is a negative association between FT maternal employment and the time young people spend in achievement‐related activities, concentrated in time when alone with a mother. Unlike time in leisure activities or time watching TV, time in achievement‐related activities when in the presence of a father does not increase to compensate for the loss in time spent in achievement‐related activities when alone with a mother.     

Capabilities and employability of unwed mothers

In this paper we assess the economic capabilities of a sample of unwed mothers who gave birth in the spring of 1998 in hospitals that serve low-income residents in seven cities that are part of a national sampling frame. We show that recent unwed mothers who are not in a cohabiting relationship are especially vulnerable to economic hardship because they are more likely to encounter multiple barriers to employment than mothers who do cohabit with their newborn's father. However, analyses of earnings capacity suggest that most single-mother families would be poor even if the mothers worked 1500 hours per year, and near poor if they worked full-time, year round (2000 hours). Analyses of income portfolios indicate that low-income mothers are quite resourceful packaging cash and income transfers from multiple sources to meet the needs of their families. These results are discussed in the context of recent welfare reforms.     

Markets,choice of kindergarten,mothers' care responsibilities,and the voucher scheme in Hong Kong

This paper examines choice of kindergarten by mothers of different socio-economic status (SES) for children aged 3 while using vouchers in Hong Kong. It identifies potential market failure to meet needs and preferences and ensure access to preferred options for all, and thus challenges the global prevalence of the market approach to early childhood services. It questions gendered responsibility and policy that prevents mothers from fulfilling care responsibilities for young children. This paper presents data from a mixed-method study including an analysis of mothers' options in terms of convenience and their views on the impact of the Pre-primary Education Voucher Scheme (thereafter voucher scheme) and local provision. Data were collected from two questionnaires, seven focus groups, and government documents. The quantitative data covered two-parent households using vouchers, with 1572 and 1360 mothers responding to the initial and follow-up questionnaires, respectively. The qualitative data from 33 mothers were coded and analyzed to capture recurring themes and nuances. Official figures were tabulated to investigate market adjustments relating to changes in demand and supply. The results reveal mothers' strong emphasis on convenience when making choices of kindergarten, the significance of SES in their choice and views, and issues of access linked to market situations and failure. They are discussed in terms of the nature, allocation, and fulfillment of care responsibilities in markets. The results lend support to the international call for active government involvement to achieve the dual goals of early childhood services (meeting children's educational needs and parents' employment needs) and show how markets may neglect the specific nature of care responsibilities, which in turn can exacerbate historical injustices in society.     

Local Day Care Quality and Maternal Employment: Evidence From East and West Germany

By investigating how locally available early childhood education and care quality relates to maternal employment choices, this study extends the literature, which mostly has focused on the importance of day care availability or costs. The authors provide differentiated analyses by the youngest child's age and for West and East Germany to examine moderating influences, such as work‐care cultures, in a market with strongly state‐subsidized provision and near‐universal participation of preschool children. The empirical analysis linked the Socio‐Economic Panel and the Families in Germany Study for 2010 and 2011 (N = 3,301 mothers) with regional structural quality data and applied multivariate regression models. In East Germany, mothers with a child under age 3 years who lived in districts with smaller day care groups were more likely to be employed and to extend their work hours. For mothers in West Germany and those with older children, day care quality was not significantly related to employment.     

The Impact of Divorce

This study sought to determine if the often described differences in the child-rearingpractices of divorced and married mothers are related to the father's absence, or if they are largely related to the low income which so often occurs with divorce. Seventy-two mothers varying along the dimensions of father absence, income, number of children, and sex of the target child were interviewed. The resultssuggest that income is a key factor; child-rearing practices were more restrictive and demanding at the lower but not at the higher income levels. Additional effects were found when child-rearing practices were analyzed by sex of child and number of children.     

Acceptance and Caregiving of Married and Divorced Custodial Mothers and Fathers

The study examined whether differences in gender and family status affect parental caregiving disposition and acceptance of children among parents of children in mid-childhood. The number of participants were 122 divorced-custodial fathers, 107 married fathers, 85 divorced-custodial mothers, and 82 married mothers (n?=?398). A comparison among four groups of parents revealed the following gender differences: mothers scored higher on anxious caregiving and parental acceptance than fathers, and lower on avoidant caregiving. Regression analysis indicated that the higher the caregiving avoidance or anxiety, the lower the parental acceptance. Family status moderated parental acceptance, as avoidant caregiving was associated with reduced parental acceptance among married parents, but not among divorced custodial parents. The finding that avoidant caregiving was not associated with reduced acceptance among divorced custodial parents implies that their parental acceptance behaviors toward their children are affected by their parental status as sole custodial parent, and the associated responsibilities, rather than by gender.     

Breastfeeding and employment: A propensity score matching approach

ABSTRACT

It is well established within the scholarship on work and the family that many women experience difficulty juggling work and family responsibilities. Challenges to breastfeeding after giving birth are a specific manifestation of this work–family conflict. Many women report that they are unable to continue breastfeeding upon return to paid work. In this article, I analyze a subsample of 746 women from the United States Infant Feeding Practices Survey II to assess the effect of new mothers’ employment status and workplace characteristics on breastfeeding duration. This research reveals that new mothers who return to paid employment within three months of giving birth breastfeed an average of five fewer weeks than new mothers who do not return to paid work for three months or more. In addition, among mothers who return to paid work within three months, full-time workers breastfeed an average of more than 15 fewer weeks than part-time workers. These substantial differences in the duration of breastfeeding suggest that women face significant obstacles to combining paid work and mothering in the postpartum period.     

Maternal child care preferences for infants,toddlers, and preschoolers: the disconnect between policy and preference in the USA

While much research exists looking at parental preferences for child care, much of that research uses child care choice as a proxy for preference. In an effort to examine the types of care mothers prefer if no constraints were placed on their decision, this quantitative study investigated how family demographic factors and family role ideology relate to the types of child care (parental and non-parental forms) mothers prefer ‘in an ideal world’ using a sample of 345 employed mothers of children under 6 years of age in a suburb of a large metropolitan area in the southern USA. Participants completed a questionnaire examining the types of care they viewed as ideal for infants (0–12 months old), toddlers (13–30 months old), and preschoolers (31–72 months old) if no constraints were placed on the decision. Results indicated that the preferences for type of care for mothers in this sample varied according to the child's age, with a large majority of mothers preferring parental care for their children. Ideological and demographic factors predicting preferences for first and second choice of child care were also explored through binary and multinomial logistic regression, revealing the influence of ethnicity, education, and family role ideology to preferences for infant care. These results add to the existing literature by confirming previous findings about the influence of child age to child care preferences, as well as highlighting the disconnect between these preferences and the way family policies are structured in the USA.     

Gendered and classed experiences of work–family conflict among lone mothers in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Research on the relationship between lone motherhood and social class is indeed limited. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews, the overall aim of this article is to increase knowledge of the ways that working conditions and access to economic resources impact on Swedish lone mothers’ opportunities to integrate paid work and family. One assumption is that lone mothers are guided by culturally shaped ideas about the proper way to be a mother, and that variance between mothers’ notions of good mothering and the means for their realization, i.e. sociological ambivalence, may give rise to conflicts and dilemmas. Results show that low incomes, non-standard hours and temporary employment reduced working-class mothers’ prospects of practising the kind of mothering they considered proper, creating dilemmas and high levels of conflict. Mothers could not always effectively use the rights granted to parents by the Swedish welfare state. The variances between notions about good mothering and the means for realizing them were not as big for middle-class mothers, thanks to greater access to economic capital and flexible working hours. Different opportunity structures hence significantly influenced lone mothers’ opportunity to combine paid work and caring commitments in ways they found appropriate.     

Connections and Constraints: The Effects of Children on Caregiving

This article assesses the effects of children on parents' involvement in caregiving. On the basis of interviews with 273 respondents, we address the effects of having children on care given to kin and nonkin; assess the effects of children's characteristics, especially age and gender, on the help mothers and fathers provide; and examine how these vary with mothers' employment. Overall, we find that the presence of children connects parents into networks of care more than it constrains them. The effects vary depending on the characteristics of the child (including age and gender) as well as characteristics of the parent (like gender and employment).     

Changes in Extended Family Relationships for Mexican American and Anglo Single Mothers

The first year of single parenthood requires adjustments in many facets of one's lifestyle, including relationships with parents and other relatives. During this transition period the women may need to rely more heavily on her family for emotional and material aid, but reactions of family members may compound the problems she experiences. In this study the relationship between family reactions and ethnicity, generation, religion, father's job classification, and the cause of single parenthood are explored for a sample of Mexican American and Anglo single women in San Jose, California. The results indicate that there are ethnic differences in family responses. The Mexican Americans are less supportive of the divorced or separated mothers. Although there are no significant ethnic difference in family responses to the never-married mothers, the Anglos are relatively less supportive of this category than of the divorced or separated women. Some implications are discussed for social programs serving single parent populations.     

Interpreting the needs of lone mothers

This article focuses on the relationship between welfare services in some districts of the municipality of Venice and their lone-mother clients. First, it outlines briefly the panorama of Italian support policies. As there is no national law on social assistance, but a variety of fragmentary and complex local systems of rights, the social rights of lone mothers have to be examined at the local level. The article then attempts to reconstruct the de factopolicies for lone mothers in a welfare system that has no provisions specifically for lone mothers. It interprets discursive and ideological dimensions of social policies from the social workers' viewpoint, highlighting the mechanisms by which the welfare programmes and practices define the needs of lone mothers. It outlines the dynamics of negotiation in the welfare services, which try to reconcile the legislative and administrative norms with the social workers' professional practices and the perceived claims of lone mothers. Despite the Veneto region's universal law on social assistance, access to economic support tends to be determined selectively on the basis of a 'qualifying need'. Interpreting lone mothers' claims to qualifying needs along psycho-social and educational dimensions serves to transform their expressed claims into needs that can be dealt with institutionally. Social workers' image of the two subculturesof lone mothers influences their attitudes and the strategies they set in motion for lone mothers. Lone mothers are provided with a broader range of discretionary support than other users of welfare services, as social workers perceive their problems as more complex and pressing. Social workers' discretion in supporting lone mothers in maternity and in accommodating paid employment and family responsibilities compensates for the gaps left by national and local welfare policies.     

Saint Paul and Divorce

Many divorced Christians believe that in divorce they have betrayed their Christian faith. Counselors and ministers can help divorced Christians to understand that (a) not all human troubles are the consequence of moral failure, (b) the apostle Paul's strict teachings on divorce can be evaluated in light of his other teachings, (c) Paul's strict view of divorce had the surprising consequence of advancing women's rights, and (d) Paul and the Church have themselves not been able to escape contributing to dissension and estrangement. The purpose of this paper is to encourage divorce counselors to help their disturbed Christian clients to appreciate Saint Paul's doctrine of divorce in historical perspective.     

Job Volatility of Rural,Low-income Mothers: A Mixed Methods Approach

The struggle for rural, low-income mothers to enter and remain in the workforce can contribute to job volatility, longitudinal changes in employment patterns. This study used a mixed methods longitudinal approach to examine job volatility of 245 rural, low-income mothers across 14 states. The mothers were categorized into three groups: stable employment, intermittent employment, and continuous unemployment. Work and family responsibilities were a continuous struggle for these mothers. Some mothers addressed these struggles through changing jobs, receiving social support, and/or staying out of the workforce to care for their children. To reduce job volatility, both qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that human capital development requires workplace flexibility and social support in addition to the traditional investments in education and healthcare.     

The psychosocial well-being of children from Australian military and fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) mining families

This study investigates the effects of employment-related father absence on children's psychological well-being and home based mothers’ perceptions of family functioning. Ninety primary school aged children and their mothers residing in Perth in Western Australia participated in this study. The sample consisted of three groups: children whose fathers were employed in fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) mining (n =30), children whose fathers were in the military (n =30) and a community sample (n =30) of children, whose fathers’ employment was not military or mining based and who did not have extended periods of absence from home. Children's psychosocial well-being was measured by the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS). Children's and mothers’ perceptions of family function were assessed with the Family Assessment Device (FAD). Results indicated that there were no significant differences between the groups on all measures of child well-being, and all groups were functioning at healthy levels. However, mothers from the FIFO families reported significantly more stress than the military and community groups with respect to communication, support and behaviour control within the family. It was concluded that despite mothers’ perceptions of disruption to family routine, the well-being of children in this small sample was not affected.     

Japanese Fathers of Preschoolers and Their Involvement in Child Care

We examine how relative resources, time availability, gender ideology, living arrangement, child‐care demand, and job satisfaction are associated with the levels of younger Japanese fathers’ involvement in child care for preschoolers. A theoretical model that includes these factors is tested using 1994 data collected from Japanese fathers and mothers with preschool children (N = 442 couples). We find that practical considerations such as fathers’ shorter work hours, mothers’ full‐time employment, fewer adults and more children in households, and younger ages of children are associated with higher levels of paternal involvement. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of attention to ways to encourage Japanese men's sharing of child‐care responsibilities with their wives.     

What Explains Divorced Women's Poorer Health? The Mediating Role of Health Insurance and Access to Health Care in a Rural Iowan Sample

Economic restructuring in rural areas in recent decades has been accompanied by rising marital instability. To examine the implications of the increase in divorce for the health of rural women, we examine how marital status predicts adequacy of health insurance coverage and health care access, and whether these factors help to account for the documented association between divorce and later illness. Analyzing longitudinal data from a cohort of over 400 married and recently divorced rural Iowan women, we decompose the total effect of divorce on physical illness a decade later using structural equation modeling. Divorced women are less likely to report adequate health insurance in the years following divorce, inhibiting their access to medical care and threatening their physical health. Full‐time employment acts as a buffer against insurance loss for divorced women. The growth of marital instability in rural areas has had significant ramifications for women's health; the decline of adequate health insurance coverage following divorce explains a component of the association between divorced status and poorer long‐term health outcomes.