Social Support,Coming Out,and Adjustment of Lesbian Mothers in Canada and France

SUMMARY

This study examined the factors associated with individual and relationship well-being, social support, and coming-out of lesbian mothers. We stipulated the existence of three important sources of variations: legal recognition of lesbian families in two distinct countries (Canada and France); mothers' biological status; and donor identity. Sixty-one Canadian couples and 53 French couples completed questionnaires on coming-out, support by family and friends, relationship adjustment and individual well-being. Coming-out and mothers' relationship adjustment were positively associated with social support. Levels of coming-out were higher for mothers in Canada and mothers in unknown donor families. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Black Teenage Mothers' Understandings of the Effects of Maltreatment on their Coping Style and Parenting Practice: A Pilot Study

This article discusses a qualitative pilot study conducted with Black teenage mothers affected by maltreatment histories, exploring the feasibility of researching how they develop insights into the effects on their parenting skills. The results indicate key impact areas, including their relationships with their carers, perceptions of significant relationships and increased vulnerability to relationship abuse. As the young mothers resisted seeing themselves as victims and utilised an avoidance‐centred coping strategy, their ability to recognise the impact of harmful childhood experiences was limited. The article concludes with reflections on the pilot study's implications and limitations.     

Building ‘community’ for different stages of life: physical and social infrastructure in master planned communities

As cities around the world struggle to cope with increasing populations, major new master planned housing developments are being undertaken to meet the demand for housing. Such urban developments are influencing workforce, household, and community relations, which in turn drive health and well-being outcomes, and affect social capital and labour market participation. This paper reports findings from the first phase of data collection for the Work, Home and Community Project. Fourteen focus groups were conducted with 68 men and women who live and/or work at newly developed master planned communities in South Australia and Victoria. Findings indicate that familiarity, availability, and the enabling of social bridges contribute to the development of community and social capital in these residential areas. For individuals at different stages of life these factors were facilitated or inhibited by specific physical and social infrastructures in the residential area and the workplace. At a time when concerns are being raised about the ability of people to combine work, home, and community these findings shed some light on the physical and social infrastructures that can enable or constrain the building of healthy communities.     

Instability in patchworks of child care when moving from welfare to work

We use longitudinal, qualitative interview data collected from 38 initially welfare‐reliant women in Cleveland, Ohio to examine the factors driving instability in child‐care arrangements when women transitioned from welfare to work. Grounded theory analysis revealed that decisions about care were circumscribed by scarce social and economic resources, women went to extraordinary lengths to patch together arrangements that typically involved multiple providers, relative care was central to patchworks of care, and patchworks of child care were often highly unstable. These complex arrangements and their instability were influenced by mothers’ desires to find the most suitable arrangements for their children within resource and job constraints, dissatisfaction with providers, difficulties accessing subsidies, and changes in provider availability. Findings suggest that policymakers must consider instability in patchworks of multiple child‐care providers as they consider alternatives for meeting low‐wage working women's and children's needs for safe, affordable, accessible, and enriching nonmaternal child care.     

Voices from the Valleys: Researching lone mothers talk

This paper focuses upon an interdisciplinary research project the authors are currently engaged in, specifically designed to address the inattention paid so far to lone mothers voices in the Rhondda Valleys in Mid Glamorgan, South Wales. This is an area characterised by high unemployment, community restructuring and fragmenting kinship patterns and, according to analysis of the 1991 Census data, Mid Glamorgan ranks ninth highest in the UK in terms of the incidence of lone parents as a percentage of total households with dependent children. Given the political sensitivity of the issue of lone parenting, and the attempts of dominant discourses to pathologise lone mothers in particular, this paper explores some of the issues involved in responsibly accessing situated accounts of lone mothers subjectivities. The particular representations of self and status that these women offer in their own accounts, and how they articulate those representations in different contexts, is bound up with complex political, ethical and methodological concerns. In addressing these concerns, this paper seeks to interrogate some of the tensions at play in research on marginalise? groups living in communities which have been defined as spatially isolated and economically deprived. The paper thus centres for discussion the problems and possibilities that inevitably surface when undertaking research of this kind. We conclude that research which reveals talk which manages, disrupts and reworks contested representations of otherness needs to be carefully and self-reflexively accessed, collected and disseminated, even and perhaps especially when such research is supposedly informed by critical feminist awareness.     

Repartnering: the relevance of parenthood and gender to cohabitation and remarriage among the formerly married

This paper is an exploratory analysis of the impact of current and anticipated parenthood on cohabitation and remarriage among those formerly living in marriage-type relationships. The focus on children is embedded within a broader analysis of repartnering which takes account of other factors, including gender. Quantitative and qualitative analyses are used, with a multivariate analysis of repartnering patterns, using data from the General Household Survey, being complemented by in-depth interview data examining the attitudes of the formerly married to future relationships. The paper demonstrates that parenthood has a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of formerly married women repartnering, with a higher number of children being associated with a lower probability of repartnering. The presence of children can work against repartnering in a variety of ways. Children place demands on their parents and can deter or object to potential partners. Parents may see their parental role as more important than, and a barrier to, new relationships. However, mothers are typically looking for partners for themselves rather than fathers for their children. Among formerly married people without children, the desire to become a parent encourages repartnering. The paper concludes that parenthood should be a key consideration in analyses of repartnering.     

Thanks for nothing: Income and labor force participation for never-married mothers since 1982

We examine the changing social and economic characteristics of women who give birth out of wedlock. Using Current Population Survey data collected between 1982 and 2002, we find that never-married mothers remain impoverished. Their income growth over these years was modest despite substantial gains in education, employment, and other individual characteristics generally associated with prosperity. These results affirm the ongoing role of family structure in shaping American inequality.     

A Therapist’s Mandate?: Integrating an Ethics of Care into Custody Law by Recognising and Responding to Post‐separation Parental Loss of Connection with Children

In 1999 Smart and Neale published their seminal book Family Fragments, arguing for the replacement of the ethics of justice that currently informs custody law and practice with an ethics of care. Recognising loss is one of four principles they identify as being key to care‐based processes for managing post‐separation parenting arrangements. Here they had in mind the non‐resident fathers in their study, who were often anxious, angry, and resentful about their diminished fatherhood. Yet gender‐neutral custody laws and the greater prominence given to shared care across the West means that increasing numbers of separated mothers are also experiencing diminished connections to their children, either by becoming non‐resident parents or through shared care arrangements. Research into post‐separation fathers’ and mothers’ experiences of loss and grief in relation to their children is sparse and largely consists of small‐scale qualitative studies focusing either on fathers or mothers. Nonetheless, these studies show that the grief talk of post‐separated parents is strikingly similar, except that mothers who become non‐resident parents commonly talk about a sense of stigma and shame, while fathers are more likely than mothers to resort to the language of anger and rights. Despite Smart and Neale's call roughly 20 years ago, custody law systems across the West continue to neglect parents’ need for recognition and support. This paper seeks to rectify this social neglect through describing a dual program of therapeutically informed interventions with separated mothers and fathers. This is designed to recognise and respond to parental loss and grief experiences, whilst simultaneously fostering personal self‐reflexivity and transformation. The latter is no easy task but is frequently an essential basis for workable co‐parenting post‐separation.     

‘We create our own small world’: daily realities of mothers of disabled children in a South African urban settlement

Parents of disabled children face many challenges. Understanding their experiences and acknowledging contextual influences is vital in developing intervention strategies that fit their daily realities. However, studies of parents from a resource-poor context are particularly scarce. This ethnographic study with 30 mothers from a South African township (15 semi-structured interviews and 24 participatory group sessions) unearths how mothers care on their own, in an isolated manner. The complexity of low living standards, being poorly supported by care structures and networks, believing in being the best carer, distrusting others due to a violent context, and resigning towards life shape and are shaped by this solitary care responsibility. For disability inclusive development to be successful, programmes should support mothers by sharing the care responsibility taking into account the isolated nature of mothers’ lives and the impact of poverty. This can provide room for these mothers to increase the well-being of themselves and their children.     

Public health policy and social support for immigrant mothers raising disabled children in Canada

A literature review regarding the social support of immigrant mothers of disabled children in Canada was undertaken with a focus on settings where supports need to be shored up. An integrative review of published papers and policy reports concerning key aspects of social supports for immigrant mothers and disabled children was undertaken. Immigrant mothers experience numerous barriers to social supports for themselves and their disabled children. Maternal immigrant populations experience unique challenges in the setting of childhood disability as well as the challenges of mothers in the dominant culture. There are negative impacts on maternal health as a result of inadequate policy offerings. Public health policy needs to be refashioned in light of weak systems and supports for both immigrant mothers and disabled children and to acknowledge that the current system poses concerning implications for the long-term health of both groups.