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Browsing by Subject "Mother"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Maternal appeals in politics: their effectiveness and consequences.
    (2011-07) Deason, Grace
    There is a history in politics of "maternal appeals" in which female activists and candidates appeal to popular ideas of motherhood to garner support for their political agendas. Political actors' choice to emphasize motherhood is at odds with social-psychological theories that indicate that women will be seen as poor candidates for leadership positions to the extent that they appear stereotypically feminine (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Heilman, 1983; Heilman & Okimoto, 2008). Nonetheless, political candidates of both genders claim to draw inspiration from their experiences as parents, and feminist political theories argue that appeals to nurturance and the family have the unique ability to usher in a new kind of politics built on fundamental values of compassion, generosity, and interpersonal connectedness (Elder & Greene, 2009; Hayden, 2003; Lakoff, 1996, 2002; Ruddick, 1989, 1997). This project provided an empirical test of the claim that motherhood can be harnessed to advance a political agenda. A novel theory of the dynamics of maternal appeals in political campaigns was tested in a content analysis of of political advertisements from the 2004 U. S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial elections and two laboratory experiments. Results indicated that candidates attempt to channel the power of motherhood for political gain, and in the contemporary political environment, male candidates have more leeway to make maternal appeals than do female candidates. Although they compromised political candidates' chances of electoral success, maternal appeals also changed the basis on which leaders were evaluated such that feminine characteristics were weighted more heavily in vote choice. Moreover, maternal appeals had effects beyond voters' impressions of candidates: They increased support for liberal policies among some individuals, suggesting that they can contribute to a liberal political agenda. However, maternal appeals also perpetuated stereotypes of mothers in an organizational context, with implications for the ethics of using maternal appeals as a political persuasion tool. Taken together, the findings of these studies support the claim that maternal appeals have a unique power, but in the current socio-cultural context in which motherhood is devalued and separate from the public sphere, the effects of its power are limited.
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    Mothers' experience of parenting with a former spouse
    (2008-12) Laird, L. Margot
    Continuing to share parenting with a former spouse following divorce, commonly referred to as coparenting, is rapidly becoming a favored custody choice of many families, professionals, and family court systems, affecting the lives of millions of individuals each year. In spite of its rapidly growing popularity, there is still much we do not understand about the nature of the coparenting relationship at the heart of this new parenting arrangement. What we do know is that developing a coparenting relationship that is healthy for all family members is difficult has a profound influence on the well-being of mothers, fathers, and children of divorce, but especially on the well-being of children. Among the many ways a child may be impacted negatively by divorce, research has shown that a negative and conflicted coparent relationship stands alone in its power to do harm to children. It is considered to be the root cause of many adjustment difficulties, producing predictable, direct, and far-reaching consequences throughout the remainder of children's lives. By contrast, a cooperative and supportive relationship between former spouses can minimize divorce's potential harm to children. Using Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological approach, this study seeks to ground our knowledge about parenting with a former spouse in a deep understanding of the experiential meaning of this phenomenon for mothers in their everyday lived worlds. The study explores the experiences of nine mothers who are coparenting with their former spouses. In-depth interviews were designed to draw out pre-reflective descriptions of their everyday experiences with regard to this phenomenon. Analysis of the mothers' naïve descriptions incorporated Giorgi's phenomenological principles, his procedural guidelines, and an incorporated phenomenological research process of my own that evolved during the analysis. The analysis revealed an everyday world characterized by inescapable and relentless threats to mothers' emotional and psychological equilibrium stemming directly from their experiences as coparents. In addition to revealing this unity of experience, the analysis also uncovered individual constituents of meaning and explored each of them at length. The meanings discovered in this study can benefit parents, professionals, and indeed all who are interested in the well-being of children and parents.