Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Trends in the Educational Differences in U.S. Mothers’ Paid Work and Child Care Time-Use and Implications for Mothers’ Well-Being(2024) Gao, Ge; Cohen, Philip N; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores U.S. mothers’ time allocation to employment and child care post-2000 and its implications for their well-being, addressing three empirical questions: (1) How have educational disparities in mothers’ developmentally adaptive child care time evolved in recent decades? (2) How have paid work-child care time divisions shifted differently for less-educated versus more-educated mothers? (3) What are the trends in educational disparities in mothers’ well-being, and to what extent do mothers’ time-use patterns contribute to these changes? This dissertation found that there has been a significant historical decline in educational disparities in mothers’ developmentally adaptive child care time investment over the past two decades. Second, mothers with different educational attainments have gradually adopted divergent paid work-child care time coordination strategies: while high school and less educated mothers saw an increased tendency to spend high volumes of time on child care without employment, college-educated mothers became more likely to invest moderate time on child care while maintaining full-time professional jobs. Finally, college-educated mothers, who were initially at a disadvantage, have experienced significant improvements in the quantity and quality of downtime over the past two decades. Some evidence suggests that the shifting distribution of paid work-child care time coordination patterns contribute to the enhancements in leisure quality for college-educated mothers. This dissertation offers an updated understanding of how US mothers with varying educational backgrounds balance work and family, the potential trade-offs between mothers’ well-being and children’s development, with suggestive impacts on the intergenerational transmission of advantage.Item "If I Am Free My Child Belongs to Me": Black Motherhood and Mothering in the Era of Emancipation(2022) Wicks-Allen, Jessica Lynn; Rowland, Leslie S; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Black women’s reproduction was foundational to Atlantic slave societies because it produced future laborers and profits for slaveholders. Although the commodification of bondwomen’s children generated grief, loss, and violence, enslaved women constructed individual and collective practices of motherhood that challenged that commodification. As emancipation reconfigured the social order, black women’s and children’s bodies and labor acquired dramatically new meanings. From the standpoint of former slaveholders, black women’s reproductive capacity and offspring were no longer assets but encumbrances. Meanwhile, emancipation meant that freedwomen could exercise parental rights that had previously been denied. These shifts raise questions about how motherhood and childrearing informed black women’s transition from slavery to freedom in the U.S. South. The dissertation argues that black women’s identities as mothers profoundly affected how they experienced and negotiated freedom. Black mothers sought to exercise self-determination by defining motherhood on their own terms, gaining control over their reproduction, and rearing their children as they saw fit. To achieve these ends, they demanded remunerative employment, custody of their children, protection from violence, child support, education for their progeny, and personal dignity. Reconstituting family and protecting the welfare of their children animated formerly enslaved women’s pursuit and definition of freedom. Whereas formerly enslaved women’s reproductive capacity and children had been assets under slavery, in freedom they became undesirable to employers, generating a whole new set of constraints for black mothers, who, as a result, faced employment discrimination and poverty. In response to these circumstances, newly freed mothers developed a politics of mutual vulnerability that stressed collectivity rather than individualism. If motherhood engendered vulnerability, the embrace of relationality served as a source of black maternal empowerment. While building on previous scholarship that has examined emancipation through the lens of gender, the dissertation deploys a more specific social location—motherhood—to bring black women’s politics into sharper focus, emphasizing the ways in which ex-slave women made and remade freedom through kinship and care work. In so doing, it also reveals that motherhood remained a site of black subjugation, albeit in new ways.Item Cooking with Mama Kim: The Legacy of Korean Women (Re)Defining Cultural Authenticity(2018) Sprague, Justin; Bolles, Augusta L; Kim, Seung-kyung; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)What is considered “authentically Korean,” how those concepts are imagined, and in what ways authenticity is constructed through the vehicles of food and Korean motherhood is the core focus of this dissertation project. This study employs visual and discourse analysis, utilizing historical archives, vlog personalities, cookbooks, web portals, and various forms of food branding and packaging. Within the interdisciplinary field of Food Studies, the conversation regarding authenticity is a fundamental one, with varying work being performed to examine what and how it is employed, and who/what are the gatekeepers that determine the parameters for something as “authentic.” The intervention into this conversation is to explore the ways that authenticity as a theoretical model has intersectional, subjective, or adaptive, potential. This entails employing the term “plastic authenticity,” which is a model of authenticity that favors the positioning of non-normative bodies (i.e., multiracial and diasporic) as brokers of cultural authenticity. In the end, this dissertation contributes to scholarship in Women’s Studies, Food Studies, and Ethnic Studies by pushing the boundaries of how cultural/racial authenticity is constructed, and the ways that women and food have direct impacts as gatekeepers on this process. Analyses range from a historical timeline of Korean immigration to the U.S. with a focus on Korean women, an analysis of a popular YouTube chef, Maangchi, and her employments of the concept of authenticity, analysis of Korean food branding strategies and their claims of authentic Korean food in the U.S., and the website analysis of a mixed-race Korean community to explore the ways that authenticity is invoked by persons not traditionally deemed “authentically Korean.” This research is critical, as it expands the field of research in Korean Studies to not only focus on women and mixed-race Koreans as historical objects, but as active agents in cultural production, meaning-making, and history writing.Item GENDERED INVESTMENTS IN CAREER AND FAMILY: VALIDATING A MEASURE OF MOTHERHOOD SCHEMAS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN(2016) Savela, Alexandra; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One persistent trend characterizing many work-family arrangements is the tendency for women to invest more heavily in the family sphere compared to men and to compromise career pursuits for their children or partner. Discovering which factors perpetuate these gender-stratified investments in work and family is necessary because, along with investing more in the family, women tend to be concentrated in low-paid, low-prestige occupations. Improving the ability to measure how young women perceive the motherhood role will allow researchers to advance the study of women’s career development. Accordingly, the present study tested, among undergraduate women, the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Meaning of Motherhood Scale, which assesses the ways in which mothers are expected to think, feel, and behave to be seen as “good” mothers. The study found that the Meaning of Motherhood Scale, originally developed with a sample of mothers, did not have the same structure in a sample of undergraduate women, non-mothers. Implications of this finding are discussed. Post-hoc analyses were implemented to explore the factor structure of the Meaning of Motherhood Scale with undergraduate women and a three-factor structure measuring Involvement, Flourishing, and Traditional expectations of mothers was found. Tentative implications of these post-hoc findings, future directions for research, and clinical implications are discussed.Item The Effects of Positive Expressive Writing on Postpartum Wellbeing: A Comparison of Mindfulness and Self-Affirmation.(2015) Ericson, Sara Kate; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research on women during the postpartum period has focused primarily on depression, to the exclusion of other aspects of wellbeing and distress. Though research has also described the barriers to getting help with experiences of postpartum emotional distress there is little research on easily accessible and affordable prevention and treatment interventions or consideration of how women’s individual differences may influence the effectiveness of interventions intended to prevent and treat symptoms of emotional distress. In the present study, self-report data was gathered from 257 women at five points in time during the extended postpartum period. Baseline measures of anxiety, depression, wellbeing, and two facets of mindfulness (nonreactivity and nonjudgment of inner experiences) were examined as potential predictors of how two types of positive expressive writing interventions, based on self-affirmation and mindfulness theories, would impact women’s symptoms of depression, anxiety, and complaints related to physical and psychological wellbeing. These conditions were also compared to a waitlist control condition. Contrary to what was hypothesized, there were no significant differences between the writing and waitlist conditions on outcome anxiety, depression, or wellbeing. Additionally, nonjudgment and nonreactivity did not interact with type of writing condition in predicted ways. Compared to the self-affirmation condition, those in the mindfulness condition used more emotion words in their writings, and reported more changes in affect over the course of their individual writing sessions. Post-hoc analyses indicated post-writing negative affect might mediate the relationship between baseline and follow-up depression and anxiety. Limitations and implications of the findings are discussed along with recommendations for future study.Item A Biopsychosocial Model of Body Image in New Mothers(2009) Welsh, Anne Cavanaugh; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The vast majority of eating disorders literature to date focuses on adolescent and college aged women. However, recent research suggests that eating disorders and struggles with body image are not limited to younger women, but instead occur in women of all ages (e.g. Hay, 1998). One group of women that might be particularly at risk for decreases in body image are first time mothers, as their bodies go through immense changes during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Thus far, the literature has shown a relationship between biological changes, such as weight retention, and low body image in postpartum women (e.g. Walker, 1998). However, little research has explored the role of psychosocial factors in postpartum body image. The current study explored a biopsychosocial model of postpartum image, drawing on psychosocial variables that had been shown to relate to body image in adolescent and college aged women. This study found that psychosocial factors (internalization of the thin ideal, pressure for thinness, and negative affect) accounted for variance in body satisfaction and disordered eating, above and beyond that of biomedical factors (weight change, postpartum BMI, and shape change). Additionally, psychosocial factors partially mediated the effect of weight change and shape change on body satisfaction and disordered eating. These findings have important implications for psychologists and health care professionals who work with new mothers.Item Exploring the Role of Playfulness, Social Support and Self Esteem in Coping with the Transition to Motherhood(2006-05-04) Cavanaugh, Anne Fenton; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)First time parenthood is a major transition in the lives of many young adults, and can lead to both positive and negative outcomes in terms of marital satisfaction and individual adjustment. New mothers are particularly at risk for declines in satisfaction and adjustment as they are often the primary caregivers. The current study examined the coping processes of 197 women in their first year of motherhood. Playfulness, social support and self esteem were examined as possible personal resources during this transition. Data were collected using a web based survey and analyzed with cluster and correlational analyses. Results suggested postpartum adjustment is unrelated to relationship satisfaction. Additionally, while the variables of interest, particularly playfulness, predicted a large amount of variance in relationship satisfaction, they only predicted a small amount of variance in postpartum adjustment. These findings will help counseling psychologists develop and implement interventions to help new mothers in this transition.