Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 MOTHERING AFTER INCARCERATION: REENTRY AND RENEGOTIATING MOTHERHOOD(2017) Hall, Casey Lauren; Freidenberg, Judith Noemi; Butler, Mary Odell; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the wake of mass incarceration, there has been an unprecedented increase in the incarceration of women in the United States. The majority of incarcerated women are mothers, whose absence causes a significant disruption in family life. While research has demonstrated the negative impact of maternal incarceration on women and their children, much remains to be learned about women’s return to the community and in to family life upon reentry. The purpose of the research, conducted in the District of Columbia (2015-2016), was to explore the lived experience of mothering after incarceration, the role of motherhood on women’s experiences of prison to community reentry, and the impact of incarceration and reentry on women’s roles as mothers. Sources of data for this study include life history interviews with formerly incarcerate mothers, interviews with community stakeholders such as community service providers and criminal justice professionals, participant observation at relevant service organizations and community events, and archival data. This research design allowed for an examination of the lived experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers, as well as the social and structural context within which they mother their children, and in which they attempt to gain access to resources to rebuild their lives after incarceration. The research produced case studies that highlight the structural, institutional, and social factors that shape the lives of incarcerated women, including their sense of motherhood and how these factors affect the practice of mothering for women who become involved in the criminal justice system. The findings reveal the ways women attempt to mother their children as they struggle within and against difficult social positions, and how kinship ties are challenged, made, and remade as a result of a mother’s incarceration. The findings contribute to the anthropology of mothering, and underscore emergent roles of kinship, both biological and fictive, in the practice of mothering and experiences of prison and reentry for women who become involved in the criminal justice system. The experiences of formerly incarcerated mothers has implications for broader understandings of motherhood and mothering as dynamic, contextual processes, structured by the conditions in which women mother their children.Item PREGNANCY AND WORK: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY OF JOB SATISFACTION AND TURNOVER INTENTIONS DURING A FIRST PREGNANCY(2017) Ross, Katherine; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite the prevalence of working mothers and mothers-to-be, there is a paucity of research on the intersection of pregnancy and work. This study used a mixed methods approach to examine the workplace experiences of women who were working full-time during their first pregnancy. Participants (N = 166) represented a diverse sample in terms of geographic location (36 states), income level ($25,000 to over $200,000), education level (less than high school through doctorate) and age range (18-42). Quantitative results showed that pregnancy-related work stress, social support in the workplace, level of satisfaction with family leave policies, and the employee’s level of negative affect are all factors related to job satisfaction and turnover intentions for pregnant employees working full-time in the United States. Qualitative data about women’s supportive and unsupportive workplace experiences during pregnancy were also collected and coded using a modified version of Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR-M; Spangler, Liu, & Hill, 2012). Supportive and unsupportive experiences were coded into the following themes: 1) Things people do and say in the workplace, 2) Demands of the job, 3) Pay, 4) Career trajectory, 5) Paid leave, 6) Support for maternity leave, 7) Help from colleagues, and 8) Other parents in the workplace. Coders also identified more specific categories of experiences within each theme. These and other results, as well as implications for employers, employees, and career counselors, are addressed in this manuscript.Item Harbor(2011) Young, Martha A.; Plumly, Stanley; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The speaker confronts both her ambiguous relationship with her father and becoming a parent herself, moving from fear and anger to a tentative reconciliation. Specific topics also include motherhood, the author's younger sister and brother, her son and daughter, as well as miscarriage, strokes, and death.Item PREDICTING YOUNG WOMEN'S CAREER PLANS: DO FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS FOR CHILDREN PREDICT OUTCOMES OVER AND ABOVE INSTRUMENTALITY?(2013) Savela, Alexandra; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study assessed factors related to career development in a sample of undergraduate women. The roles of instrumentality, anticipated work-family conflict, and willingness to compromise career for children in the prediction of career choice traditionality, career aspirations, and occupational engagement were examined. Additionally, the moderating role of willingness to compromise career for children on the relationship between instrumentality and each career outcome was tested. Results indicated that instrumentality predicted leadership aspirations, recognition aspirations, and occupational engagement. Anticipated work-family conflict predicted career choice traditionality, leadership aspirations, and occupational engagement over and above instrumentality. Willingness to compromise career for children added to the prediction of occupational engagement after controlling for instrumentality and anticipated work-family conflict. No moderation findings were detected. Findings are discussed in terms of future research directions and in the context of career counseling with undergraduate women.Item Accidents of Water(2012) Walsh, Cherie Thompson; Plumly, Stanley; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This collection, consisting of poems that take their imagery and dramatic situations from motherhood, childhood, Christian mythology, and art, enacts a belief in the power of naming, storytelling, and the making of meaningful objects. Most of the poems treat the issue of loss, personal or collective. Some poems accept loss, for example, through an honoring of what has gone. Others operate more radically, seeking to remake their stories in order to allow for a transformation of their elements.Item Gender Beliefs and the American Electorate(2012) Bell, Melissa Ann; Kaufmann, Karen; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The overarching purpose of this dissertation is to provide the literature with a revised conceptualization of gender beliefs that will better explain variance in public opinion. When trying to operationalize feminist attitudes in the past, the public opinion literature has relied on measures of abortion or one-dimensional index scores- basically collapsing attitudes into a false dichotomy of feminist/anti-feminist. This is problematic for many reasons. I argue that the feminist belief system should be treated as a multidimensional concept comprising at least three distinct dimensions: belief about women's opportunity; belief about assertive women; and belief about the changing family structure and role of the mother. The second half of the dissertation applies this new approach within the areas of abortion attitudes, candidate evaluations (both experimental and real world), and party affiliation. Overall, the findings support the thesis that there are at least three distinct gender beliefs with varying degrees of explanatory power.Item First Baby, First Year: Gratitude and Emotional Approach Coping as Predictors of Adjustment and Life Satisfaction during the Transition to Motherhood(2011) Piontkowski, Sarah; Hoffman, Mary Ann; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Becoming a mother is one of the most common major life transitions, with approximately 82% of the population of women in the United States having given birth by the age of 45. Although becoming a mother is generally thought of as a positive experience, the transition to parenthood can also present many challenges. This study examined the postpartum transition of 152 first-time mothers. Utilizing the stress and coping model, this study explored the role of gratitude and emotional approach coping on postpartum distress, postpartum adjustment, and life satisfaction. Data were collected using an online survey, and correlations, regression analyses, and mediation analyses were run. The findings revealed that women who reported higher levels of both gratitude and emotional approach coping also reported better postpartum adjustment, greater life satisfaction, and less postpartum distress. The health of both the mother and the baby also predicted better postpartum outcomes for mothers.Item The Long Tradition: Black Women and Mothers in Public Discourses(2009) Sanders, Tammy L.; Struna, Nancy L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document THE LONG TRADITION: BLACK WOMEN AND MOTHERS IN POPULAR DISCOURSES Tammy Sanders, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Directed By: Chair and Professor Nancy Struna Department of American Studies With her insightful analysis, Nancy Lurkins in &ldquoYou are the Race, You are the Seeded Earth:&rdquo Intellectual Rhetoric, American Fiction, and Birth Control in the Black Community (2008), asserts &ldquo(past) black leaders promoted the ideal of black domesticity and moral motherhood as a counterstrategy to white attacks. Over time, appreciating and even desiring black motherhood came to be identified with black communal pride and as a result black women became responsible for upholding the entire race&rdquo (47). Similarly, recent history has proved to be no different when it comes to the responsibility of black mothers. This dissertation will explore how public discourses involving the social sciences, films, and novels historicize, represent, and re-envision black motherhood. It will investigate how these discourses about motherhood are shaped by the historical moment of their occurrence and what they tell us about the attitudes of those establishing critical thought. By examining texts like the Moynihan Report, Ann Petry's The Street, Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, and the 1974 film Claudine, this project will analyze the rhetoric of scholars about black motherhood alongside popular images of black mothers to illustrate how they overlap and how black women's bodies are consistently at the nexus of academic, social, cultural and political conversations. In an attempt to further complicate mothering studies by using black feminist thought as my lens, this dissertation seeks to tease out the interconnectedness of historical moments and discourses without perpetuating traditional gender norms as it relates to black female identities.Item Essentially Powerful: Political Motherhood in the United States and Argentina(2007-04-29) Gibbons, Meghan Keary; Peres, Phyllis A.; Rosenfelt, Deborah; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Essentially Powerful" explores the roles of essentialism around motherhood in the political protests of two groups in the United States and Argentina. Another Mother for Peace in the U.S. and the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina based their protests on their identities as mothers, authorizing themselves to challenge their states' actions around their children. The states themselves also used the figure of the mother to promote specific behaviors that limited political opposition. The contrast between these two approaches problematizes the figure of the subject within poststructuralist and feminist debates about resistance. The subject is seen alternately as an active agent who can use essentialism strategically and a discursive construction that can be easily manipulated by ideology. This study explores the ground between these two poles, mapping the ways in which essentialisms around motherhood can be proscriptive in the hands of hegemons, but empowering when used by subjects themselves, who blend experience with essence. Interviews with participants in both groups as well as testimonial accounts, films and media coverage of the groups combine to allow a rich exploration of essentialisms by the mothers and their states. My first chapter explores how the Madres and the dictatorship used essentialism to struggle for discursive control over Argentine motherhood. The Madres' authorization of themselves as public, political subjects -in interviews, testimonies and letters-- challenged the dictatorship's formation of motherhood as a private, domestic identity. Chapter two examines the representation of the Madres' protests in film, exploring the ambivalence that Argentine audiences experienced in the women's blurring of several traditional binaries: emotion and reason, family and state, private and public. My third and fourth chapters analyze the narrative strategies of Another Mother for Peace. These North American mothers used essentialism to justify their movement into the public, political sphere, while still performing traditional, domestic motherhood in strategic ways. My final section explores how distinct cultural, religious and historical paradigms inflected the experiences of these two mothers' groups differently, facilitating and/or problematizing their uses of essentialist identities. This analysis critiques the limitations of both proscriptive and biological essentialisms, and allows us to see how the mothers' own experiences of motherhood pushed them beyond the boundaries of traditional essentialism and into new subjectivities.