College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    “You're biracial but…”: Multiracial socialization discourse among mommy bloggers with Black and non-Black multiracial children
    (Wiley, 2022-06-30) Reyna, Chandra V.
    Objective This study examines thematic content and discourse surrounding multiracial socialization between Black and non-Black multiracial families on multiracial mommy blogs. Background Mommy blogs have been recognized as a medium through which mothers challenge dominant representations of motherhood, create community with other mothers, and seek out advice. But little is known about how mothers write about and discuss race, racism, and multiracial socialization online. This study addresses this knowledge gap by analyzing how a niche of bloggers—mothers to multiracial children—construct narratives surrounding race, multiraciality, and multiracial socialization online and how their narratives differ by the racial makeup of the blogger's family. Method Using a MultiCrit framework, this study analyzes 13 mommy blogs written by mothers of color with multiracial children. Blogs were analyzed for thematic content related to race, racial identification, multiraciality, and multiracial socialization. Results The findings demonstrate that mothers' orientations to multiracial socialization vary depending on whether the blogger has Black or non-Black multiracial children. Bloggers who are mothers to Black multiracial children blogged frequently about their engagement in safety socialization, whereas mothers with non-Black multiracial children did not. Conclusion The stark difference between thematic content from bloggers with and without Black multiracial children highlights the differing experiences among Black and non-Black multiracial people, for mothers of Black multiracial children, and the implications anti-Black racism has on family processes.
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    Mothering in the streets: Familial adaptation strategies of street-identified Black American mothers
    (Wiley, 2022-05-18) Hitchens, Brooklynn K.; Aviles, Ann M.; McCallops, Kathleen
    Objective: Using components of the Family Adjustmentand Adaptation Response Model, Critical Race Feminism, and Sites of Resilience, this study explored how street-identified Black American mothers engage in street life, while juggling the pressures of child rearing, family, and home life within a distressed, urban Black community. Background: Street-identified Black American mothers are vilified for their intersecting identities of being Black women who are experiencing poverty, and who may also be involved in illegal activity. Black mothers are disproportionately represented in the criminal legal system, but existing research has inadequately examined how street-identified Black mothers “do” family in the confines of structural violence. Method: We addressed this gap by analyzing interview data with 39 street-identified Black American mothers ages 18 to 54. Data were collected using street participatory action research. Results: We identified a typology of three adaptive mothering strategies employed by street-identified Black women as they respond to and cope with violent structural conditions shaping their mothering: constrained mothering, racialized mothering, and aspirational mothering. Conclusions: Findings suggested that these strategies were developed in response to an overarching carceral apparatus, of which these mothers were tasked with avoiding when possible and confronting when necessary. Their mothering strategies were shaped by a collective, Black American cultural identity and worldview, and the mothers possessed a unique way of perceiving the world as criminalized subjects with disproportionate proximity to the punitive state.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.