Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper draws from qualitative interviews with pregnant women to understand the roles their mothers play in their pregnancies. Medical literature and popular self-help pregnancy literature suggest a “generational disconnect” between expectant mothers and expectant grandmothers, emphasizing the differences in the experiences and understandings of the two generations. This study finds some evidence of differences: most respondents did find their mothers provided advice or shared experiences that respondents considered “dated,” but continued to turn to their mothers or other female relatives regularly for advice. Preliminary data suggest that women preferred to seek advice about potential pregnancy-problems from physicians and daily care from their partners, but most turned to their mothers for help in defining physical phenomena as problems (or not), citing the common embodied experience of pregnancy and, less often, genetic similarities as the basis for the expertise of their female kin. This paper will also explore differences among women in the sample and between the accounts of pregnant women and the accounts of their mothers. This research contributes to out understanding of pregnancy, particularly the framing of embodied expectant experiences, and how the gendered mother-daughter relationship is negotiated as daughters become mothers.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: This study, first, examines relationship between mother’s assets and mother’s involvement in child’s education. This study will decompose mother’s assets into savings, savings for education of their children, and homeownership. Second, this study will assess the relationship between mother’s assets and mother’s expectation of child’s education. In addition, this study will examine the effect of mother’s expectation of child’s education on the relationship between mother’s assets and mother’s involvement in their child’s education. The expectation of child’s education is hypothesized to mediate the relationships between the assets and mother’s involvement in child’s education.
Results of regression analysis indicate that mother’s assets are positively associated with mother’s involvement in child’s education. Homeownership is related to mother’s involvement in child’s education in this study. This is consistent with findings from previous studies (Aaronson, 2000; Boehm & Schlottman, 1999; Green & White, 1997). Different from other studies, this study included specific savings for child’s education, which indicated significant relationship with mother’s involvement in child’s education.
The results also show that mother’s expectation of child’s education is positively related to mother’s involvement in child’s education. However, contrary to the research hypothesis, the mediating effect of mother’s expectation did not indicate statistical significance. This result is somewhat different from Zhan and Sherraden’s (2003) result, which found partial mediating effect of mother’s expectation on the relationship between mother’s assets and child’s educational outcomes such as high school graduation and child’s academic performance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Based on the uses and gratifications and social identity gratifications models of media use, this study assessed if non-traditional mother lifestyles (working outside the home and single-motherhood), type of mother identity (traditional vs. nontraditional), and concerns about parenting drive active use of parenting magazines. By means of structural equation modeling, it was determined that information seeking in the form of active use of parenting magazines is motivated by nontraditional mother concerns, as opposed to concerns associated with all mothers (traditional and nontraditional) and also by type of mother identity. Mothers espousing a traditional mother identity spent less time reading parenting magazines and did not make active use of parenting magazines.

Publication Type: PAPER
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Addresses maternal emotion socialization and children’s emotion understanding in relation to acculturation within Latino families. By using developmental, sociological, and feminist perspectives, and both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this study makes an important contribution to the literature on children’s development of emotion understanding and the importance of the cultural context.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study is an examination of Black and Hispanic college-age women’s self-reports of their perception of the communication with their mothers and how this communication influenced them. The method used to collect the data for this study was focus group interviews. Results indicated that mothers clearly had topics that they emphasized and those that they did not discuss. Both sets of topics, those discussed the most and least appeared to have influenced the daughters.