published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work

<div>This dissertation addresses the overarching question, “What are the processes, antecedents, and outcomes of first-time mother’s pregnancy disclosures to their supervisors?” Two new theoretical disclosure models, the antecedent pregnancy disclosure model (APDM) and the outcome pregnancy disclosure model (OPDM), were empirically tested to address this question. Utilizing longitudinal data, these models examined the direct, mediation, and moderation effects associated with expecting women’s pregnancy disclosure experiences. </div><div><br></div><div>The APDM and OPDM drew upon disclosure theories (e.g., Afifi & Steuber, 2009; Greene, 2009), the interpersonal process model (Reiss & Shaver, 1988), and work-life literatures to extend disclosure theorizing through an examination of the work-related predictors of disclosure decision making and the interpersonal, relational, and career outcomes associated with expecting mother’s disclosure experiences. The APDM identified both individual-level (e.g., perceived career risk) and organization-level (e.g., structural support) predictors for the specific types of disclosure strategies women used to inform their supervisors that they were pregnant.</div><div><br></div><div> The APDM also tested two mechanisms (i.e., disclosure efficacy and anticipated disclosure strategy) as potential mediators between predictors and enacted disclosure strategies at T2 (see Figure 2). The OPDM built upon findings of the APDM to examine the association between enacted disclosure strategies and relational, psychological, and career outcomes while testing the role of perceived supervisor responsiveness as both a moderator and mediator to these effects (see Figure 3). Results of data analysis (N = 131) revealed that perceived organizational support and perceived risk influenced expecting women’s engagement in specific disclosure strategies at T2 through differing mechanisms (see APDM). Additionally, results suggest that the different disclosure strategies that women enacted at T2 were significantly associated with expecting women’s career, relational, and psychological outcomes (see OPDM). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. </div><div><br></div>

Working mothers may encounter difficulty combining work and family, particularly as this interface involves child care arrangements. This research investigated the effects of various dimensions of child care support on stress and role conflict in employed mothers. It was hypothesized that as job support, affordability, spousal support, and satisfaction with child care increased, that child care stress, job stress, and role conflict would decrease. The data were derived from a survey (Lane County Dependent Care survey, Emlen, 1990} of women employed in 15 companies in the Lane County, Oregon area. The study sample consisted of 825 full and part-time employed mothers with children under the age of eighteen living in the home. This research analyzed the women's responses to questions pertaining to each of the four dimensions of child care support (four questions}, and two questions on stress (one on child care stress and one on job stress} and one on role conflict. The questions were formatted into Likert-type scales, ranging from three to six points. Crosstabulations were calculated to examine eight hypotheses, four with stress as the dependent variable and four with role conflict as the dependent variable. Hypotheses with job support as the independent variable were supported with moderate positive correlations. Hypotheses involving spousal support were tested using only married women. The independent variable showed no statistically significant correlations with either stress or role conflict. Hypotheses involving affordability were supported by moderate positive correlations between low levels of affordability, and child care stress and role conflict. The last hypotheses used dissatisfaction with child care arrangements as the independent variable. These were supported by moderate correlations regarding child care stress and weak correlations regarding role conflict. Further directions in the examination of relationships between help with child care and the reduction of stress and role conflict for women are suggested.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-248). Also available on the Internet.

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Ten front-line maternal social workers were interviewed to determine how they are managing in terms of combining their work and family responsibilities. Supervisor support, and the effectiveness of family-friendly work place policies were explored. All agreed, that motherhood, has had a positive impact on practice including increased empathy and understanding, for both parents and children. The following workplace initiatives were determined to be helpful: flexible and predictable work hours; part-time options; and compressed-work-week. Despite half feeling unsupported by their supervisors, the majority indicated that they are managing well primarily due to flexible work hour scheduling. The attitude of supervisors, regarding the value of parenting, appears to be the key factor relating to their level of support. There was some indication of role conflict and much evidence of accommodation, including turning down supervisory/management positions, postponing education and restricting types of practice.

Today, advocates argue that a universal child care system is necessary for mothers to be able to take part equally in the wage-earning that is the hallmark of citizenship. Why has such a system never been a serious political possibility in twentieth-century British Columbia? In seeking to answer this question, this study looks to important moments in the province’s history of child care politics and, in doing so, untangles the historical understandings of work, motherhood, and social citizenship that have precluded the existence of universal child care in British Columbia’s welfare state. Throughout the twentieth century, British Columbia’s child care politics hinged on debates about whether mothers should work, what kinds of mothers should work, what kinds of work they should do, and what the state’s role was in regulating their relationship to their family and the labour force. As these debates played out across the century, several themes were relatively consistent. The belief that women’s social rights derived from their mothering work was one, and this notion achieved political expression in the passage of mothers’ pensions legislation in 1920. At several moments during the twentieth century, and gaining prominence especially in the 1970s, advocates and activists argued that all women should have the right to work, and that a universal child care system was their right as wage-earning citizens. In terms of policy-making and program provision, however, the story of child care politics in British Columbia is largely one of failure for working mothers. In their relationship to the state, working mothers had two main options, both of which left them limited access to a version of social citizenship constrained by gender and class. On the one hand, gender and class norms translated into welfare policies that encouraged stay-at-home motherhood and precluded the possibility of publicly-provided child care. On the other hand, when a mother was in the labour force, her paid work was assumed to signal some kind of family failure, with “failure” measured against the ideal of a male-breadwinner, female-homemaker family. In those cases, public child care (and to some extent mothers’ pensions) was considered an appropriate welfare service for “needy families” because mothers’ wage work fulfilled important welfare goals: the preservation of the work ethic, guarding against chronic dependency, and meeting the demand for female labourers in marginal occupations. Yet even though mothers’ work was an obligation of their welfare benefits, they were still considered second-class workers and their wage-earning was not a positive source of social rights. Gendered and classed understandings of paid work, in other words, was the source of an uneasy relationship between working mothers and the state. Neither dominant welfare paradigm included room for a child care system that recognized mothers’ rights as paid workers. The result was an unrealized version of social citizenship for working mothers and for all women in twentieth-century British Columbia. / Graduate

Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2007. / Supervisors: Janet Howarth, Dr Kate Tiller. Bibliography: leaves 295-315.

Thesis (M.S.) --Minot State University, 2006." / "Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Systems, Minot State University." Includes bibliographical references. Corresponding website: http://www.geekymoms.com/mambo/

Thesis (Ph. D., Education)--University of Idaho, December 2008. / Major professor: Jerry R. McMurtry. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-204). Also available online (PDF file) by subscription or by purchasing the individual file.