Francine M. Deutsch

Transition to motherhood and the self: Measurement, stability, and change.

Different ways of conceptualizing and measuring change in attitudes during transition to motherhood are examined. A series of analyses was performed on data from a cross-sectional sample (N = 667) and a smaller longitudinal sample (n = 48) to demonstrate sound psychometric properties for 2 new scales and to show construct comparability across different phases of childbearing. For Childbearing Attitudes Questionnaire, results demonstrated equality of covariance for 16 scales and comparability of structure and meaning of 4 higher order factors--identification with motherhood, social orientation, self-confidence, and negative aspects of giving birth. For Mothering Self-Definition Questionnaire, results demonstrated equality of covariance of 5 scales and comparability of structure and meaning of a single higher order factor, interpreted as reflecting positive feelings about ones mothering characteristics. Analyses of correlations and mean differences identified areas of change and stability.

Filial Piety, Patrilineality, and China's One-Child Policy

This study examined the effects of Chinas one-child policy on two traditional aspects of Chinese family life: filial piety and patrilineality. Eighty-four graduating university seniors, who were part of the first cohort born under the onechild policy, were interviewed about their life plans. Comparisons between only children and those with siblings showed that only children were as likely to plan on helping their parents as were those with siblings and were more likely to intend to reside in the same city. The only children seemed to feel especially responsible for their parents’ happiness because of their singleton status. Among only children and those with siblings, patrilineal norms seemed weak. Students’mentions of family structure to explain their decisions suggest that the one-child policy is undermining patrilineal norms.

Traditional ideologies, nontraditional lives

This study examined how blue-collar couples whoalternate work shifts and share the care of theirchildren reconcile their traditional gender ideologieswith their nontraditional lives. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-three alternatingshift couples in which the husband was a blue-collarworker. Ninety-six per cent of the participants wereWhite, and the remainder were Hispanic. The results suggested that despite their nontraditionalbehavior, these couples maintained traditional genderidentities by adherence to three central beliefs abouttheir families: 1) the father was still the breadwinner; 2) the mother only worked in the paid laborforce because of financial pressures; and 3) the motherwas still the central parent. The ways in which each ofthese myths is constructed, and the functions they serve of both maintaining traditionalgender identity, and of obscuring potential conflictsbetween husbands and wives over identity arediscussed.

Equally Shared Parenting

Conventional images of motherhood and fatherhood, social interactions, and gender-based job pressures push couples toward unequal parenting. Equally sharing parents resist those pressures, and construct equality through everyday negotiations and ongoing decisions about family and work. They do not believe that mothers are more responsible for children, or more suited to care for them, than fathers. They avoid gender-based decisions about jobs that reinforce a gender-based division of labor at home. Qualitative research is necessary to unravel the complex interactions between work and family arrangements, and to show how economic, social, and ideological factors constrain family arrangements, but are also transformed in their creation.

What is in a Smile

Women have been observed to smile more than men in a variety of social contexts. In order to investigate the consequences of this sex difference for the way men and women are perceived, male and female college students rated the characteristics of men and women depicted in verbal descriptions accompanied by photographs in which they either smiled or did not smile. In control conditions these targets were rated without accompanying photographs. The findings showed that the absence of smiles had a greater impact on perceptions of women than on perceptions of men. When not smiling, women were perceived as less happy, less carefree and less relaxed than were men. Moreover, nonsmiling women were rated less happy, less warm, less relaxed and less carefree than the average woman, whereas smiling men were rated more favorably on those traits than the average man. These results suggest that different standards are applied to men and women. If women fail to perform expressive and warm nonverbal behavior, they will be evaluated more harshly than men.

THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF PRAISE AND CRITICISM FOR MOTHERS AND FATHERS

Praise and criticism reported by parents was examined to investigate the double standard of parenting for men and women. Transcripts from interviews with parents were coded for the types of praise and criticism reported. Repeated-measures categorical analyses confirmed double standards of both praise and criticism. Mothers reported being criticized more than fathers did for too little involvement at home or too much involvement in paid work. Fathers reported being criticized more than mothers were, for too much involvement at home or too little in paid work. Fathers, particularly equal sharers, reported more praise than mothers for involvement in parenting, whereas mothers reported more praise than fathers for successfully combining family and work. Women also reported receiving both more praise and more criticism about their husbands than their husbands reported about them. Double standards of both praise and criticism were discussed in terms of their potential to discourage nontraditional family life.

Friendship and the Development of Self-Schemas The Effects of Talking about Others

Two studies were conducted to examine a model proposed to explain similarity in the self-schemas of friends. According to this model, in the ongoing conversation of friendship, each person becomes aware of the dimensions used by the friend for describing people. Over time each incorporates some of the friends dimensions for organizing information about others and ultimately for describing the self. In the first study the self-conceptions of friends and nonfriends were compared. As predicted, friends, as compared to nonfriends, had more similar self-schemas, and more readily adopted each others self-schema dimensions for describing a target. In the second study two unacquainted partners discussed their impressions of a target person. Subsequently, the pairs shared more similar self-schemas and incorporated dimensions from each others self-schemas for self-description and for description of the target person. Thus, the results of both studies are consistent with the model proposed. Directions for future research are discussed.

Does Social Approval Increase Helping

In order to determine the interactive effects of social response and individual differences in need for approval on subsequent helping behavior, 46 female subjects were either socially rewarded or punished for helping the experimenter. As predicted, subjects who were high in need for approval were subsequently more likely to help a confederate who had dropped books if they had been socially rewarded than if they had been punished. Subjects low in need for approval were unaffected by the previous social reinforcement. Several explanations for these results are offered. The importance of examining interactions between personality and situational variables in research on prosocial behavior is discussed.

Fathers’ Involvement in Child Care and Perceptions of Parenting Skill Over the Transition to Parenthood:

This study explored first-time fathers’ perceived child care skill over the transition to parenthood, based on face-to-face interviews of 152 working-class, dual-earner couples. Analyses examined the associations among fathers’ perceived skill and prenatal perception of skill, child care involvement, mothers’ breastfeeding, maternal gatekeeping, mothers’ work hours, fathers’ depressive symptoms, and fathers’ beliefs about responding to a crying child. Involvement was also examined as a potential mediator between some predictors and perceived skill. Findings suggest that breastfeeding and depressive symptoms were not related to involvement or perceived skill. Maternal gatekeeping was unrelated to skill yet had a negative relationship with involvement, if only at 1-month postpartum. Early father involvement mediated the relationship between perceived skill before and after the birth only for fathers who supported prompt response to a crying child. Finally, involvement at 1 year mediated the positive relationship between mothers’ work hours and perceived skill at the same age.

The Relations among Talking, Liking, and Similarity between Friends

Self-concept similarity in 58 female first-year roommate pairs was examined using the spontaneous trait generation task. On the basis of the trait overlap identified by this task, friends were more similar than nonfriends. Correlational analyses demonstrated that the amount of talking between roommates was more highly related to trait overlap than was liking or reported time spent together, suggesting that conversation between friends may be a key to the development of self-concept similarity. These results were interpreted as support for a model of self-concept change in which exposure to new interpersonal constructs leads to their adoption as self-schemata. Conversation between friends is discussed as one means of exposure to new constructs.