Progress 10/01/05 to 09/30/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: As a part of this study, professional women were interviewed in focus groups to "determine the major challenges, concerns, satisfactions, and needs of professional women that are related to work, family, and personal flourishing or fulfillment." Focus group data were gathered, transcribed, coded, and analyzed by project researchers to identify representative themes about flourishing for the specific population of mothers with professional careers. Analytic induction was used to code their comments according to operational definitions of symptoms of flourishing; then narrative analysis techniques were applied to distill their conversation to an overall expression of flourishing: "I live in a social structure that is at odds with my daily realities as a mother with a professional career. I am able to flourish in this context because I want to have both work and family in my life, and I am realistic about what I can accomplish; and also because I have a husband I can rely on, a strong network of social support, and a lot of flexibility in my life. I think society is changing for the better for women, and I am confident that I am able to make positive changes in my own life, and in the world." The women reported in their own words that they do experience the state of flourishing. The results indicate that for the women who participated in the study, the biggest challenge to flourishing was living in a social context that was at odds with the realities of their lives as mothers with professional careers. Despite this challenge, the women explicitly expressed that they did experience the state of flourishing. For them, flourishing involved the internal characteristics of desiring to combine career and motherhood in their lives, and being realistic about what they could accomplish. Flourishing also involved having external resources that included a spouse they could rely on, a strong network of social support, and a good amount of flexibility in their lives. PARTICIPANTS: Dr. Kathryn D. Rettig, Principal Investigator, lead the project's data management and supervised participating graduate students Peggy Andrews, Shuling Peng, and Jaerim Lee. TARGET AUDIENCES: Researchers and students who are interested in work, family, and personal issues among professional women with young children; career counselors who work with professional women; family life educators who develop, conduct, and evaluate education programs for families with working mothers; and professional women and their families. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
The project work has been undertaken in the hope that professional women will receive more usable and relevant media messages related to their work, family, and personal lives and will express greater fulfillment in their work, family, and personal lives. Professionals in the academe, the Extension Service, agencies and clinical settings who work with professional women will also learn which media sources these groups utilize and focus information towards those sources. In addition, practice implications include recommendations that counselors and educators work to help women who want to combine career and family understand the symptoms of flourishing and how other women have experienced them. Implications for employers who want to maximize the talent of their employees who are mothers with professional careers include explicitly acknowledging that many highly educated women want to have both a challenging career and a healthy family. Allowing these women the flexibility to map out a unique pattern for successfully combining the two domains in their lives will be important. This project used a unique theoretical coding system that utilized analytic induction techniques while emphasizing the voices of the participating women. Future studies may utilize this process again with different populations, as well as include demonstration and testing of the Mental Health continuum Short-Form assessment developed by Dr. Corey L.M. Keyes. Finally, future studies can examine women in the context of their families and workplaces to address the need for more social supports for the growing population of working mothers. Explicitly examining whether and how family members are experiencing the state of flourishing, and whether and how entire workplaces might be experiencing flourishing can illuminate vital social contexts that can lead to solutions to increase well-being for all individual in society.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/09 to 12/31/09
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The research tasks for 2009 were to conduct data-coding of work and family dynamics. The preliminary findings focus on the resources professional women utilized to cope with work and family demands. Fourteen women acknowledged help and support from their husband in managing household chores. At least six women had their husband share responsibility in childcare including driving children or spending time with children in the evening. Other resources women used to support their childcare included daycare, kinship, other parents, and nanny. Fourteen women referred to their social networking for support or advice(e.g., friends, colleagues, or other parents) when they encountered parenting issues. Seven women stated that they go online resources including weblog, email newsletter, and message boards for information. Traditional media such as magazines or television gave way to internet for professional women to seek out information when needed. A few women mentioned that guilt or inadequacy arose when they read some parenting magazines because they could not measure up to their standards. Fourteen women appreciated some form of flexibility in coping with work/family demands, including working at home or bringing unfinished work home, adjust work schedule when needed, and multiple managers. Yet,eight women identified that there is a boundary issue or spillover effect in their work/family balance. A few of them acknowledged that technology brings flexibility but also cause work- to-family spillover. PARTICIPANTS: Peggy Andrews, doctoral student, workedon data-analysis during the reporting period from January to December 31, 2009. Shuling Peng has been working on the project as a research assistant to the P.I. since September, 2009. Dr. Kathryn D. Rettig, the principal investigator, is a professor at the Department of Family Social Science in the University of Minnesota. She took the lead for data management and supervised two doctoral students. TARGET AUDIENCES: Researchers and students who are interested in work, family, and personal issues among professional women with young children; family life educators who develop, conduct, and evaluate education programs for families with working mothers; and professional women and their families. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Professional women will receive more usable and relevant media messages related to their work, family, and personal lives and will express greater fulfillment in their work, family, and personal lives. Professional women will receive enhanced educational and professional service from those who work with such a population. They will learn which media sources are of value to others in their respective group. Professionals in the academe, the Extension Service, agencies and clinical settings who work with professional women will learn which media sources these groups utilize and focus information towards those sources.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/08 to 12/31/08
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The research tasks for 2008 were to analyze the data from the focus groups, to determine the media to be analyzed, and finalize the template to be used for the media content analysis. In response to objective one, data are being examined by one researcher who has been analyzing the data from six of the focus group conversations. The groups represent ideas of 40 women who each participated in one group session. They met the criteria of being a mother, working in a paid professional position at least 20 hours per week, and having a bachelor's degree. Most of them were married, except for the two divorced and one separated. They were business owners, executives, managers, university administrators, legal professionals, and physicians. The data analysis in the first stage of development has centered on "embracing the contradictions" of their full lives. PARTICIPANTS: Peggy Andrews, doctoral student TARGET AUDIENCES: The author of the above paper wishes to target career counselors to so support professional women in improving life quality. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: We have not yet had the conversation with the other researchers in the multi-state project concerning the media template and have not started this work.
Impacts
The first paper in process is titled "Embracing the Contradictions: Mothers with Professional Careers Talk about Flourishing." The paper was developed as one of the two written examination requirements for a doctoral degree. It has received a major revision during the first three drafts and now that the written examination has been passed, it is possible to submit it to a research journal for publication consideration.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/07 to 12/31/07
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The research tasks for 2007 were to gather more qualitative data via focus group discussions, to transcribe the data, and to start analyzing the transcribed data for future publications. These tasks were initiated in a timely manner. The research team completed five focus groups with professionally employed mothers during the reporting period. The audio tapes from three groups have been transcribed, and those from the recent two groups will be transcribed in the next few months. Three Minnesota researchers have begun data analysis, and one has completed the first draft for publication consideration. The Minnesota participants for the five focus groups were 33 professional women with at least one child. They ranged in age from 26 - 54 years, with most of them between 33 and 43 years. The majority of women were married except for three divorced, one separated, and one cohabitating. All of them met the criteria for the study of working 30 or more hours per week in a paid job
and having at least a bachelor's degree. The participants were employed in various positions: 19 were business professionals including managers, consultants, and trainers; two owned businesses; six were executive/administrative professionals in non-profit organizations, governments, or universities; two were postsecondary teaching/research professionals; two were legal professionals; one was a physician; and one was a graphic designer. The recruitment procedures were modified in 2007 to obtain more diverse life situations. The results have not been disseminated since 2007 continued to be the data collection stage of this project. Publications from the project will be shared with the focus group participants along with other researchers.
PARTICIPANTS: One principal investigator and five graduate students worked on the Minnesota part of this multi-state research project during the reporting period from January to December 31, 2007. Dr. Kathryn D. Rettig, the principal investigator, is a professor at the Department of Family Social Science in the University of Minnesota. She took the lead for the overall research process, including research design, data collection, and data management. Dr. Rettig also supervised three of the graduate students who had 25% research assistantships and were paid for 10 hours of work weekly, each of them for one semester. Peggy Andrews, Jaerim Lee, and Shuling Peng were research assistants for this project during the 2007 spring and fall semesters. All of them are Ph.D. students in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. These research assistants recruited focus group participants, prepared and organized focus group discussions, and reviewed literature and
media sources on female professionals. Three volunteer graduate students helped in recruiting participants and conducting focus group discussions. The graduate volunteers for the project were Peggy Andrews in fall semester, Memory Grems, a Master's student, for two semesters, and Dr. Jenet Jacob for two semesters. She is a now at Brigham Young University.
TARGET AUDIENCES: The first group of target audiences is researchers and students who are interested in work, family, and personal issues among professional women with young children. The findings from this project are expected to enhance researchers' and students' understandings of professionally employed mothers due to the lack of scholarly information about these women. The second group of target audiences is family life educators who develop, conduct, and evaluate education programs for families with working mothers. Researchers in this project intend to suggest implications to these educators in order to better serve families of professional women with young children. The third group of target audiences is professional women and their families. They will benefit from increased public understandings of their work, family, and personal issues. They have been ignored in the substantial body of work and family literature.
Impacts
Preliminary data analysis revealed several themes with regards to the objectives of this multi-state project. The first theme was "lives of contradiction." The women had contradictory thoughts about whether the landscape was changing vs. static, and the desire for career flexibility vs. predictability. Second, it was also apparent that the women struggled with keeping balances between their levels of living and their standards of living in the current landscape of American women. Third, the media were not helpful or useful sources of information for most participants concerning the ways to balance work, family, and personal issues. The women felt that print media were not targeted at them. They also found that many media sources about parenting were exclusively developed for stay-at-home mothers. The participants were more likely to proactively turn to media sources for immediate, practical information, such as news, weather, or for recreation. Further in-depth
analysis of focus group data will be completed next year. One researcher is working on a paper, tentatively titled "Lives of Contradiction," which will be submitted to a journal for publication consideration. Another researcher is in the middle of data analysis to investigate the levels of living and the standards of living among professional women with children. The third researcher has started designing a research paper in order to explore time use among these mothers. There were many human resources that helped to produce project outputs and achieve research outcomes. The Department of Family Social Science provided two doctoral research assistants who devoted 10 weekly hours of their time to the project during the 2007 fall semester. Three volunteer graduate students also assisted in conducting five focus groups.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/06 to 12/31/06
Outputs
The first objective of this multi-state project is to 'Determine the major challenges, concerns, satisfactions, and needs of professional women that are related to work, family, and personal flourishing or fulfillment.' The research tasks for 2006 were to develop demographic and question protocols for conducting and analyzing data from audio-taped, transcribed, focus-group conversations. These tasks were accomplished within the expected time frame and the audio tapes from three pilot groups have been transcribed. There were 19 professional women who participated in the three focus group discussions in Minnesota. They ranged in from 31-53 years of age, with most of them between 41 and 49 years. All of them were married, had children, and demanding jobs. All of them met the criteria for the study of working 30 or more hours per week in a paid position, but four women had less than two continuous years in the same job. The participants had at least a bachelor's degree
and were employed in positions such as those in the following list: Human Resources Manager, Dean in a Community College, Professor of Biology, Leadership and Organization Consultant, Managing Editor, Business Coach and Marketing Consultant, Litigation Support Provider, Leadership and Organization Consultant, Teacher, and Accountant. The research tasks for 2007 are to conduct the focus groups and to modify the recruitment procedures in order to obtain more diverse life situations among participants who are professional women. The questions for future groups will elicit primary concerns of participating women in the areas of paid work, romantic partnerships, parenting, and personal enrichment. The researchers will also inquire as to what women find rewarding or frustrating from popular media in order to gain perspectives about their paths toward personal fulfillment. The textual data has not yet been analyzed, but several themes seemed apparent. First, the women did not seek help from
media sources concerning the ways to balance work and family. Instead they would go to co-workers or family members. They were more likely to turn to media sources for relaxation in their scarce personal time. The participants were still very good consumers who could effectively seek information on the internet when needed, such as solutions for medical conditions. Second, they were excellent managers and had helpful husbands who were very active and consistent in sharing the household and family work. The third theme was about the difficulties of finding time for self and for women friends, conditions that were not facilitating personal flourishing or fulfillment.
Impacts
It is unknown whether the messages embedded in popular and local media (e.g. magazines, radio, Internet, etc.) are applicable or helpful to professional women. The researchers will also inquire as to what women find rewarding or frustrating from popular media in order to gain perspectives about their paths toward personal fulfillment.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/05 to 12/31/05
Outputs
The first objective of this project is to Determine the major challenges facing female farmers and ranchers, professional women, and Latina immigrant women with respect to work, family, and personal fulfillment. The first task for work in 2006 is to develop protocols for conducting and analyzing data from audio-taped, transcribed focus group interviews. Protocol questions for the focus groups will be developed and refined through piloting with Extension Service clientele and professionals. Questions will elicit primary concerns of participating women in the areas of paid work, romantic partnerships, parenting, and personal enrichment. The first technical committee meeting for the regional project is scheduled for March10-11, 2006 in Tempe, Arizona.
Impacts
The researchers will also inquire as to what women find rewarding or frustrating from popular media in order to gain perspectives about their paths toward personal fulfillment.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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