The story so far: I used to be a graduate student in Religious Studies, but after my mom died in September 2008, I slowly realized I was done with it and stopped putting off pregnancy. My baby was born in October 2009. Now I’m her stay-at-home mom, and the only thing I still write is this collection of essays. I aim to post something new once a month, and sometimes I also make minor changes to older entries.
My topic is motherhood, especially the impact motherhood has on me as a person. Why make those musings public? Because it’s the only thing that gets me to “finish” a piece of writing–and parenting has so few tangible results that seeing something finished is suddenly important to me. But when I write about my personal struggles, I’m also wondering if I can pay forward some of what I’ve gained from reading quietly about others’. If my writing gets you to tell your own story in the comments here or on your own blog, then I figure I’ve won.
Hello,
I am researching attitudes about mothering with some of my colleagues at the University of Mary Washington and our students. We are collecting data from people over the age of 18. We are looking for parents and non-parents but are especially interested in the views of mothers. Your blog seems to target women who might be interested in our study. Would you be willing to post a link to it on your blog?
If so, please post the following link (along with our permission for people to repost the link elsewhere if desired) along with anything else you choose to say:
http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/504769/5ce89fe88b59
Feel free to share this information and link with your friends. You can post it on other online venues you feel might be appropriate as well.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Hello,
About a year ago – see above post, my colleagues at the University of Mary Washington and I were investigating people’s attitudes about parenting/mothering. We contacted you about posting a link to the survey on your blog and want to thank you if you were able to do that. We also wanted to let you know about the results of our study. The survey asked questions about a wide variety of beliefs people may have about parenting. We analyzed participants’ responses to the questions and identified the best items to measure five types of parenting beliefs including questions about: (1) whether parenting is more natural for mothers than fathers; (2) how fulfilled people feel by being parents; (3) the importance of engaging in stimulating activities with children; (4) challenges related to being a parent; and (5) how child-centered parents should be. We also compared our questions to existing parenting measures and determined that they were measuring different types of parenting beliefs. My colleagues and I are in the process of writing a report about the results of this study and plan to submit it for publication in a research journal. If you are interested in a more detailed report of the results, let me know and we can send it to you when we’re done.
This year we are building upon the research we conducted last year. We want to use the new parenting beliefs measure that we developed (i.e., the best 26 items from last year) to examine how it relates to maternal well-being. We are looking for mothers over the age of 18 to complete the questions. Your blog seems to target women who might be interested in our study. Would you be willing to post a link to it on your blog?
If so, please post the following link (along with our permission for people to repost the link elsewhere if desired) along with anything else you choose to say:
http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/760064/Mothering-Attitudes-Survey
Feel free to share this information and link with your friends. You can post it on other online venues you feel might be appropriate as well.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Miriam Liss, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Mary Washington
1301 College Avenue
Fredericksburg, Virginia 22401
Phone: 540-654-1552
Fax: 540-654-1836