Faculty research spotlight: Mothers at work and at home in the time of COVID
Scholars in the Diederich College of Communication are investigating the problem of balancing work and motherhood during the CoVid pandemic. Professor Lynn Turner, Department of Communication Studies, and Associate Professor Gee Ekachai, Department of Strategic Communication, joined by Professor Emeritus, Karen Slattery, retired from the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, are interviewing mothers about managing family and employment during the health crisis.
What was your inspiration for this research?
Gee: I am always interested in crisis communication so when COVID happened, initially, I was curious about how parents communicated the COVID crisis to their children. I mentioned my interest to Lynn and Karen since Lynn is an expert in family communication and Karen has done work on mothers research. After our brainstorming, we just focused on mothers’ roles and expanded the scope beyond crisis communication to children.
Karen: I’ve been involved in previous research involving mothers of combat soldiers, that is, women who faced unexpected challenges relating to maternal work and expectations. The study we are currently working on involves mothers who face a different kind of crisis. I was curious to learn how they respond.
Lynn: My interest in family communication dovetailed perfectly with this project, so I was delighted to join my colleagues in this research. Communication is often both a tool for stress-reduction as well as the source of family stress. I thought the stressor of COVID would be a fascinating prism for investigating how communication was operating in the lives of families, and possibly discover strategies that would be useful for mothers to adopt in this calamitous moment.
What surprised you about this project?
Karen: I’ve been particularly intrigued by the notion that mothers, who face serious issues related to balancing work with mothering during a pandemic, are able to see silver linings in a time in which their day-to-day lives have been turned upside down.
Gee: I am also surprised that mothers judged themselves too harshly.
Lynn: My surprises sort of combine what my colleagues have said. It was interesting, and unexpected, that the mothers put up such a brave front when talking to us and focused (almost unrelentingly) on the positives coming out of the pandemic. However, simultaneously, mothers judged themselves so harshly in terms of their evaluation of their own mothering both before and during COVID. Most of the mothers we spoke to (we have interviewed 32 people so far) stated that their mothering always fell short of what they could be doing and rarely gave themselves more than a 7 out of 10 for their efforts. Even though the pandemic asked more of them, they generally were not willing to factor that in when asked to evaluate themselves. It’s also been a bit surprising that although we began these interviews in August, 2020 and conducted the most recent one in January, 2021 the mothers’ frustration level with COVID restrictions hasn’t seemed to increase appreciably.
Have you completed your research — if not, are you looking for additional participants?
Gee: Most of our participants are white, middle-class mothers. We want to interview more diverse mothers in lower economic status who had or are having financial, mental or personal challenges during these hard times.
Lynn: As the project expands, we’d like to talk to a wider variety of mothers such as mothers of adopted children, custodial grandmothers, and stepmothers among others.
Karen: We are still looking for participants.
What’s next for the three of you?
We plan to expand this research, moving beyond working mothers and focusing on mothers in general. We also plan a book project on this topic with chapters focusing on mothers from different categories (e.g., mothers with special needs children, stay-home mothers, single mothers, mothers with stepchildren.)