The management of family routines by single, Xhosa-speaking mothers with young children

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY: The majority (40%) of South African children are raised by single mothers. Single mothers often deal with a unique combination of social and economic stressors, putting them and their children at greater risk of a range of negative outcomes. Yet family routines can be a vital resilience resource. Routines help to maintain order and stability in the home; they foster a sense of belonging and group cohesion; and they are spaces where caretakers teach children unique context-specific competencies and values. In this grounded theory study, single (i.e. unmarried and unpartnered) Xhosa-speaking mothers (N = 26) who live in abject poverty were sampled from several peri-urban, informal settlements outside of Cape Town, South Africa. The study's aim was to understand how these women manage their family routines after becoming parents. Semi-structured interviews (n = 21) and naturalistic home observations (n = 8) showed that routines can be hampered by maternal Intrapsychic risks (e.g. cognitive and affective difficulties such as stress and anxiety, feelings of worthlessness or psychological unpreparedness for motherhood), normative Parenting challenges (e.g. child misbehaviour or parental inexperience), Scheduling challenges (e.g. time starvation or chaotic daily rosters), Interpersonal risks (e.g. community stigma, not meeting family-of-origin expectations, or conflict with the biological father), and Economic risks (e.g. unemployment, halted education, or lack of basic needs). Yet women inherently also experienced personal growth during this phase of life and tapped into an extensive range of intra- and interpersonal competencies. The management of family routines concerned five adaptive processes: Managing maternal mental health (e.g. cognitive, affective, conative and behavioural strategies that mothers used to retain or regain positive feelings, achieve role balance, and increase motivation); Assistive parent-child actions and interactions during routines (e.g. immediate mother-child transactions within the proximal space that improved task execution and mother-child experiences); Scheduling actions (e.g. strategies that helped women manage limited resources such as time, balance packed rosters, and improve timetable stability); Managing and coordinating significant adult relationships (e.g. extra- and intrafamilial adult relationships that mothers cultivated and accessed for support); and Attenuating economic risks. The findings demonstrate the profoundly dynamic nature of the management process, highlighting key pre- and postpartum contextual obstacles, as well as powerful strengths in single-mother families. To bolster family routines, practitioners should not focus exclusively on postpartum phases of adaptation, but also consider the events that cause women's single-parent status and the impact of these experiences on maternal mental health.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University