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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to present data regarding the effects of unrealistic expectations and external constraints – such as work structure and socialization – on parents’ construction of work and family roles during their early years of parenting.

Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on Bowen's family systems theory and involves a two-stage panel study. Thirty-six expectant parents were surveyed and interviewed. Five years later, 28 of these parents were studied a second time.

Findings – This study reveals poignant areas where parents have unrealistic expectations that require reconstruction of their roles. These areas include work changes, domestic responsibilities, leisure time, and parental conflict. Parents who worked as a team, rather than in opposition, were most successful in rebalancing their separateness/belonging needs.

Research limitations/implications – The small, nonrandom sample suggests caution in generalizing the findings. The value of the sample lies in that the study reveals viewpoints that can go undetected and unreported in large, randomized samples.

Practical implications – Study results should help family members, and professionals who work with families, to better deal with the often competing challenges of employment and family demands and, in turn, improve well-being for children, parents, and families.

Social implications – This study's findings provide a basis for assessing, improving, and developing policies for parents.

Originality/value – Both data sets are original. The results from this study inform our understandings about expectations in the transition to parenthood.

This paper aims to explore the motivations of digital moms to develop relationships with brands in the online environment.

Following a qualitative, interpretative approach, this paper uses several data collection methods such as netnography, focus groups and in-depth interviews to fully understand the motivations of digital moms.

The results suggest that eight motivations influence consumers to engage with and follow brands on their social networking sites: information, entertainment, knowledge-seeking, social influence, social interaction, brand-relationship maintenance, communication and self-expression. A proposed framework that categorizes these motivations based on the level of engagement, and the type of user is discussed along with the new functions that brands fulfill in the online environment.

These findings have practical implications for managers seeking to design and implement improved branding strategies to develop stronger, more meaningful relationships with their customers. The location of participants of this study can be considered as a limitation, as the different life situations or contexts of other Internet users may alter the results.

This study recognizes important changes in consumer behavior elicited by online technologies. Several qualitative data collection methods are used to identify and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the motivations of digital moms to interact with brands online. A major contribution of this research is the establishment of a link between consumer-brand relationship theory and uses and gratifications theory.

Despite the efforts to improve the usage of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) among pregnant women in endemic malaria countries like Ghana, its usage still remains low. Therefore, this study aims to assess the intention to use ITNs and actual usage behaviour among pregnant women in Ghana using the integrated model of behaviour prediction (IMBP) and explore factors preventing its usage.

A structured questionnaire was administered to 310 respondents using a convenience sampling technique, and the data were analysed using multiple regression. Exploratory data collected through an interview guide was analysed using Kvale and Brinkman’s (2015) five-step approach.

The findings indicate a significantly positive association between intention to use ITN and actual usage of ITN among pregnant women in Ghana. Attitude and normative beliefs were the most significant predictors of intention to use ITNs among pregnant women. The result further shows that despite the generally positive perception of the effectiveness of the ITN in malaria prevention and positive intention to use it, its actual usage remains low because of discomfort (primarily associated with heat, irritation, heat rashes, suffocation and vomiting, size and design, reactions to ITN’s chemicals and misconceptions about ITNs causing cancer. In this study, the implications are discussed.

This study applied the IMBP to ITNs usage intention among pregnant women in a developing market context and found the model to predict ITN usage intention effectively.

To demonstrate how applied projects integrated within master’s level graduate programs in the organizational sciences provide students with experiences that facilitate the translation of classroom concepts into practices that positively impact individual, organizational, and societal level outcomes.

We discuss how the scientist-practitioner model guides our thinking regarding the development of cocurriculum options for master’s level students. To give context, we provide thumbnail sketches of two applied programs — a master’s of science degree program in industrial-organizational psychology and a master’s of business administration (MBA) program — that serve as exemplars for linking practice with science.

We demonstrated, with specific examples, how practicum courses can bridge curricular and cocurricular offerings in stand-alone master’s programs, thus offering a glimpse into the range of activities completed by master’s students with little to over 20 years of work experience: job analysis, interview protocol development, program evaluation, talent acquisition, performance management, coaching, as well as training strategy ideation and delivery. We conclude the chapter with final reflections on the use of practicum classes in master’s level training.

The practicum courses detailed serve as unique exemplars of how to apply theory and research to organizational problems, thus bridging science and practice in the organizational sciences.

A workshop on the evaluation of a controversial plan to integrate preventive and curative mother‐and‐child services in Jerusalem was conducted by the Hebrew University — Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. An extensive field study, conducted by second‐year MPH students led to a better understanding of community problems and needs, and to the formulation of recommendations for closer co‐ordination, rather than integration, between the municipal preventive health services and the curative clinics operated by the sick funds. This paper shows how these recommendations affected the decision‐making process in Jerusalem, and discusses the implications of these and other policy interventions on attaining the various goals of public health academicians.

This chapter considers the mobilities of families subject to child protection involvement at the threshold of the birth of a new baby. The author presents data arising from an ethnographic study of child protection social work with unborn babies. This study aimed to draw near to social work practice within the Scottish context through mobile research methods and included non-participant observations of a range of child protection meetings with expectant families. Research interviews were sought with expectant mothers and fathers, social workers and the chair persons of Pre-birth Child Protection Case Conferences. Case conferences are formal administrative meetings designed to consider the risks to children, including unborn children. This chapter focusses on the experiences of expectant parents of navigating the child protection involvement with their as yet unborn infant. The strategies that parents adopted to steer a course through the multiple possibilities in relation to the future care of their infant are explored here. Three major strategies: resistance, defeatism and holding on are considered. These emerged as means by which expectant parents responded to social work involvement and which enabled their continued forwards motion towards an uncertain future.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) aims to assist expectant mothers in low-income households. It might address the insufficient prenatal and postnatal healthcare services in rural areas of low-income nations, including Bangladesh. However, the effectiveness of such intervention is rarely investigated in rural Bangladesh. The study aims to explore the impact of CCT on certain health outcomes of expectant mothers in southwestern rural Bangladesh.

The study applied the quasi-experimental Propensity Score Matching method to assess the effectiveness of CCT in health outcomes of expectant mothers. The authors also deployed logistic regression to explore the predictors of three health issues – blood pressure, hemoglobin adequacy and morning sickness.

The Average Treatment Effect shows that the CCT program significantly improves maternal health by lowering the extent of blood pressure and morning sickness and enhancing the hemoglobin adequacy of the CCT recipient women compared to the non-recipient. The result reveals that CCT beneficiary status as well as the education and immunization are positively and significantly associated with normal blood pressure and hemoglobin adequacy. CCT is also a negative predictor of morning sickness. The study recommends to expand the coverage of the CCT program and also emphasize on the improvement of education, training and immunization for rural pregnant women.

To assist in scaling purchasing power and nutritious food for poor pregnant and lactating mothers in low-income households, “Nobojatra” project initiated the CCTs in the southwest region of Bangladesh. Yet, the impact of such cash transfers on their health outcomes is rarely explored in the context of Bangladesh. This study provides evidence regarding the effectiveness of cash transfers to pregnant women of low-income households in rural Bangladesh.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-08-2022-0512

The purpose of this article is to identify design guidelines for online resources based on the subjective assessment criteria used by individuals to assess and process information resources. This method of creating design guidelines targeted at precise user groups has the potential to aid designers and developers to create more user-centred information resources.

The authors gathered data using a prospective longitudinal study investigating the information behaviour of expectant and new mothers. Women were asked to report on their information-seeking activities in a series of semi-structured interviews covering pregnancy and early motherhood.

This research identified 15 assessment criteria that were utilised by women to assess and process information resources. The most popular resource criteria amongst participants were credibility and convenience, while completeness and relevance were the most popular information content criteria. The authors found that assessment criteria were not considered in isolation, with criteria such as formatting and search engine ranking impacting on participants' perception of other criteria.

This research demonstrates the potential of linking a user groups subjective assessment criterion to design guidelines. The authors propose that these guidelines could be used to help design an online information resource. They could also be used to assess if an existing online resource met the needs of a user group. The methodology used in this study could be leveraged to create design guidelines for user groups.

This research uses subjective assessment criteria as a means of understanding how expectant new mothers process information resources. People use subjective judgements when processing information resources, and this should be incorporated into the design of information resources. Analysing longitudinal data allowed the authors to build a rich picture of how participants evaluated and compared different information resources.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the factors responsible for the utilisation of safe motherhood practices under the Government of India (GOI)-run maternal health programme Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY).

Data for the survey were collected from 435 expectant mothers registered under JSY from seven districts of western Uttar Pradesh, India. Based on the existing theories of behaviour change and the social marketing framework, a model of antecedents of adoption of safe motherhood practices was tested out empirically.

The results suggested that controlling for demographic variables such as age, education, number of children, intention to follow safe motherhood practices, maternal health self-efficacy, attitude towards safe motherhood, life satisfaction and facilitating conditions all contributed towards the adoption of safe motherhood practices. However, facilitating conditions moderated the relationship between intention to follow safe motherhood practices and adoption of safe motherhood practices.

The study focused only on maternal health, excluding child health under JSY.

The study findings suggest that social marketers should focus on the individual (micro)- as well as programme (macro)-level factors to bring about systemic behaviour change.

The adoption of safe motherhood practices will result in a reduction of the maternal mortality rate. This will improve the overall health of mother and child.

The JSY programme is targeted at promoting safe motherhood practices among poor women in the reproductive age group from India. The adoption of safe motherhood practices will result in less maternal mortality and contribute to the well-being of the family.