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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.

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.

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.

Purpose – Despite growing efforts to treat depression, engaging low-income and minority mothers continues to challenge providers. To address this issue, we conducted focus groups to identify responsive strategies for improving engagement of low-income and racially diverse mothers at high risk for depression.

Methods – Three focus group discussions (one prenatal, two postpartum) with 21 low-income and racially diverse mothers were held to determine their definition of depression, attitudes about depression treatment, and perceived barriers to treatment. Discussions took approximately 60 minutes and were audio-recorded. Detailed notes were taken during the discussions. The notes and audio recordings were analyzed using qualitative methods.

Results – Identification of the source of distress, assessing women's perception of treatment and their related costs and benefits, and addressing cultural and financial barriers to treatment emerged as key themes for improving engagement among participants.

Conclusion – To be responsive to women's depression care needs, treatments should be informed by patient perceptions and needs, while addressing barriers to care.

Popular self-help pregnancy literature suggests a “generational disconnect” between pregnant women and their mothers, emphasizing the incommensurate experiences of the two generations. Based on longitudinal, in-depth interviews with a diverse group of 64 pregnant women and 23 grandmothers-to-be, this chapter explores how different generations of women negotiate the idea of a disconnect and its implications for the medicalization of pregnancy. My findings showed limited support for the generational disconnect. Nearly all of the pregnant women I interviewed who were in contact with their mothers consulted them to assess issues related to pregnancy embodiment. Black and Latina women and white women with less than a college degree disregarded or even rejected the disconnect; they tended to frame their mothers’ advice as relevant. Their mothers attended prenatal care appointments and frequently expressed skepticism about medical directives. By contrast, I found that highly educated white women tended to endorse the generational disconnect when it came to matters related to pregnancy health behaviors – what to eat, how much to exercise – and their obstetric care. The mothers of these women not only largely supported the generational disconnect, but also bonded with their daughter over a shared appreciation for scientific understandings of pregnancy. Foregrounding women’s perspectives provides insights into meaning-making in pregnancy and the ways that mothers of pregnant women can both stymie and deepen medicalization of childbearing.

Although birth-preparation classes are the most important institution for parents-to-be, they have largely been disregarded in sociological research. This empirical study aims to examine the role birth-preparation classes in Germany play in the extensive gendering during the transition to parenthood. We combine ethnography of birth-preparation classes with a content analysis of text material offered by professional associations of midwives. This empirical investigation aims to show that today’s birth-preparation classes highlight differences between men and women as well as between women without children and mothers, interconnect them with gendered attributions of child care and labor and legitimize these differences through naturalization. Thus, birth-preparation classes introduce a gendered distribution of labor as early as the antenatal phase and thereby function as institutions promoting a process of regendering and retraditionalization.

Language is a fundamental and yet extraordinarily powerful medium. Language is more than the primary feature distinguishing humans from other species. As our principle means of communication, language links us to culture, and in so doing, shapes our perceptions and determines the way in which we think (Clark, Eschholz & Rosa, 1981; Thorne, Kramarae & Henley, 1983). Language is inseparable from social life. Through language, individuals learn cultural patterns and political and social values (Mueller, 1973). Language also reflects the prejudices of society, with assumptions about relative status, power or appropriate behavior often built into the words we use to talk about different groups of people. As Frank and Anshen (1983) note, ageism, racism, and most importantly for this discussion, sexism, are all perpetuated by our language, even among those who consciously reject those prejudices.

The chapter draws on recent scientific findings on the participation of fathers in childcare, and the perception of the role of fathers by both men and women in the Czech Republic. We apply a mixed method approach, combining qualitative data from longitudinal research on transition to motherhood and fatherhood (TransPARENT), which traced 16 parental couples for four years, with data from quantitative surveys on the topics of parenting and work–life balance. The data are examined for the incidence of breadwinner and the involved father models in Czech families. We focus on the earliest stage of the family life course, that is, when the children are aged between zero and four years. We show that fathers of young children still predominantly assume the breadwinner role, leaving most childcare to mothers. However, the growing number of parents expressing a preference for a more equal sharing of childcare indicates a shift in both the perception of fatherhood and the value placed on the active participation of fathers in early childcare in the Czech Republic. The main limitation of this text is that it only focuses on families with very young children. The future research should fill the gaps in contemporary knowledge of Czech families by addressing the division of roles, and particularly the roles of fathers, in households with school-age children. The chapter suggests that fathers’ greater involvement in childcare could be stimulated by policy measures such as the introduction of paternal leave or broadening the range of (public) childcare services for the youngest children.

Research examining the experiences of women in the workplace has, to a large extent, neglected the unique stressors pregnant employees may experience. Stress during pregnancy has been shown consistently to lead to detrimental consequences for the mother and her baby. Using job stress theories, we develop an expanded theoretical model of experienced stress during pregnancy and the potential detrimental health outcomes for the mother and her baby. Our theoretical model includes factors from multiple levels (i.e., individual, interpersonal, sociocultural, and community) and the role they play on the health and well-being of the pregnant employee and her baby. In order to gain a deeper understanding of job stress during pregnancy, we examine three pregnancy-specific organizational stressors (i.e., perceived pregnancy discrimination, pregnancy disclosure, and identity-role conflict) that are unique to pregnant employees. These stressors are argued to be over and above the normal job stressors experienced and they are proposed to result in elevated levels of experienced stress leading to detrimental health outcomes for the mother and baby. The role of resilience resources and learning in reducing some of the negative outcomes from job stressors is also explored.

This chapter explores the inequalities and restrictions faced by women as they entered the medical profession in the United Kingdom. A case study in the first hospital in the United Kingdom to be founded and run by women, the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children, it demonstrates the importance of history for understanding women doctor’s early career choices and opportunities. The chapter begins with an outline of nineteenth-century notions of feminine propriety. It considers how middle-class women sought to subvert these restrictions and gain an active role in public life, and explores how this impacted upon arguments in favour of medical women. It reveals the significance of the changing nature of medical knowledge in this period, and considers how this contributed to the emergence of two distinct specialisms, both of which became the preserve of women doctors: maternal welfare schemes in the 1900s, and the treatment of VD in the inter-war period. The chapter concludes with its contribution to this edited collection.