Digital Commons Network^™

Chronic Stress And Well-Being: Testing Mindfulness As A Proposed Method To Decrease Stress In Parents Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Madeline M. Gillies

Theses and Dissertations

Parenting is a demanding role that encompasses many responsibilities and challenges. When a child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, there are additional demands on the parent's time, energy, and financial resources, which likely leads to increased levels of chronic stress for parents. This dissertation examines the differences in chronic stress levels between parents who have children with autism and parents who do not, using hair cortisol concentration (HCC) as a benchmark. This dissertation also explores reducing parental stress by introducing a mindfulness intervention. Participants (n = 68) were recruited and divided into two groups: Parents of children who have …

Did Covid Change Everything Or Nothing At All? Canadian Family Life During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Carlee Guenther Dynes

Theses and Dissertations

In March of 2020, Canada, along with the rest of the world, declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency and responded with society-wide lockdowns, granting exceptions only for essential workers. Canadians across all demographic categories were significantly impacted, and many parents of children under 18 faced the difficult task of caring for their children while simultaneously meeting their work obligations. Using novel in-depth interview data from 30 Canadian parents (in 15 couples) collected between April 2022 and May 2023, I explore three main changes to family life resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic: expanded family-friendly work practices, increased time with nuclear …

Kiss Number 8, Emma Patton

Children's Book and Media Review

Kisses number 1 through 7 were predictable, but kiss number 8 changed everything. Amanda, also called Mads, has a secret. Her best friend Cat wants her to date Adam. He’s a little younger but starting to get attractive, and he has a big thing for Mads. The trouble is, Mads is starting to realize that the person she really wants to kiss is Cat. How could that be possible, though? She couldn’t be gay--she’s only kissed boys. There’s also something mysterious happening in her family. It turns out that the person she has always thought of as her grandma is …

The Materials Of Traditions, Victoria Jensen

Theses and Dissertations

The homes we grow up in have a great impact on the homes we create as adults. Many of the traditions I saw in my childhood home were expressions of love within our family. These everyday traditions helped not only to build bonds within my nuclear family, but also with the chosen family I have formed as an adult. Repeating these traditions, or at least my best memory of them, has helped me in building my own home now. The ways I interact with my friends often reflects those same traditions I learned from home. I brought a few of …

A Proposal For Paid Family Leave In Utah, Erin Wong

Student Works

When a woman gives birth, the arrival of that child will have a statistically significant negative impact on that woman’s employment, earning potential, health, and overall wellbeing. The arrival of a child has no statistically significant impact on men’s employment, earning potential, or overall health and wellbeing. The labor force experiences a drain of talent and productivity when mothers leave the market in large numbers after having a child. Many mothers who wish to remain the workforce after childbirth are faced with the impossible choice of their child’s health or their own job and earning potential. Many fathers or partners …

"It's Like Being Pulled In Two Directions": Experiences Of Transgender Latter-Day Saints, Morgan Monet

Theses and Dissertations

This study qualitatively examined the experiences of transgender individuals who also identify as active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (N=10). Researchers took an interpretive phenomenological approach to elicit factors which allow trans Mormon folks to hold their apparently conflicting religious and gender identities simultaneously (and the consequences of doing so). Overall, we aimed to answer the broad question, “what is it like to be transgender and Mormon?” Following a process of semi-structured interviews, transcription, and coding, the broad categories which seemed to connect many elements of the trans/Mormon experience were 1) a sense of being …

Perceived Family And Partner Support And The Work-Family Interface: A Meta-Analytic Review, Heather H. Kelley, Ashley B. Lebaron, E. Jeffery Hill, Diana Meter

Faculty Publications

This study employed meta-analytic techniques to elucidate the role of perceived partner and family support in four measures of the work-family interface. We extracted 183 effect sizes from 82 samples and a total of N = 36,226 individuals. We found perceived familial (partner and family) support was negatively associated with work-to-family conflict (r = -.099) and family-to-work conflict (r = -.178). It was positively associated with work-to-family enrichment (r = .173) and family-to-work enrichment (r = .378). Various sample-level moderators were investigated through meta regression and subgroup analyses, including whether the support measure was family or partner focused. Perceived family …

"Life Will Be A Brief, Hollow Walk": The Future Of Humanity Through Maternal Eyes In Tracy K. Smith's Life On Mars, Mallory Lynn Bingham

Theses and Dissertations

Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry, Life on Mars, has been celebrated and analyzed as an elegy to Smith's father by many reviewers and scholars. And while this reading is valid and has been openly endorsed by Smith herself, our understanding of this collection and Smith's father is incomplete without Smith's treatment of motherhood and religion, two previously unexplored fields in relation to Life on Mars that complete our picture of Smith's father. Smith uses her own new role as a mother and her religious questions about the afterlife and her father's fate to address her father's …

Uniting And Dividing Influences Of Religion On Parent–Child Relationships In Highly Religious Families, Heather Howell Kelley, Loren D. Marks, David C. Dollahite

Faculty Publications

Religion can have both helpful and harmful influences on relationships. The purpose of this study is to better understand how religion can have both a unifying and a dividing influence on parent–child relationships. Through the use of interviews with 198 highly religious families (N = 476 individuals), we address some of the complexity inherent in religion and examine the influence of three dimensions of religious experience (religious practices, religious beliefs, and religious community). Findings are supported with primary qualitative data. For the highly religious parents and children in this study, 8 times as many unifying accounts of religion than …

Surviving Secular Society: How Religious Families Maintain Faith Through Community And Parenting Practices, Quinn Galbraith, Christina Riley, Alexandra Carlisle, Heather Kelley

Faculty Publications

In pluralistic society, religious families may struggle with adapting to non-religious culture. This can be concerning for religious parents who attempt to raise their children to be religious in a non-religious environment. This study draws upon qualitative interviews with 130 highly religious individuals in Ireland and the UK to analyze what perceived challenges religious families experience in secular society and what coping mechanisms they employ to counteract secular influences. Researchers identified three common challenges: outside pressure to conform, media misrepresentation, and immoral messages in media. They identified three potential coping mechanisms: controlling access to media, building religious community, and teaching …

“Line Upon Line”: Joseph Smith’S Growing Understanding Of The Eternal Family, R. Devan Jensen, Micheal A. Goodman, Barbara Morgan Gardner

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So begins L . P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between. This statement reminds religious educators to study history as it unfolded and to avoid presentism, or “an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences.” Latter-day Saint doctrines did not spring up fully formed, as we have them today. The historical record shows that Joseph Smith did not begin with a full understanding of the doctrines of eternal families and sealing ordinances as we teach them today. In fact, the Prophet Joseph Smith dictated a revelation on …

Guy In Real Life, Meagan Andrus

Children's Book and Media Review

By chance one night, sixteen-year-old Lesh and eighteen-year-old Svetlana run into each other—literally. After that chance meeting, they begin eating lunch together at school and slowly learn they have more in common than they might think. On the outside, they’re total opposites: Svetlana is a blonde embroidery aficionado and expert dungeon master of her friend group’s RPG; Lesh is a gangly, metal-loving, black-wearing boy. While they get closer, Lesh begins playing an online fantasy game as a beautiful elfen priestess he names Svvetlana (two v’s), partly because he thinks messing with online nerds is fun, but mostly because he admires …

The Witch Boy, Natalie Hatch

Children's Book and Media Review

Aster was born into a life of magic. His mother and older sister are witches, and his father is a shapeshifter. It has always been this way: male shapeshifters and female witches. Aster, who struggles with shapeshifting, is drawn to words of power, the incantations and spells that the women use. He tries to learn these things but is caught, disciplined, teased, and treated worse by his family members. When Aster's male cousins go missing, Aster finds he’s the only one who can scry to find the missing boys. He wants to help and protect his family, but to do …

Teaching The Doctrine Of The Family: A South African Example, Khumbulani D. Mdletshe, Michael A. Goodman

Religious Educator: Perspectives on the Restored Gospel

Early in 2015, I visited my aunt’s home. She lives in one of the largest townships in South Africa, an urban residential area with a predominantly black African population. Townships often have higher unemployment, greater poverty, and younger populations than other areas in South Africa. Townships also tend to have higher levels of risk behaviors such as drug abuse, unprotected sex, and crime. This was my first visit to my aunt’s home in five years. As I entered the home, I noticed some young people I had never met. My aunt, who is in her early sixties, began to introduce …

Preventing Eating Disorders By Promoting Media Literacy And Rejecting Harmful Dieting Based Mentalities, Mckayla Kagie

Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology

This review investigates the main contributing factors of an eating disorder and how one can facilitate eating disorder prevention. A brief summary of eating disorders and their history is provided. The diet mentality and the negative consequences associated with that mentality are examined. The term “diet mentality” is used intermittently to describe the behaviors and beliefs that surround fad dieting including the desire to manipulate food and water intake to lose weight. How to reject that diet mentality is discussed as part of preventing eating disorders. Additionally, preventative measures include becoming media literate and promoting body positivity. Media literacy is …

Families And Workplaces, E. Jeffrey Hill, Erin K. Holmes

Faculty Publications

In order to survive and thrive, every family must both provide for and nurture its members. This is true regardless of the particular structure, size, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or cultural background of the family. Physical needs of families are most frequently met through paid labor in workplaces. Nurturing needs of individuals are most commonly met by family members in the home. Learning how to simultaneously provide for and nurture one's family in harmony is of interest to everyone but very difficult to achieve. It is not wonder that research on the interface between families and workplaces has exploded …

Relational Struggles And Experiential Immediacy In Religious American Families, David C. Dollahite, Loren D. Marks, Kaity Pearl Young

Faculty Publications

Qualitative family scholar Kerry Daly has called for more theory addressing understudied dimensions including religion, everyday experiences, and time. Herein we address all three of these dimensions as we empirically examine and theorize Ono relational struggles among religious families. We also explore what we term experiential immediacy–defined as the personal and temporal proximity to participant-reported lived experience. Based on qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews with 198 highly religious families (N = 476 individuals), we identified four types of relational struggles created by religious involvement: burdens, disunities, abuses, and offenses. We also offer a conceptual framework of experiential immediacy grounded …

Exploring The Connections And Tensions Between Sacrifice And Self-Care As Relational Processes In Religious Families, Hilary Dalton

Theses and Dissertations

The relational processes of sacrifice and self-care both influence every human relationship and as such, every human has to learn how to engage in them. Families are one of the many communities in which one must address sacrifice and self-care. This study provides a qualitative exploration of the relational processes of sacrifice and self-care among a sample of 198 highly religious (Abrahamic faiths) families. In-depth analyses explored motivations, types, and related family processes among family relationships. Five themes from the data about how families perceived and addressed the relational processes of sacrifice and self-care are discussed: (1) tensions between sacrifice …

Implicit Family Process Rules Specific To Eating-Disordered Families, Mallory Rebecca Wolfgramm

Theses and Dissertations

Family environment is a significant factor in the development of eating disorders in young-adult females. Clinical experience, research and theories about eating disorders indicate that constrictive implicit process rules within a family are correlated with eating-disordered families. This study identified implicit family process rules that are unique to eating-disordered families and how well these rules predict membership in eating-disordered and non-eating-disordered families. One hundred and two families (51 eating-disordered and 51 comparison families) participated in the study. Mothers, fathers, young-adult female children, and siblings in each family completed the Family Implicit Rules Profile (FIRP). The design included cluster analysis of …

Faroosh And Elina, Faroosh, Elina, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Faroosh was a cameraman for a private television program in Afghanistan working on a documentary about the Taliban. When he and his crew were discovered, the Taliban attacked them and he and his wife fled to Turkey, walking 12 hours to get there. Upon arrival the police arrested and harassed them. Turkey was not a safe place. After several suicide bombings in the area, they decided to move on to Greece, where they are in a refugee camp without any progress in their situation. They have no money to move forward and no ability to work and the economic situation …

Fawad And Zakeela, Fawad, Zakeela, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Fawad and his wife, Zakeela, have three children. Zakeela was a beautician, and Fawad was a singer in the Baghlan district in Afghanistan. The music he produced was not in accordance with the strict restrictions of the Taliban. They threatened his life and assaulted him many times, so he decided to leave with his family to Kabul. Fawad’s day job was as an FM radio producer; at night, he moonlighted as a singer and musician. He produced music for ceremonies and weddings, often performing for the women’s part, which the Taliban did not accept. Eventually, his life was again threatened, …

Ilhan, Nura, Radwa, Ziagull And Children, Ilhan, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Ilhan, his wife Nura, and their children resided near Kabul, in a region where both the Taliban and ISIS were active. As Shias, Ilhan’s family faced numerous menaces, including threats from ISIS that they would be beheaded if they did not display ISIS flags. Ilhan’s sister Radwa, who is deaf and mute, was forced to marry a regional leader. In addition to being threatened on religious grounds, Ilhan’s family was also threatened by an elder of their town. Out of desperation, Ilhan’s family sold their house appliances, escaped Afghanistan, and arrived at the …

A Path To Empathy: Child And Family Communication, Sarah Ann Stone

Theses and Dissertations

This longitudinal study examined the association between communication in the family on the development of empathy in young children. Co-regulation and family expressiveness measured communication in parent-child dyads at age 12 months (N = 186), 24 months (N = 100), and 36 months (N = 78). A follow-up was conducted at 60 months (N = 47) to measure empathy-related responding in children. Co-regulation styles change over time, generally increasing in the most engaged, two-way style of communication (symmetrical) and decreasing in one-sided and less engaged types. Greater family expressiveness predicted higher levels of empathy as observed in an empathy-eliciting experiment, …

The Quality Of Residential Parent-Child Relationships And Its Impact On Stepfamily Experiences, Megan Urick, Gordon E. Limb

Faculty Publications

This study sought to understand the effect that residential biological parent-child relationship has on retrospective accounts of overall stepfamily experiences. Using data from the Stepfamily Experiences Project (STEP), a nationally-based quota sample, retrospective accounts of 1,593 emerging adults’ stepfamily experiences were analyzed. Results indicated that a higher quality residential biological parent-child relationship was positively and significantly correlated with a higher quality stepfamily experience. Clinicians and other social scientists need to be aware of the importance of strengthening the parent-child relationship when providing services and interventions for stepfamilies.

Indigenous Women College Students’ Perspectives On College, Work, And Family, Jennie L. Bingham, Aaron P. Jackson, Quintina Bearchief Adolpho, Louise R. Alexitch

Faculty Publications

Native American and First Nations (herein collectively referred to as Indigenous) women college students are faced with the challenge of balancing their cultural imperatives and the demands of the dominant Western culture in family, school, and work/employment roles. In order to explore these women’s experiences and perspectives, this study analyzed unstructured qualitative interviews of 11 Native American and 9 First Nations female college students. The themes that resulted from the hermeneutic analysis were (a) honoring Indigenous culture and community, (b) living in two worlds, (c) pursuing individual fulfillment and goals, and (d) acknowledging the importance and influence of family.

The …

Religion And Relationships In Muslim Families: A Qualitative Examination Of Devout Married Muslim Couples, Zahra Alghafli, Trevan Hatch, Loren Marks

Faculty Publications

Since 11 September 2001, Islam has been the center of many debates, discussions, parodies and publications. Many Muslims feel that their religion has been portrayed unfairly in Western media. The topics that seem to generate the most criticism relate to gender roles and the treatment of women, both inside the home and in society. The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceived role of Islam on marital and familial relationships from an insider’s perspective and to present participants’ reflections on sensitive issues, including gender roles, women’s rights and marital unity. Content analysis of in-depth interviews of twenty diverse …

Healthy Transitions To Family Formation, Erin Kramer Holmes, Geoffrey Brown, Kevin Shafer, Nate Stoddard

Faculty Publications

Current demographic trends in the United States suggest that emerging adults delay marriage (Vespa, 2014), nonmarital cohabitation is the norm among this age group (National Marriage Project, 2012), and premarital sex—including noncommitted hooking up (Garcia, Reiber, Massey, & Merriwether, 2012)—is widely accepted (Pew Research Center, 2014). These trends collide with consistently high divorce rates (Amato, 2010; Cherlin, 2010), where up to one-third of emerging adults grow up in stepfamilies (Copen, Daniels, Vespa, & Mosher, 2012). Aside from high divorce rates, the United States is experiencing what some demogra- phers term “the great crossover,” whereby unmarried parenthood is overtaking married parenthood …

No One Best Way: Work-Family Strategies, The Gendered Division Of Parenting, And The Contemporary Marriages Of Mothers And Fathers, W. Bradford Wilcox, Jeffrey P. Dew

Faculty Publications

The gender revolution of the last half-century has dramatically reshaped the nature, quality, and stability of marriage and parenthood in the United States. A half-century ago, most married mothers did not work outside the home, and most men and women preferred this arrangement. But over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, mothers streamed into the labor force, fathers devoted more time to childcare and housework, and public opinion largely swung behind these changes, with most Americans expressing normative support for working mothers, as well as for more egalitarian relationships between mothers and fathers in the home …

Adolescent And Parent Perceptions Of The Influence Of Religious Belief And Practice, Carrolyn A. Mcmurdie, David C. Dollahite, Sam A. Hardy

Faculty Publications

The purpose of the present study was to investigate lay conceptions of religious influence. Specifically, we explored adolescents' and parents' perceptions of the ways in which their religious beliefs and practices had impacted them and their life. The sample included 419 adolescents and 282 parents recruited from across the United States through an online survey panel. Participants were asked to list three different ways that religion had influenced their lives. Responses were coded using grounded-theory qualitative methods. Six main themes of influence emerged in both the adolescent and parent responses: Interpersonal Relationships, Character Development, Religious Values and Practices, Perspective, Peace …

Influence Of Family On Native American Students, Lisa Jeannette Fox

Theses and Dissertations

Native American* postsecondary education students encounter several barriers to academic persistence including cultural assimilation issues, limited access to career information services, and an individual sense of duty and responsibility to remain tied to traditional spiritual values and beliefs systems, joined with family pressure to stay home. While the presence of Native American students in postsecondary education has increased, the number of students persisting through to graduation remains alarmingly low. Much of the research on Native American academic persistence has focused on acculturation and assimilation issues, leaving the influence of family largely unexplored. To help enrich this aspect of Native …