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The Effect Of Single Mothers’ Marital Status On Sympathy, Character Evaluations, And Maternity Leave Support, Patrick B. Dorsey Ii
The Effect Of Single Mothers’ Marital Status On Sympathy, Character Evaluations, And Maternity Leave Support, Patrick B. Dorsey Ii
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Social science research has found that single mothers tend to be viewed more negatively than married mothers. However, single mothers are not a monolithic group, they can vary in terms of their marital status. Informed by DiLiapi’s (1989) motherhood hierarchy, we hypothesized that relative to never married single mothers, formerly married single mothers (i.e., widowed and divorced) would garner more sympathy, more favorable character evaluations and people would also be more willing to support maternity leave policies as a result of thinking about formerly married single mothers compared to never married single mothers. To test these predictions participants were randomly …