Gender equity in community sustainability : breastfeeding and intimate partner abuse
We live within a web, connected to our family, friends, communities, societies, nations and ultimately, the greater biome of the Earth. Healthy, thriving women and children benefit their communities; healthy women work to contribute to and help care for their families and friends, and healthy children are able to learn well at school and are best positioned to develop into healthy, able citizens. Unfortunately, the presence of intimate partner abuse (IPA) negatively impacts maternal and child health, resulting in lost productivity, missed schooling, increased healthcare costs, and in some cases the deaths of women and infants. IPA is a critical issue in community well-being and sustainability. This dissertation presents three studies focusing on better understanding dynamics around IPA that impact women and their children. The first two studies focus on how abuse impacts breastfeeding. Providing human milk for an infant has benefits for infants, lowering all causes of infant mortality and resulting in increased IQ and lifelong health benefits (Victora et al., 2016). Nursing an infant also benefits mothers by reducing postpartum hemorrhage, lowering the risk of postpartum depression and their lifetime risks of nine different types of cancer (Stuebe, 2009). These benefits accumulate across individuals, resulting in healthier mothers and children, better able to contribute to their families and communities. The first study uses a nationwide dataset from the Centers for Disease Control, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment and Monitoring survey (PRAMS), to quantitatively explore the relationship between reported physical abuse and breastfeeding initiation. The relationship between IPA and breastfeeding initiation is complex and the literature is not yet settled. This study contributes to the literature by using an alternate approach that is not definitive, but points toward new areas for future research. Working to resolve this question can help healthcare providers, IPA advocates and policy makers with better information to begin to shape interventions to support mothers coping with abuse. Breastfeeding matters to these mothers for health reasons, but also because it is one of the first major decisions they make for an infant and if they do not meet their breastfeeding goals, they often experience guilt, question their value as mothers (Jackson, DePascalis, Harrold & Fallon, 2020) and face a higher risk of postpartum depression (Gregory, Butz, Ghazarian, Gross & Johnson, 2015; Borra, Iacovou & Sevilla, 2015). The first hypothesis explored is that mothers reporting physical abuse will initiate breastfeeding at a lower rate than mothers reporting no physical abuse. Logistic regression confirmed mothers reporting physical violence initiate breastfeeding at a lower rate than their unabused counterparts. The relationship remains significant when controlling for race and maternal education, but marital status reverses the effect. Subsequent subgroup analyses show married women's decisions around breastfeeding initiation to be significantly impacted by physical abuse, while unmarried abused mothers initiated breastfeeding at roughly the same rate as unmarried mothers reporting no physical violence. The second hypothesis focuses only on mothers reporting physical abuse and explores whether a 'dose' effect exists. Logistical regression again shows mothers who report physical abuse at two time points initiate breastfeeding at a lower rate than mothers reporting physical abuse at only one time point. This finding remained significant even when controlling for maternal education, race/ethnicity, and marital status. The second study is a qualitative exploration of mothers' experience of living with an abusive partner while breastfeeding. While quantitative studies can estimate the size and direction of a phenomenon it does not tell us what is happening in the day-to-day life of people experiencing it. Qualitative research can raise the voices of women coping with abuse during the breastfeeding phase, who are the experts on their situations. It is also essential for those working to end abuse to understand how mothers and their decisions are constrained by abuse and how they use their agency to resist and survive. This study uses semi-structured interviews with thirteen mothers with infants under one year of age who lived with an abusive partner for some amount of time while breastfeeding/pumping. Using thematic content analysis, themes emerged around mothers using gender performativity, successfully and unsuccessfully, to attempt to stem the violence and chaos in their relationships. Mothers attempted to fulfill traditional female roles to appease abusive partners, used breastfeeding to protect themselves and their infants, and drew strength from family, friends, and medical/support professionals by fulfilling the 'good mother' role through breastfeeding. The third study examines organizational resilience for nonprofits, which often function as a key part of the social safety net by providing services to vulnerable populations and strengthening communities. Despite their essential nature, organizational resilience (OR) among nonprofits is not well studied. Finding no models specific to nonprofits, a model of OR from the for-profit sector was adapted and extended. The model adaptation focuses on financial resources, technical resources and social resources and expands each category to cover unique aspects of nonprofits that the for-profit OR model does not contain. The gap between OR and social-ecological resilience (SER) was also examined, and several SER concepts were added to enhance our nonprofit OR model. The adapted model is then illustrated through a case study of intimate partner abuse (IPA) agencies. Managers and frontline staff from eight IPA nonprofits in a Midwestern state were interviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The adapted model can be used by researchers and practitioners to better understand and evaluate OR not only in IPA agencies, but all nonprofits.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- In Copyright
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Bomsta, Heather D.
- Thesis Advisors
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Kerr, John
- Committee Members
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Chaudhuri, Soma
Hodbod, Jenny
Bauchspies, Wenda
- Date
- 2022
- Subjects
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Intimate partner violence
Psychological aspects
Breastfeeding--Psychological aspects
Motherhood--Psychological aspects
Social ecology
New mothers
Social aspects
- Program of Study
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Community Sustainability-Doctor of Philosophy
- Degree Level
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Doctoral
- Language
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English
- Pages
- x, 160 pages
- ISBN
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9798426834255
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/9j92-h686