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Mothers' help seeking as care initiated in a social context
1University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.
Purpose:
To develop from the literature a rationale for a theoretical model of help seeking by mothers of young infants and to explore this model for two mothers.
Significance:
Components of the help that mothers of young infants often seek concerning caregiving are specified and linked in the theoretical model. This type of model is needed to support research and development of theory concerning help seeking.
Organizing Framework:
Working model includes: (a) the meaning to the mother of a caregiving situation; (b) her goals in seeking help; (c) formal and informal sources of help; and (d) a mother's expectations about accessibility of help and her willingness to seek help.
Scope And Sources:
Forty-six mothers of healthy, full-term infants completed a self-report form 3 months after the infant's birth. Responses of two mothers are used to illustrate the model.
Data Extraction:
Mothers used categorical options to describe the four working model components for four hypothetical infant-care situations derived from mothers' reports in an earlier study. Mothers used ordinal rating scales to describe their help seeking in general.
Findings:
The two mothers expected help sources to be accessible and were willing to seek help for caregiving from all types of help sources. Although both viewed themselves as having little need of help, both reported they would seek help for all the hypothetical problems. However, the women differed in what they wanted from help and from whom they would seek it and in variability in several working model components across caregiving situations.
Conclusions:
Examination of the two mothers' responses suggests that the theoretical model provides a base for study of mothers' help seeking. Maternal experience and environmental and personal conditions may shape working model components. Further model development may require a narrative approach to learn about conditions associated with help seeking as well as to obtain a full sense of the meaning and expectation components of the working model.
Implications:
Knowledge of a mother's working model of help seeking can aid clinicians in responding sensitively to requests for help and in supporting a mother in seeking help.