Alleviation: An International Journal of Nutrition, Gender & Social Development, ISSN 2348-9340
Volume 2, Number 2 (2015) : 1-7
©Arya PG College, Panipat & Business Press India Publication, Delhi
www.aryapgcollege.com, www.apcjournals.com

Interpersonal Relationship of Adolescent Girls with their Working and Non-Working Mothers

Dr. Kalpna
Associate Professor, Department of Home Science, BPSM Girls College, Khanpur Kalan (Haryana), India
E-mail: siddhantdahiya3@gmail.com

Introduction

Research on adolescents has historically concentrated on academic achievement and transition into adult roles. Of particular interest is how family structure, work environment and parental education impact such outcomes.
Women have worked to produce goods and services for themselves and their families since long. Every known economic system has been presumably requiring working of women. They have been working in practically every such system both for their satisfaction as human beings and members of the society.
For a child, a mother’s role has been clearly defined. She is a caretaker, a friend, a mentor a chef, a chauffeur, a doctor, a discipliner, a detective and whatever else the need of the hour maybe. A child’s life is dictated by his mother’s words and actions.
In this journey of life, the connection formed between mother and child is unbreakable. But the connection between a mother and her daughter is beyond any comparison despite the fact that daughters are considered very close to their fathers and various researches also endorse the fact.
Historically care of home and children has been allotted to mother. The employment of mother away from home for a considerable period of time was believed to be incompatible with good care of home and children. The assumed neglect of home and children was the only basis for objecting to employment of mothers. Many scholars believed that the behavior required at workplace was incompatible with the household roles of women especially mothers.
Today there is a welcoming change from this attitude due to rise in education levels and consequently standard of living.
During adolescent years, parents and children need to establish new kinds of interpersonal relationships. Adolescents need the parents’ guidance and support. The need for dependence continues to exist often in an uneasy and fragile alliance with the need for greater independence. As many things are changing in the adolescents’ world, the young person needs a base of security and stability something she/he can take for granted while more immediate and shifting concerns are worked out.
Under favorable circumstances, the development of age appropriate autonomy is a dual process providing both for separate individuality and self exploration and for continuing family encouragement and connectedness.
There is a gradual shift from unilateral parental authority towards more cooperative interactions with frequent unilateral parental authority with respect to basic social obligations and ample independence to the adolescents outside the family circle particularly with peers.
There are hundreds of studies comparing the children of working and non working mothers. Maternal employment has generally positive effects on girls. Girls whose mothers work are more independent and have more positive views for the female roles.
The most negative outcome for children are typically found for two subgroups- mothers who prefer to work, but are staying at home and mothers who dislike their jobs or are unwilling workers. According to Bronfenbrenner (1982), working mothers give more positive description of their young daughters than do non-working mothers which may help to account for the more positive outcome for girls whose mothers are employed. But these connections are still tentative.
In families, where mother is employed full time, the father is more involved in housework and child rearing than traditional families although domestic responsibilities are seldom equally divided. Nevertheless children who live in homes with both parents employed, experience a more egalitarian relationship between parents, more care by people outside the family and more responsibility for household chores than other families.
As household operations have become more efficient and family size has decreased in India, it is not certain that children with working mothers actually receive less attention than whose mothers do not go out for employment.
Mothering does not always have a positive effect on the child. The educated non-working mother over-invest her energies in the children fostering an excess of worry and discouraging the child’s independence. In such situations, the mother may inject more parenting than the child can profitably handle.
Children of mothers who enjoy their work and remain committed to parenting show very favorable adjustments, a higher self esteem, more positive family and peer relationships, less gender stereotyped beliefs and better grades in school. Girls especially profit from the image of female competence.
These benefits undoubtedly result from parenting practices. Employed mothers who value their parenting roles, are more likely to use authoritative child rearing and co-regulation i.e. granting their child independence with oversight.
Children in dual-earned households devote more daily hours doing homework and household work under parental supervision. Maternal employment results in more time with fathers who take on greater child rearing responsibilities. More paternal contact is related to higher intelligence and achievement, mature social behavior and gender stereotype flexibility. However when employment places heavy demands on the mother’s schedule, children are at a risk of ineffective parenting. If the father helps very little or not at all, the mother carries a double load at home and at work leading to fatigue, distress and reduced time and energy for children. Dual earning parents need assistance from work settings and communities in their child rearing roles. Part time employment, flexible schedules, job sharing, and paid leaves when the child is ill, help parents juggle the demands of work and child rearing. The common element of all close relationships is interdependent and interpersonal associations in which two people consistently influence each other’s lives, focus their thoughts and emotions on one another and regularly engage in joint activities whenever possible. Several investigators have reported that youngsters and adolescents perceive their mothers as being more nurturant , more actively concerned about their offspring’s development and well-being than their fathers.
Both male and female adolescents feel that their mothers exert more influence on them than their fathers, reflecting the greater role of the mother in child rearing process.
This study was undertaken specifically to examine the relationship of teenage girls with their working and non-working mothers.
Methodology
Haryana state was chosen as the locale of the study. District Sonipat was purposely selected as the researcher hailed from the place. In accordance with the methodological procedure related with various variables, interview schedule was developed for the data collection. The schedule developed was tested on 220 teenage girls.The data were collected from September 2008 to September 2009.The following statistical techniques were applied in the analysis of the data.
The interview schedule was administered individually by the researcher and responses were obtained. Subsequently, the recorded responses were analyzed statistically to draw meaningful inferences.
Results and Discussion
There were 47.3 per cent girls of working mothers who belonged to age group between 17 to 18 years, followed by 27.3 per cent respondents who belonged to age group between 15 to 16 years.
The larger the family, greater the number of interactional systems and the greater friction at home. To avoid the unhealthy home climate due to this friction, parents of large families use authoritarian child rearing practices.
There is much impact of economic status on the relation of mothers and teenage daughters because in all disputes, money plays an important role. Healthy relations develop in high status families.
Teenage girls having good relations with family members continue to have the same with their peer group. This is because of family background which leaves indelible imprint on the children. Educated and working mothers play an important role in selecting career lines of their daughters because level of thinking of an educated mother is entirely different from a non-working and uneducated mother.
Sharing of experiences and activities between working mothers and daughters was more in age group between 13 to 14 years and least in age group 17 to 18 years. This may be due to the fact that older girls get busier with their lives outside homes than younger ones.
Sharing of experiences and activities between non-working mothers and daughters was more in age group between 15 to 16 years and least in age group between 17 to 18 years. Working mothers were aware of the friends of their daughters. They were more afraid of their daughters engaging in bad activities and overindulgence. There was hardly any difference on openness of relation between working and non-working mothers. It depends on individual mothers that what relations they are having with their daughters. Mutual disclosure brings about a more equal status between friends and parents. Teenagers are described potentially attaining the status of friendship as a result.
Relationships between teenagers and their parents are characterized by a renegotiation of control over the child’s life which incorporates issues regarding their choices, identity and independence. Talk is perceived to be the most important marker of teenage parent communication and indicator of closeness.
The ultimate marker of independence is perhaps talking about growing up and sexuality which symbolizes a high degree of intimacy between parents and their teenage daughters. Some parents and teenage daughters referred to conversations about sexual matters as indicative of the close nature of relationships.
Discipline of daughters of working mothers was more in age group between 15 to 16 years and least in age group between 17 to 18 years. Discipline of daughters of non - mothers was more in age group between 15 to 16 years and least in age group between 17 to 18 years which was more or less same in both categories.
There were 46.5 per cent of non-working mothers who have a greater amount of household responsibilities whereas 30.9 per cent working mothers had high level of household responsibilities.
There were 73.6 per cent of non-working mothers who had a very good healthy relationship with their teenage daughters whereas 47.3 per cent of working women claimed to have a good positive relationship with their daughters.
The best and most valued relation between a mother and a daughter is a kind of interactional friendship which has a lot of room for dialogue. This type of relationship is less susceptible to tension and misunderstanding where both parties share their secrets freely between themselves rather than emphasis on enforcing authority. With such an interaction, girls tend to grow up to be confident and strong willed.
A relationship and interaction between mother and daughter that tilts favorably towards sisterhood will comprise some of the qualities that are to be found in the friendship kind while also adding characteristics that are unique to sisterhood.
The bond between a mother and a daughter is not manifested as strongly as in friendship without losing touch of the warmth and love towards each other. The mother and daughter idolize each other so much that they want to copy each other. The competitiveness to copy each other creates the needed stamina to really know each other.
Adolescence is a crucial period for healthy development in both psychological and physical terms. During this period, attitudes and beliefs tend to settle in a pattern out of which emerges the shape and direction of one’s lifestyle. For rural India, the adolescence of a girl can best be defined as the period of engaging in household activities, as a prerequisite for a good homemaker in future and may be premature end of education. However rural households increasingly have started putting more emphasis on education than on household chores. Mothers watch their daughters with dread. They worry about their daughter’s survival physically, socially, personally and in various relationships in their lives.
Mothers have high hopes that their daughters will overcome any difficulties they themselves had experienced and hope that their daughters will be more successful. They also hope that their daughters will be able to follow through with creating a next generation and the survival of the species and family traditions.
Closeness was associated with companionship something that respondents perceived as increasingly possible as children become physically and emotionally matured and potentially capable of a more reciprocal friendship with a parent. This was particularly true in the same gender parent teenage pairs. Friendship relies on a mutual disclosure and many respondents invoked this type of relation as an ideal in changing parent child relationships.
Each mother has to transit the role of femininity to her daughter to help them survive in the world. Most mothers are encouraging their daughters within their mother child relationship. They want to be helpful and feel very bewildered with them. One of the things observed quite regularly is that the mother knows so little about her own self. That she is giving much more importance on how her daughter turns out to be.
Understanding the mother daughter relationship is critical for the young adult girls because the daughter bonds with her mother in a complex and interdependent association that often inhibits the daughter from establishing her own identity.
Conclusions
Communicating effectively with the daughter is perhaps the most important aspect of mother daughter relationship. She will listen to the mother and accept her guidance if the mother has good listening skills, not only with ears but also with eyes and heart.
Mother should encourage her daughter to be assertive so she can speak up for herself when she is not treated respectfully. She should encourage her daughter to get a good education and should show interest in her homework. Girls should choose their battlescarefully and find a good time for a talk to improve the communication with their mothers.

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