The parenting practice of single mothers in Turkey: Challenges and strategies

Date

2013-09-01

Author

Kavas, Serap
Hoşgör, Hatice Ayşe

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

68
views

0
downloads

Drawing on 24 interviews with single mothers in Turkey, this qualitative study examines various cultural and structural factors facing single mothers in a patriarchal society. It identifies strategies single mothers devise to handle the hardship of bringing up a child alone and stand up for themselves as single parents. Results demonstrate that single mothers in this study face numerous challenges, including the difficulty to maintain authority in their new family setting; the struggle to keep the sense of a complete family; and the experience of negative attitudes toward single mothers and their children. We argue that through the strategies they have devised, these mothers strive to rebuild their families in line with the traditional Turkish family system. We draw on the literature on boundary ambiguity as a theoretical framework for understanding these women's single parenting experiences.

Subject Keywords

Development, Sociology and Political Science, Law, Education

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/37194

Journal

WOMENS STUDIES INTERNATIONAL FORUM

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.05.004

Collections

Department of Sociology, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Variation in labor market participation of married women in Turkey Hoşgör, Hatice Ayşe (Elsevier BV, 2008-03-01) We explore the role of paid work in women's empowerment in Turkey by analyzing the variation in employment status and occupational position of Turkish women according to socio-economic and geographic background characteristics, characteristics of their marriage, and gender role attitudes. Being employed is seen as a major instrument in making women less dependent on their families and freeing them from the suppressing influence of patriarchal ideologies. However, only 35% of married women are gainfully empl...
Challenges of primary education in Turkey: Priorities of parents and professionals Demir, Cennet Engin; Paykoc, Fersun (Elsevier BV, 2006-11-01) This article investigates the major issues and problems of Turkish society that may have an impact on people's daily lives, and the characteristics required of primary school graduates as citizens in response to those issues and problems from the perspectives of parents and educational professionals. Data was collected from 407 parents and 389 professionals using three questionnaires developed by the researchers. Results indicated that priority challenges of primary education were considered to relate to pe...
Factors influencing the academic achievement of the Turkish urban poor Engin Demir, Cennet (Elsevier BV, 2009-01-01) This study estimates the individual and combined effects of selected family, student and school characteristics on the academic achievement of poor, urban primary-school students in the Turkish context. Participants of the study consisted of 719 sixth, seventh, and eighth grade primary-school students from 23 schools in inner and outer city squatter settlements. The findings indicated that the set of variables comprising student characteristics, including well-being at school, scholastic activities and supp...
Effects of family background characteristics on educational participation in Turkey Smits, Jeroen; Hoşgör, Hatice Ayşe (Elsevier BV, 2006-09-01) We study family background effects on participation in primary and secondary education of children in Turkey using large representative data sets. Educational participation, especially of girls, is found to be still a major concern, with non-enrollment being especially high in the countryside and the eastern part of the country. Parental education, number of siblings, household income, occupation of the father, traditionality of the mother and the mother's ability to speak Turkish are major factors affectin...
The impact of household income on child labour in urban Turkey Dayıoğlu Tayfur, Meltem (Informa UK Limited, 2006-08-01) The aim of this study is to investigate the determinants of child labour in urban Turkey with a special reference to low household income or poverty as one of its root causes. Studies done elsewhere have produced mixed results which necessitate the relationship to be studied at country-level. The data from urban Turkey indicate that children from poorer families stand at a higher risk of employment. This finding is confirmed using various measures of household material well-being. Simulation results have fu...

Citation Formats

S. Kavas and H. A. Hoşgör, “The parenting practice of single mothers in Turkey: Challenges and strategies,” WOMENS STUDIES INTERNATIONAL FORUM, pp. 56–67, 2013, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/37194.