In our textbook they describe research that was done on support for young single mothers. This research was conducted on young single mothers in Canadian communities. The research was conducted because being a young single mothers can trigger a lot of mental health issues such as depression and isolation. They used this study to create a community for support of these mothers to help alleviate these issues by letting them know that they are not alone and there are people out there that are facing the same issues as them. Not only were they all single mothers but non of them held a full time job outside of the home.
This study was conducted by providing all of the mothers with computers. All of these computers had access to a bulletin where they could all post and communicate with each other. They could participate in conversations on these computers through the bulletin with details their daily lives and struggles they were facing. During the time this was considered cutting edge technology. his is because the internet and house owned computers was not a normal at the time and not as widespread as it is today. This was a base level bulletin similar to out early outlets of social media, like My Space.
Before the intervention began they measured the mothers stress levels and then after the intervention they did this again with the post intervention interview. The study lasted about 6 months and after the intervention was over they also gave the, a scale assessing their sense of community that they felt through the social support group that was through the bulletin. Although the usage rate on average was high for all of the participants combined, individually they had very different usage rates which ranged from regularly using the system to not using it at all.
From the pre and post interventions they discovers a negative relationship between consistently using the bulletin to less parenting stress. Meaning the more they used the belting on a daily average consistently they less parenting stress they felt. they also found that the mothers that accosted the bulletin more get more a sense of community and belonging to a community. these results were fairly pleasant to the researchers because of the fact that young mothers tend to face a lot of stress after having their children and tend to feel isolated and alienated from others around them, so providing them with less stress and a sense of community is nice to see in research. The results suggest that online social support can be an effective intervention in proceeding support and and reliving stressors of young single mothers (Dunham et al., 1998).
I think this study is important and can definitely be used if anything more in todays day and age than any other. We are provided with many different social media outlets and blogs that are easily accessible at our finger tips. People already create support groups, and I feel like one for youg single mothers or even mothers in general could be very helpful especially with things like stress and even postpartum depression. I think when people get to share their experiences and Elaine they are not the only one and they can talk about it with people similar to them it provides a sense of relief. This can also provide a safe space where there is no judgement and nothing but support and also they can probably give advice on what helped them overcome the struggles they may be facing, And all of this in the comfort of your own home and easily accessible any time of day.
Dunham, P., Hurshman, A., Litwin, E., Gusella,
J., Ellsworth, C., & Dodd, P. (1998).
Computer mediated social support: Single young mothers as a model system. American Journal of Community Psychology, 26, 281-290.
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.