Middle-aged married women: Coping with involuntary unemployment
| Autor: | 郭曉晴 |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2010 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 98 This study aimed to explore what impacts the middle-aged married women faced, what factors hindered and supported their coping process, and what coping strategies they adopted after involuntary unemployment. Furthermore, it was observed that how the interrelationships between they and the social-environment contexts in which they live influenced their coping process. This study was conducted through semi-structured in depth interviews with five participants to gather their experiences, which was examined and interpreted in terms of hermeneutic approach and thematic analysis. The findings of this study were as follows. Middle-aged married women encountered certain psychological impacts as a result of involuntary job loss. They deplored the cruelty of the employers and felt lost and anxious. In addition, their depression spread because their main focus in life, their ways of gaining self-worth and social identity were destroyed. Their insufficient savings within the family or their spouse’s unsteady income would make a more severe financial impact and elicit diverse and accumulative pressure. The impacts of reemployment on them varies based on their age and background and may be summarized as follows. (i) They could not solve the problem when facing repeated failures in job application due to age discrimination and the competitive job market. (ii) They were in a worrying situation of frequent job changes resulting from the differences in new workplaces and found difficulty in winning recognition for their work. (iii) After lengthy unemployment, they would disappoint their ambition unfulfilled. They also worried if they didn’t return to job market as soon as possible, they might have no job opportunities in the future because of age, but at the same time, they also feared it would be difficult to adapt to new job. (iiii) They were greatly shocked at the gap between the present and the past job market when returning to work after lengthy unemployment and felt unsatisfied with their motherhood experiences neglected. During the process of coping with job loss, their husbands were their main supporters and possibly their obstacles. Although emotional support and information iii provision from family and friends could help relieve the pressure of unemployment, their negative comments on unemployment could be hurtful and the willingness of asking their help could be decreased out of a face-saving factor. Religious belief could invoke cognitive adjustment and behavioral change, and bring positive effect to their unemployment coping process. When confronting impacts of job loss, they not only tended to balance the books by increasing income and reducing expenditures, but also attempted to rearrange their time structure and life focus to ease their negative emotions, and further adjusted their attitudes towards the unemployment experiences to enhance their coping efficiency. After recurrently coping, those who coped better would gradually construct their unemployment experiences and coping strategies in a positive and self-controlled way. The way led them to reframe their unemployment experiences instead of regaining their original income. At last, the researcher self-reflected how her perspectives may influence the whole research process. In addition, the research limitations, implications for future studies and practice were also discussed. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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