Psychology is a unique science that deals with human personal and social problems. This field of study has a lot of different directions. In order to have the scientific findings organized in a logical manner, there are different themed psychological scientific journals that publish articles on relevant topics. This paper examines two articles from different journals. The first article is «Gender typing in stepmothers: A phenomenological analysis» by Gosselin, J., & Rousseau, K. (2012) published in Qualitative Research Journal. The second article is «Parenting and academic socialization as they relate to school readiness: The roles of ethnicity and family income» by Hill, N. E. (2001) from the Journal of Educational Psychology. The reader may notice that the theme of the articles is quite different. This is explained by the fact that the selected two journals are focused on different areas of psychology. This paper aims to compare the research methods and worldviews of the authors of the articles.
The first article to be analyzed is the «Gender typing in stepmothers: A phenomenological analysis» by Gosselin & Rousseau (2012). This scientific study was completed to define the possible roles of stepmothers in the family. Most people stereotypically believe that stepmother simply replaces mother`s place and that is all. However, the stepmother has a much more complex role in the new family. It turned out that her role in the family can be androgynous and feminine. In order to perform this scientific work, the authors conducted interviews with the stepmothers, half of who were androgynous and the other half - feminine. The main finding of this paper is a description of how they feel being androgynous and feminine stepmothers, respectively (this is about the role in the family). Androgynous mothers described themselves as positive figures (Gosselin, J., & Rousseau, K. (2012), who had to face life's difficulties in the past and now know how to cope with their stress wisely. Also, they preferred a family model, where the couple is understood as a partnership of equal individuals. Feminine stepmothers often mentioned the difficulty in balancing between the role of a good mother and man`s girlfriend. In addition, those women reported about the sense of failure, guilt and tiredness, and often even dissatisfaction of life.
The second article for analysis is «Parenting and academic socialization as they relate to school readiness: The roles of ethnicity and family income» by Hill (2001). This study considers the important characteristics such as ethnicity and family income in the context of children`s socialization and their school readiness. Many people believe that all children are equal in school. However, the reality shows that the mentioned above factors have a strong influence on how children perform and succeed at school. To complete this study, the author chose samples of Euro-American and African-American children from families with different incomes. The main method of study was interview and basic statistical analysis. The author found that in high income families parenting had a weaker relationship with prereading performance than it was for families with lower income. Also, ethnicity was found to be one more important factor, which «moderated the relationships between parental school involvement and children`s premath performance» (Hill, 2001).
References
Gosselin, J., & Rousseau, K. (2012). Gender typing in stepmothers: A phenomenological analysis. Qualitative Research Journal, 12(1), 111-129.
Hill, N. E. (2001). Parenting and academic socialization as they relate to school readiness: The roles of ethnicity and family income. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(4), 686.
