Ramona Mercer
Ramona Mercer
Background
- Ramona Mercer served
as the head nurse in pediatrics and staff nurse in intrapartum, postpartum, and
newborn nursery units.
- For over 30 years, she
has done research into parenting in low- and high-risk situations and
transition into the maternal
role.
- She authored
Perspectives on Adolescent Health Care, Transitions in a Woman's Life, and
Parents at Risk.
Key Concepts & Definitions
·
MATERNAL
ROLE ATTAINMENT - An interactional and developmental
process occurring over a period of time, during which a mother becomes attached
to her infant, acquires competence in the care-taking task involved in the
role.
·
MATERNAL
AGE – chronological and development.
·
PERCEPTION
OF BIRTH EXPERIENCE - A woman’s perception of her
performance during labor and birth
·
EARLY
MATERNAL-INFANT SEPARATION – Separation from the mother after birth due to illness or
prematurity.
·
SELF-ESTEEM
– An individual’s perception of how others view ones and self-
acceptance of the perception
·
SELF-CONCEPT
(SELF-REGARD) – The overall perception of self that includes self-satisfaction,
self-acceptance, self-esteem and congruence of discrepancy between self and
ideal self.
·
FLEXIBILITY
– Flexibility of childrearing attitude increases with increased
development.
·
CHILDREARING
ATTITUDE – Maternal attitude and belief about childrearing.
·
HEALTH
STATUS – The parent perception of their prior health, current health,
health outlook, concern
·
ANXIETY – A trait in which there
is specific proneness to perceive stressful situation as dangerous or
threatening.
·
DEPRESSION –
Having a group of depressive symptoms, and the affective component of the
depressed mood.
·
ROLE
STRAIN – The conflict and difficulty felt by the women in fulfilling the
material role obligation
·
GRATIFICATION – A
component of the parental role and identity. A process in which an
enduring emotional commitment to an individual is formed.
·
INFANT
TEMPERAMENT – The temperament, appearance, and health status.
·
FAMILY – A dynamic system which
includes a mother, father, infant (subsystem-individuals) and mother-father,
mother-infant , father-infant (dyads) within the overall family system.
·
FAMILY
FUNCTIONING – The individual's view of the relationships between the
family and its subsystems and broader social units.
·
STRESS –
Positively and negatively perceived life events and environmental variables.
·
SOCIAL
SUPPORT – The amount of help actually received, satisfaction with that
help, and the person providing that help. It has 4 areas emotional,
informational, physical, appraisal.
·
MOTHER-FATHER RELATIONSHIP –
Perception of the mate relationship that includes intended and actual values,
goals, and agreement between the two.
·
CULTURE –
The total way of life learned and passed on from generation to generation.
Major Concepts
1. Person
- Refers to the
"self" or "core-self". She views the self as separate from
the roles played.
- Through maternal
individuation, a woman may regain her own "personhood" as she
extrapolates her "self" from the mother-infant dyad.
- The core evolves from
a culture context and determines how situations are defined.
2. Nursing
- Referred as a science
emerging from a "turbulent adolescence to adulthood"
- The health
professionals having the most "sustained and intense interaction with
women in the maternity cycle"
- Obstetric nursing is
the diagnosis and treatment of women's and men's responses to actual or
potential health problem during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum
period.
3. Health
- She stresses the
importance of health care during the child bearing and child-rearing process.
- Health status is
an important indirect influence on satisfaction with relationships in
childbearing families.
- Health status of the
newborn is the extent of disease present and infant health status by parental
rating of overall health.
4. Environment
- Development of
role/person can't be considered apart from the environment; there is a mutual
accommodation between the settings, relationship are embedded.
- Definition of
environment is taken from Bronfrenbenner's definition of the ecological
environment in which maternal role attainment develops.
- Model shows nesting of
the mother and infant with the microsystem, mesosystem and macrosystem. This
indicates the environmental factors such as social support, stress, and family
functioning within the microsystem and environmental factors such as work
setting, school, and daycare impact role attainment.
References:
Slideshare: Mercer's
Maternal Role Attainment Theory (Online) Available at
http://www.slideshare.net/JosephineAnnNecor/ramona-mercers-maternal-role-attainment-theory
Accessed: September 11, 2016
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from http://www.inmemoriam.ca/view-announcement-355028-ramona-mercer.html
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