GSU Undergraduate Alum now GSU Postdoctoral Fellow
LaShawnDa Pittman-Gay, recent doctoral graduate from Northwestern University, has returned to GSU to further her research on the challenges and rewards of African-American grandmothers who care for their grandchildren as the GSU Department of Sociology’s First National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Minority Research Fellow. In her dissertation, entitled “Standing in the Gap: African American Caregiving Grandmothers,” Pittman-Gay:
“Examines how low-income, urban African American caretaking grandmothers’ coping strategies are affected by what these grandparents perceive and define as stressful, their individual and child-rearing goals and objectives, the formal and informal institutionalized resources they have available, how they make use of resources, and laws and policies that influence their care giving experience.”
Learn more about Pittman-Gay from this GSU press release, and explore these other resources related to her research:
- GSU’s Project Healthy Grandparents and National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren.
- Kelley, S. J., & Whitley, D. (2003). Psychological distress and physical health problems in grandparents raising grandchildren: Development of an empirically based intervention model. In B. Hayslip & J. H. Patrick (Eds.), Working with custodial grandparents (pp. 127-144). New York: Springer Publishing Company.
- Ruiz, D. S. (2004). Amazing grace: African American grandmothers as caregivers and conveyers of traditional values. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
- Stevenson, M. L., Hendersdon, R. L., & Baugh, E. (2007). Vital defenses: Social support appraisals of black grandmothers parenting grandchildren. Journal Of Family Issues, 28(2), 182-211.
