Graduate school is demanding: it requires multiple emotional and cognitive resources to overcome stress and ambiguity related to balancing studies and personal life.
One of the most vulnerable groups of students are mothers, who need to cope with inner conflicts, related to the process of choice-making in terms of balancing their parental and student’s responsibilities. The goal of the study was to emphasize the difficulties, which graduate students-mothers need to overcome, and to highlight the options for help, which can be offered by counseling services to this population. Cognitive dissonance and inner conflict are described and analyzed to show existing strategies to cope with these unpleasant inner states. Implications for practice and future research are included.
Paper is currently under review.
