The Community of Epona: Parents, Daughters, Horses and Resilience

• In Event: 054 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 12. Gender, Race, and Class

Abstract

This intergenerational study explores parents’ and daughters’ perceptions of equine companions as a means to foster resilience during adolescence and the transition to adulthood. The project addresses whether and how parents purposefully use horses and horse activities as a means to socialize strength and independence in their adolescent and young adult daughters, during key life course turning points. Additionally, the project examines girls’ and young women’s views about the meanings of horses as co-agents of empowerment and engagement and the personal and cultural meanings they attach to equine companions. This study uses a feminist theoretical interpretation of Wilson’s biophilia perspective to undergird life course narrative and phenomenological methods to explore equine companionate relationships, parental socialization goals, and girls’ and young women’s development of resilience during adolescence and the transition to young womanhood. This study uses a multi-method, multi-family-member research design to examine girlhood, early adolescence, and young womanhood. Critically, this project examines both positive and negative dimensions of equine relationships in adolescence as a facilitator or hindrance to the development of a resilient core self-identity. The methods include qualitative face-to-face interviews and self-administered surveys of both parents and daughters. The final sample consists of 30 families interviewed between July 2012 and July 2013, representing 34 daughters. These daughters include eight girls aged 10-12 years, six aged 13-15, nine aged 16-19, and eleven aged 20-23. The sample was recruited with expert informant and snowball techniques from a Hunt Seat boarding and lesson stable in Northwest Ohio as the focal interview location.

Author

• Laura Ann Sanchez, Bowling Green State University