An Agency, Resilience, and Emotional Regulation Perspective of Intersectional Identity and Coping Strategies of Working Mothers

ABSTRACT

This paper advances and refines Hall's model of coping behavior and proposes an A gency, R esilience, and Emotional R egulation (ARR) framework to investigate coping strategies employed by working mothers to mitigate mental health and psychological well‐being related challenges arising from the interplay of their intersecting social identities, that is, gender, motherhood, and employment. Utilizing a purposive sampling approach, data was collected from 25 working mothers in Pakistan, a Muslim majority country in South Asia with strong patriarchal traditions, through in‐depth qualitative interviews and a graphical illustration of their mental health and psychological well‐being. The data was analyzed through thematic analysis to explore the coping strategies employed by working mothers to mitigate the deterioration of mental health and psychological well‐being stemming from their intersecting identities. The findings demonstrate how agency, resilience, and emotional regulation influence the coping strategies working mothers use to manage the burden of their intersecting identities. This paper contributes to the scholarship on mental health and diversity by offering a contextually grounded framework of coping strategies to address mental health and psychological well‐being challenges of working mothers.