My second paper was written on working mothers and how they are a community. This paper represents my critical thinking skills as a writer because it reflects my ability to effectively analyze an issue and use synthesis to strengthen the ideas I presented. In writing this paper, I spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about how exactly working mothers represent a community, how they are supported within this community and how they are supported within the larger community. I wrote it with the idea of analysis constantly on my mind - am I just sharing information or am I really investigating, scrutinizing and studying the subject? Analysis asks the writer to explain what something means, why something works, and hopefully in the end give the reader a better understanding of the topic, and I think I was able to do this with this paper.
An example of analysis in this assignment can be seen in the thesis itself: “By looking at these experiences [of the different generations of working mothers], one is able to gain a better understanding of how communities can dramatically change over time and also how communities serve the needs of the people in them.” This assertion immediately shows the reader what I’m going to be trying to make them understand - that by examining and really looking at these difference perspectives, a better awareness of what makes a community is formed.
The use of synthesis was used also when in the paper I wrote about Sarah, a working mother in the 1970s, and the support for her by not just the community of working mothers in which she belonged, but also by the larger communities surrounding her, including her family, neighborhood, city and beyond. By integrating her experiences and that of Catherine Latterell’s “assumption” about the role of community from the text, a synthesis within the paper developed: “Sarah did not feel that her community “supported her personal goals,” (Latterell 90), but she also did not expect this support.”
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I really enjoyed reading this piece. I am glad you found yourself as a part of a community. Working mothers is definitely a big community. The community theme really opened my eyes also. Like you mentioned it was really hard to understand how something could be a community. I think it opened a lot of our classmates eyes while doing the community theme. We grow up with one idea of what a community is so, it is hard for people to look at the idea of a community as something else.
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