Transcending options: Creating a milieu for practicing high‐level wellness

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between living in a female‐headed one‐parent family and the family's practice of prevention behaviors. The participants included 59 female‐headed, one‐parent families as well as other data sources that provided a societal perspective on the phenomenon. Interviews, observations, a health diary, and a card sort were used for data collection. This study was carried out according to the tenets of grounded theory. The major finding was the emergence of the theory of transcending options. This theory describes the family's practice of prevention behaviors as a subset of the family's life circumstances. The family's behaviors (health and nonhealth) were a response to the societal options that the woman perceived were available to the female‐headed, one‐parent family. The theory of transcending options describes this process on a continuum. There are three major points on the continuum: choosing options, seeking options, and transcending options. The interface between the family's life circumstances and their practice of prevention behaviors is evident at each of these points.