Ideologies of motherhood and experiences of work

Abstract

Using in-depth interview data, this paper explores how work experiences during pregnancy influence women's identities as workers and as mothers. I argue that despite the influx of mothers into the workplace, the normative view of motherhood in the U.S. still requires women who have children to place their identities as mothers before all else, and certainly before their identities as workers. I examine how work experiences during pregnancy affect how women go about adding "mother" to their identity palette. Among the women I interviewed, those whose workplaces supported their multiple roles and identities found it easier to keep worker as a primary part of their self and easier to resist exaggerated norms of intensive mothering. In contrast, women who experienced negative events in the workplace related to their pregnancy were more likely to subscribe to the normative view of the primacy of motherhood as an identity. This paper argues that workplace support during pregnancy contributes significantly to whether a woman is able to maintain her sense of self as a worker while starting a family.