Constructing the "Good Mother": The Experience of Mothering Ideologies by Work Status

Sex Roles (2006) 54:509519 DOI 10.1007/s11199-006-9021-3

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Constructing the Good Mother: The Experience of Mothering Ideologies by Work Status

Deirdre D. Johnston Debra H. Swanson

Published online: 2 November 2006

C

Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore how mothers construct their workerparent identity within a cultural context of competing mothering ideologies. We used narrative data from interviews with 95 married mothers with at least 1 child under the age of 5 to compare the construction of intensive mothering expectations by middle-class full-time employed mothers, part-time employed mothers, and at-home mothers. Although previous research has shown that mothers alter work status to live up to intensive mothering expectations, our results show that mothers also alter their construction of intensive mothering expectations to reconcile these demands with their work status choices. The results also suggest that mothers with different employment decisions differ in their construction of Y. Elvin-Nowak andH. Thomssons (2001) 3 discursive positionsaccessibility, happy mother/happy child, and separation of work and home.

Keywords Motherhood . Work and family . Ideology and identity

We live in an era of contested motherhood ideologies. However culturally and historically aberrant (Coontz, 1992; Degler, 1980; Shorter, 1975) and individually restrictive (Maushart, 1999; Rich, 1976) the dominant motherhood ideology of the last century may have been, motherhood expectations were clearly dened. The traditional mother

D. D. Johnston ([envelopeback])

Department of Communication, Hope College, Holland, MI 49422-9000, USAe-mail: [email protected]

D. H. Swanson Hope College,Holland, MI 49422-9000, USA

ideology dened a good mother as full-time, at-home, White, middle-class, and entirely fullled through domestic aspirations (Boris, 1994). Scholars have challenged the patriarchal assumptions of the traditional motherhood ideology as restricting mothers identities and selfhood (Glenn, 1994), perpetuating the economic dependence of mothers (Chang, 1994), and excluding mothers who are adolescents (Bailey, Brown, Letherby, & Wilson, 2002), older, single, lesbian (Lewin, 1994), or Women of Color (Collins, 1994; Dill, 1988; Glenn, 1994). As a result, we now experience an era in which a number of mothering ideologies compete for ascendancy (Buxton, 1998; Collins, 1994; Darnton, 1990; Golden, 2001; Hays, 1996; Thurer, 1995). The purpose of the present study was to assess how contemporary mothers in the United States construct their mothering identity in a cultural context...