Anticipated Gains: Motherwork, Organizational Brokerage, and Daughter’s Occupational Development

ABSTRACT

Research on mothers’ efforts to protect their families from scarcity tends to separate individual action and the organizational context. We propose an intergenerational approach focusing on the convergence between the two, and ask: how are resources, acquired by motherwork vis-à-vis organizations, transferred to daughters to advance their occupational development? Based on 30 interviews with economically marginalized mother-young adult daughter dyads, the findings reveal an intergenerational brokerage of organizational ties, creating a resource for the occupational development of young women. We argue that in the context of poverty, organizational ties are crucial for mothers striving to support their daughters’ occupational development.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergenerational brokerage
• mother-daughter relations
• poverty/welfare
• young women
• organisational ties

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A social worker.

2. Just under 50% of the young women who participated in the study were enrolled, at some point, in a girls’ club in their local authority.

3. Both compulsory for young women in Israel.

4. A program aimed at personal growth and development for young women.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel National Insurance Institute; The Center for Resrearch on Jewish Women at Bar-Ilan university; Naamat - Working Women’s Movement; Israel ministry of welfare and social services - Yated Program.

Notes on contributors

Roni Eyal-Lubling

Roni Eyal-Lubling is a social worker-sociologist. PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her research focuses on the lives of marginalized young women, mother-daughter relations,  poverty, and social marginalization as well as labour/education market participation. Co-founder of Rotem Center for research and practice with and for marginalized young women. For more information please visit: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roni-Eyal-Lubling.

Orly Benjamin

Orly Benjamin is professor of sociology at Bar Ilan University, Israel. She received her PhD in sociology from the University of Oxford, UK. Her research focuses on women in poverty,  employment, and on mothers' struggle to provide in poverty as well as on economic abuse, sexuality, emotion, and the welfare state. Her work appears in various journals, including The British Journal of Sociology, International Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Sociological Perspectives, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, and Community, Work and Family.