The Good Working Mother: Managerial Women’s Sensemaking and Feelings About Work–Family Issues

Abstract

We use a sensemaking lens to explore how women managers experience and articulate work–life concerns upon their return to paid work following maternity leaves. We focus on 11 women who held different types of managerial positions, including vice presidents, circulation managers, and human resources experts. We found that our participants re‐framed the good mother image into a good working mother role that fit their lifestyles and interests. To accomplish this reframing, participants engaged in three thematic processes supportive of the good working mother image: (a) good working mothers arrange quality child care; (b) good working mothers are (un)equal partners; and (c) good working mothers feel pleasure in their working mother role. These themes and image were both ironic and fragile constructions of working motherhood. Because these themes and images enable participants to make sense of and establish the worth of working motherhood to family members, friends, acquaintances, organizational members, and community members, they provide a reason why middle‐ or upper‐class working and stay‐at‐home mothers may be in conflict about work and family choices.

Keywords:

• Work–Family
• Managerial Women
• Sensemaking
• Irony
• Gender
• Identity

Notes

[1] Differences exist among the meanings of tensions, paradoxes, ironies, and double binds. Tensions arise when there is a “clash of ideas or principles or actions” and individuals experience “discomfort” because of this clash, whereas paradoxes occur in “pragmatic or interaction‐based situations in which, in the pursuit of one goal, the pursuit of another competing goal enters the situation (often without intention) so as to undermine the first pursuit” (Stohl & Cheney, 2001, pp. 352–353). Irony has multiple meanings: “a means of recognizing the incongruity between the actual result of organizing and the normal or expected result,” “a strategy for sustaining the tension that comes from holding together incompatible, but necessary projects,” and “a tool for celebrating the contingency of language, theories, and identities” (Trethewey, 1999, p. 143). Trethewey notes that irony “helps us to live with, explore, and potentially exploit the contradictions or organizational life” (p. 143). Double binds are seemingly incompatible rules or expectations to which women may attempt to accommodate to, resist, or re‐frame dominant understandings of situations (Jamieson, 1995; Sullivan & Turner, 1996; Wood & Conrad, 1983).

[2] We would like to thank one of our anonymous reviewers for this insight into sensemaking processes. This reviewer noted that, by focusing on what is absent in sensemaking processes, we contribute a different approach to sensemaking literature.

[3] These interview questions asked participants about when they returned to paid work, how they felt about their transition into working motherhood (thus encompassing pregnancy, leaves, and returns to paid work), and their thoughts and actions during their maternity leaves. These questions occurred in a few parts of the interview protocol. As one of our reviewers pointed out, we did not probe deeply into our participants’ responses about child care since it was simply one part of the entire transition into working motherhood (and hence only one part of our interview protocol). Thus, our participants may not have talked about fathers arranging child care because of the nature of the interview, the nature of the questions, or participants’ experiences with child care. What is important, however, is the way our participants made sense of their experiences. In their accounts, they talked about their own actions—the phone calls and appointments they made to assess child care alternatives, the interviews with potential nannies, the ads they placed in newspapers, and so on. They perceived their roles as primary and created their meanings of working motherhood through these perceptions. However, we do acknowledge that their recall and retrospective sensemaking may have been mood congruent (i.e., people remember events that have the same emotional tone as what they currently feel; see Weick, 1995), dependent on events that elapsed since the time of their maternity leaves (Weick, 1995), and consistent with gendered self‐identity constructions (Golden, 2001, 2002).

[4] Rakow (1992) defines gender ideologies as belief systems that underlie individuals’ assumptions and negotiated social meanings about what is natural for each gender. Subsumed within gender ideologies are gendered work (work delegated to women), and gender work (work confirming beliefs about women’s natural tendencies and abilities). Julie’s comments reflect stereotypical gendered roles and expectations in the U.S. that women become mothers and men become bread‐winners (Potuchek, 1995; Riggs, 1997; Wood, 2005). It also reflects class differences in that Julie had not assumed that she would have to continue paid work but had tried to figure out if and how she would integrate, balance, or navigate work and family issues.

[5] Ciulla (2000) questions the meaning and prioritization of work in contemporary lives. She notes that individuals have a decreasing capacity to enjoy time away from work and time to explore relationships (see also Hochschild, 1997). Ciulla proposes a number of pragmatic solutions but primarily urges readers to make informed choices and envision different kinds of working life. She notes that ongoing gendered work–family discussions and changes are critical to re‐framing the meaning of work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrice M. Buzzanell

Patrice M. Buzzanell (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Professor in the Department of Communication where she specializes in feminist theorizing and gendered workplace practices. Rebecca Meisenbach (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an Assistant Professor at Concord University who focuses on identity(ies) constructions, identity, and ethics of fund‐raising and fund‐raisers. Robyn Remke (M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Meina Liu (M.A., Tsinghua University) are Assistant Professors at Southern Illinois University and University of Maryland where they research organizational irony and negotiation, respectively Venessa Bowers (M.A., Purdue University) and Cindy Conn (Ph.D., Purdue University) are Lecturers at IUPUI and Virginia Commonwealth University.