Surfing the raging sea: pregnancy and motherhood in dance during a pandemic

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic, pregnant people and mothers in the United States have faced untenable conditions as they grapple with simultaneous professional and personal demands without access to adequate financial, career, or caregiving support. These simultaneous demands are not new to women, but the pandemic set inequities between working mothers and childfree workers and between women and men in even starker contrast. This article explores responses from 110 (self-identified) women participants about how their role of mother has changed, how their professional and personal lives have changed, how they have adapted to the pandemic era, and what kinds of support have or would have been helpful during this time. The participants’ words point to areas of positive benefit and areas of needed growth and change in dance industries and workplaces and reframe the ways we construct our ideas of motherhood and expectations of mothers. I centralize their experiences for the benefit of everyone working in dance so that we may support each other in a revolution of dance as an inclusive, accessible, diverse field of equity and opportunity.

KEYWORDS:

• Pregnancy
• motherhood
• pandemic
• workplace culture
• work-life balance
• dance organizations

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ali Duffy

Ali Duffy (PhD, MFA) is Professor, Graduate Director, and Associate Head of Dance at Texas Tech University and the Artistic Director of Flatlands Dance Theatre.