Making working motherhood work

This concluding chapter explores the intersections between the accounts of the relationship between mothers and daughters with social changes in the expansion of opportunities for women. The recommendations for daughters centre on challenging feelings of generalised maternal guilt by communicating the finding of this, and other research, that most daughters feel positive about having a mother with a career. The daughters in this research pointed out several ways in which they were protected from feeling any ill effects, which it will be useful to disseminate in order to positively influence the ‘emotion management’ of work and caring commitments. Mothers have an important role to play in encouraging their daughters' ambition. The chapter then discusses contemporary feminisms in the context of the culture of ‘maternal citizenship’ and the masked cost to the professional, middle-class women of the trend towards making individual mothers wholly responsible for their children's outcomes.

Well-mothered daughters?

This chapter examines how the daughters felt about having grown up with a mother mainly working full-time or close to full-time hours. In most cases the daughters felt well mothered. The daughters demonstrated this view by recalling far fewer events when they felt compromised by the trade-offs their mothers were making than did their mothers. Most revealing was the five key ways many of the daughters offered to explain how their mothers managed the compromises involved in combining work and family life. The chapter discusses five themes: being there for the events where parents (especially mothers) were expected to be, being able to predict their mother's routine, their mother being emotionally present when at home, being cared for at home after school and being taught to be independent.

Daughters’ aspirations for working motherhood

This chapter focuses on the aims and aspirations of the daughters with regards to combining work with motherhood. Almost all of the daughters who were child-free anticipated having children and had ideas about how they wanted to shape their careers around motherhood. A clear majority of the daughters also anticipated (or were) working part-time. The chapter then discusses the facets of the contemporary culture of motherhood that means many women who have embarked upon professional and managerial careers think about substantially cutting their working hours. A dominant belief is that part-time work gives you the ‘best of both worlds’. In essence, good parenting is being measured by time spent at home versus time spent at work — despite the daughters' belief that they were well mothered by career women working much more than part-time hours.

Quiet ambition

This chapter shows that many young women are as ambitious for career success as men in the early stages of their career. However, young women quickly lose faith that success will be achievable. Several reasons are given for this, including the effect on careers of parenthood, issues with self-confidence and lack of fit with the dominant culture of the workplace. The research illustrates that these mothers often acted as career mentors by talking through their daughters' experiences at work, helping them to acquire useful skills, and therefore bolstering their daughters' confidence. The daughters characterised their mothers' careers as successful. However, the daughters also described this success as a by-product of hard work and work done well. This is indicative of the finding that the mothers in this study tended to underplay or not talk at all about their career successes.

Partners in parenting

This chapter focuses on the crucial role played by partners and fathers in influencing both the positive and negative feelings mothers have about combining work with motherhood. Almost half of the partnered mothers and daughter mothers had a more or less egalitarian parenting arrangement. These mothers tended to feel more positive about their experiences of managing work and family life. Nevertheless, most of the mothers — including many with egalitarian parenting partnerships — shouldered an unequal amount of domestic responsibility. This has persisted across generations, as exemplified by the fact that over half of the daughters had or were planning to adopt the male breadwinner, female part-time model that they perceived as the ‘best of both worlds’. Motivations and experiences involved in shared parenting tend to be emotionally complex and full of contradictions.

Working motherhood across generations

This chapter examines the influence the generations of mothers and grandmothers have upon their daughters' views about combining work with motherhood. It explores the continuities and discontinuities in intergenerational transmission of attitudes about work and hours of work through the lens of differences in historical, biographical and maternal time. Almost all the daughters and ‘daughter mothers’ intend to emulate, or are emulating, their mothers in continuing to work after motherhood. Moreover, many conversations take place about working motherhood between the grandmothers and ‘daughter mothers’, because female generations become closer when the generational chain acquires another link. This is a moment in the biographies of the daughters when they are most receptive to their mothers' influence. The chapter then addresses why the grandmothers encourage or discourage commitment to work.

Career choice: like mother, like daughter

This chapter demonstrates that mothers in high-status career roles are, in most cases, the primary influence over their daughters' career expectations. The mothers with careers in the study often acted in ways that fitted the description of mentoring and many were said by their daughters to be role models. Ways in which the daughters' attitudes to work were guided and shaped by their mothers with successful careers included a substantial number of this sample following their mothers into the same or similar careers, having the same work values, and having doors opened to their careers by their mothers. This suggests that the daughters have absorbed from their mothers that work can be interesting, enjoyable and satisfying, and that they should aim for a career that delivers them these qualities.

A backlash against the way their mothers worked?

This chapter explores the idea that one should expect a backlash from the daughters against wanting to work as long hours as their mothers due to having seen their mothers try to ‘have it all’, or because of how they feel their mothers' working hours impacted upon them. The research did not find much evidence to support this notion of a backlash. The chapter then looks at other research which argues that mothers working long hours experience greater work–life conflict in the context of societal expectations that women should work part-time when they have primary school-age children. The implication of the existing research is that mothers may have transmitted feelings of stress to their daughters. On the other hand, other recent research has focused on the effect on children of maternal employment.

Mothers, daughters and careers

This chapter provides an overview of how having a mother with a career influences the daughter's own career ambitions. This book's research shows that at the start of the daughters' careers their mothers are indeed highly influential. Most daughters thought their mothers were the main influence over their academic success, which provided a gateway to a career. Many also thought of their mothers as successful and described them as role models. However, the research also shows that having a mother as a role model of career success is far less predictive than one might imagine of the daughters progressing as far or further in their own careers. People can be role models simply by doing what they do. Mentoring implies a more active role for the more experienced party.