Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Maternal presenteeism: theorizing the importance for working mothers of 'being there' for their children beyond infancy

Edgley, Alison

Maternal presenteeism: theorizing the importance for working mothers of 'being there' for their children beyond infancy Thumbnail


Authors



Abstract

This study theorizes why full-time working women with partners and school-age children deploy talk of maximal irreplaceable maternal care. The concept of maternal presenteeism frames women's personal beliefs, perceptions, and ambitions as subject to normative pressures associated with intensive mothering and a postfeminist sensibility. The accounts of 20 women who combine motherhood of school-age children with full-time professional work are analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings show that even women in demanding careers with partners talk about seeking to be maximally visible to their children and construct forms of workplace flexibility as a matter of luck. By contrast, maternal irreplaceability was viewed as a matter of fate. Examples of resistance to maternal presenteeism served to highlight these normative assumptions and a conflation of ideologies within the accounts of some working mothers. Vestiges of “intensive mothering,” performative notions of “presenteeism” drawn from regimes of work, and a postfeminist sensibility can be identified in the intersubjective experience of some working mothers. A postfeminist sensibility explains why social practices consistent with forms of “intensive mothering” may persist beyond infant years, and yet get recast as choice.

Citation

Edgley, A. (2021). Maternal presenteeism: theorizing the importance for working mothers of 'being there' for their children beyond infancy. Gender, Work and Organization, 28(3), 1023-1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12619

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 18, 2020
Online Publication Date Feb 16, 2021
Publication Date 2021-05
Deposit Date Jan 6, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Gender, Work & Organization
Print ISSN 0968-6673
Electronic ISSN 1468-0432
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 28
Issue 3
Pages 1023-1039
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12619
Keywords Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management; Gender Studies
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5203022
Publisher URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.12619

Files




You might also like



Downloadable Citations