Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
11-2019
Abstract
Unemployment influences life experiences and outcomes, but how it does so may be shaped by gender and parenthood. Because research on unemployment focuses on men’s experiences of unemployment, it presents as universal a process that may be gendered. This article asks: how do college-educated, heterosexual, married mothers experience involuntary unemployment? Drawing on in-depth interviews with unemployed mothers in the US, their husbands, and follow-up interviews, this article finds that the experience of job loss is tempered for mothers as they derive a culturally valued identity from motherhood which also anchors their lives. Husbands’ support emphasises that employment is one of several options mothers can pursue. Couples pivot attention to husbands’ careers as they worry about finances, often resulting in marital tensions. Using mothers’ unemployment as a case, this study demonstrates that unemployment has more divergent implications depending on gender and parenthood than prior theories suggest.
Keywords
gender, motherhood, professionals, unemployment
Discipline
Family, Life Course, and Society | Work, Economy and Organizations
Research Areas
Sociology
Publication
Work, Employment and Society
First Page
1
Last Page
18
ISSN
0950-0170
Identifier
10.1177/0950017019887334
Publisher
SAGE Publications (UK and US)
Citation
RAO, Aliya Hamid.(2019). From professionals to professional mothers?: how college-educated, married mothers experience unemployment in the US. Work, Employment and Society, , 1-18.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3126
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017019887334