Thomson, Rachel and Kehily, Mary Jane
(2011).
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| DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Link: | http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1080/09540253.2010.490205 |
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| Google Scholar: | Look up in Google Scholar |
Abstract
This paper explores the transition to first-time motherhood as experienced by a small sub-sample of women engaged in the professional care of young children. In the context of a wider study of motherhood in the UK, their experience of combining work with new motherhood was distinctive. Women who professionally care for young children present a counter narrative to the view that teaching and motherhood can be blended. Negotiating the boundaries between work and motherhood produced a troubling reflexivity in which difficult feelings emerged and collided. Working in urban education involves emotionally intense forms of attachment that are disrupted by pregnancy. Becoming a mother prompts a renegotiation of professional and personal boundaries, leading women to pursue mothering as a separate enterprise, marked by individual solutions to care and career. Separating themselves from their working environment, women simultaneously isolate themselves from their middle-class counterparts who pay for childcare and return to work.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
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| Copyright Holders: | 2011 Taylor & Francis |
| ISSN: | 0954-0253 |
| Keywords: | teacher identities; maternal identities; work; motherhood; early years teaching |
| Academic Unit/Department: | Health and Social Care > Health and Social Care Education and Language Studies > Childhood, Development and Learning |
| Interdisciplinary Research Centre: | Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET) |
| Item ID: | 31526 |
| Depositing User: | Mary Jane Kehily |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Jan 2012 12:26 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2012 14:24 |
| URI: | http://oro.open.ac.uk/id/eprint/31526 |
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