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Thomson, Rachel and Kehily, Mary Jane
(2011).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2010.490205
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.
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About
- Item ORO ID
- 31526
- Item Type
- Journal Item
- ISSN
- 0954-0253
- Keywords
- teacher identities; maternal identities; work; motherhood; early years teaching
- Academic Unit or School
-
Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Health, Wellbeing and Social Care
Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport - Research Group
- Education
- Copyright Holders
- © 2011 Taylor & Francis
- Depositing User
- Mary Jane Kehily