So What Is the Care/Career Conundrum™?
I love this concept by Dr Sophie Brock - A Motherhood Studies Sociologist. Sophie dictates how I feel in a conceptual model that makes total sense. I am a strong believer that you can be both a great mum and have a career. You can have a work/life balance without that feeling of "mum guilt".
Sophie explains the Care/Career Conundrum in the following way. (The following description has been used from Sophie's website to ensure the explanation is correct).
The circle of ‘care’ represents what we can think about as care-work and ‘mothering’. Attached to the role of being a Mother is the expectation of selflessness, always putting children and others’ needs above their own. To be a ‘good Mother’, we are asked to always put ‘care’ before ‘careers’.
The circle of ‘career’ represents what we can think about as waged labour, paid work, our careers - as ‘work’. To be ‘good workers’ - including good employees, good business owners, and to build a ‘successful’ career, we are driven by individualism, neoliberalism and capitalism to place priority on ‘work’ over ‘care’.
Mothers are ‘caught’ in the middle. Creating a conundrum - where we are being ‘pulled’ in opposing directions. We can never step fully into one circle, because we’ll be seen as abandoning the other. How we navigate this conundrum is not simply a ‘choice’ we make, but is influenced by lots of factors related to socioeconomic location, support networks, access to resources and more.
‘Intensive mothering ideology’ was developed and coined by Sharon Hays, with scholars such as Prof Andrea O’Reilly and Linda Rose Ennis expanding on and further contextualising the concept.
What do you think about Sophie's concept? Does it make sense to you?
