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Article Excerpt
The transition to motherhood in an organizational context has been conceptualized, investigated and managed as a critical turning point in women's lives, involving a major life decision about whether to return to work, and if so, in what capacity. Perspectives on return to work vary in how much choice is attributed to women on this matter and whose agenda (individual, organization) is regarded as most at stake. All nonetheless assume an objective reality (i.e. of the return to work decision) that can be measured, explained and managed using rational neutral enquiry. The study reported here, on the contrary, assumes no such singular depersonalized reality. It gives priority instead to employees' first-hand experiential accounts of transition to motherhood. Specifically, here, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith, 1996, 1999, 2003, 2004; Smith, Jarman, & Osborn, 1999) is employed to analyse the experiences of eight women through pregnancy to their return to work.
Socio-economic context
Women currently make up 45% of the labour force, accounting for an estimated 80% of employment growth since 1995 (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2004). Political efforts to harness the economic value of women have gathered force in the UK, including attempts to entice more women back into the workplace after child-birth (e.g. Confederation of British Industry, 2004; Women and Equality Unit (DTI), 2004). The basic economic reality is that practically every organization will, at some stage, employ women who are, or will become mothers. The issue of how to ensure these women return to work after childbirth has thus become increasingly salient, particularly if an organization has invested strongly in employee training and development (e.g. Shellenbarger, 1998).
The proportion of women returning to work soon after childbirth has doubled since 1983: almost two-thirds of women who leave employment to have children are economically active again within 9 months of childbirth (Labour Force Survey, 2004). From a 'labour capital' perspective, this statistic can be accounted for by the combination of opportunities (in particular, pay-protected maternity leave) and costs (in particular, the cost of skill depletion in today's economic climate). Findings do indeed show that the greater the investment a woman has made in acquiring experience, training and reputation prior to childbirth, the less likely she is to take her full maternity entitlement by withdrawing later in her pregnancy and returning to work sooner than her less qualified counterparts (e.g. Blau, Ferber, & Winkler, 1998). As Waldfogel and colleagues (Joshi, Paci, & Waldfogel, 1998; Waldfogel, 1998) have found, the penalties to both the individual and the economy can be offset entirely if mothers maintain continuity of employment after birth (i.e. returning after 1 year), especially to their pre-birth employer. However, this apparently 'simple' cost-benefit equation, does not take account of the fact that of the 60% or so of women who do return to work to their pre-birth employer, 40% do so part-time and to relatively marginal positions, irrespective of their qualifications and experience (Houston & Marks, 2003; Rake, 2000). Moreover, even from a rational-economic perspective, the decision is complicated by the fact that prenatal income level may mean that it is not financially viable for a woman to return to work relative to the cost of child care (Houston & Marks, 2003).
Psychology of return to work
Looked at from an employee's perspective, however, it is clear that not all women actually want to work or at least on organizational terms. Controversially, Hakim (2002) has argued that women vary in their preferences for work and that these drive the decision about whether to return to work and, if so, in what capacity. She classifies women into home centred (around 20%), work centred (around 20%) and adaptive (around 60%) types. The work-centred woman is highly likely to return to work after childbirth (if indeed she does have children), unless it is not economically viable for her to do so (although these women tend to have higher prenatal income levels that compensate for the costs of substitute child care). The home-centred woman is, on the other hand, highly unlikely to return to work after childbirth unless financial circumstances make it imperative that she does so (although these women tend to select partners with income levels that make it possible for them to stay at home). Such women may consider it morally inappropriate for mothers to work, an attitude that strongly explains why women who have otherwise invested highly in their education and training, stop working after childbirth irrespective of spouse income level (Glass & Riley, 1998).
The vast majority of women are, however, adaptive insofar as they commit to both work and family domains, although will mostly work part-time to enable these two life domains to be more easily balanced. If these women do prioritize work or family domains at any point, it is likely to be temporary and circumstantial. While statistically speaking there is no disputing that most women do indeed return to work part-time after childbirth (Rake, 2000), it is the reason why that is open to debate.
Crompton and Harris (1999) argue that women's return decisions are much more circumstantial than preference theory holds, dictated by a mixture of external opportunities and constraints, and that their work orientations will alter accordingly, while Houston and Marks (2003) argue that these decisions are more realistically a function of both preference and circumstance. Looking closely at the decisions of 349 first-time mothers through from pregnancy to when their first child was 1-year-old, Houston and Marks found that return behaviours were broadly consistent with pre-childbirth intentions in the way classified by preference theory. However, 24% of women were unable to return to work as planned, supporting the idea that many return decisions are circumstantial, depending for instance on income levels relative to costs of child care, perceived anticipated organizational support for return to work and extent of personal planning for return. Anticipated lack of support, for example, may come about because of negative organizational experiences leading up to childbirth including subtle (or not so subtle) exclusion from activities and/or reassignment to less important tasks (e.g. Halpert, Wilson, & Hickman, 1993; Swiss, 1996; Thompson & Francesco, 1996).
Lack of perceived actual organizational support (both explicitly, from managers and immediate colleagues, and implicitly from, say, unspoken prejudice against using family-friendly work initiatives) is also a pivotal reason why those who do return to work may resign after a short period, because work commitments do not comfortably reconcile with those arising from the family domain (e.g. Brown, Ferrara, & Schley, 2002; Grover & Crooker, 1995; Joesch, 1997; Reardon, 2000; Thompson, Beauvais, & Lyness, 1999). Such findings hold even after controlling for financial, marital and familial circumstances (e.g. number of children) (Glass & Riley, 1998; see also Houston & Marks, 2003). Against these findings it is worth noting, that all of the seven women interviewed by Borrill and Kidd (1994) struggled on an emotional level to discuss their change in status with their immediate managers during maternity leave and on their return to work.
To summarize, the contemporary psychological literature models return to work as literally a decision task underwritten by a combination of internal imperatives (i.e. intrinsic preferences) and/or external factors (social and economic opportunities and constraints, organizational support).
Experience of becoming a mother in an organizational context
As informative as the decision perspective is for organizations, it does not do justice to the fact that pregnancy, childbirth and the transition to motherhood are profoundly transformative experiences for women (Smith, 1999). By focusing purely on the decision to return as a quantifiable issue, not only dissociates the decision from its transitional context, but also glosses over the potentially highly complex nature of the whole experience. For instance, a substantial proportion of mothers in Houston and Marks (2003) longitudinal study, who did not return to work as intended, experienced emotional difficulties at the prospect of leaving their babies. In an intensive study of the experiences of four women during their transition to motherhood, Smith described a major shift in subjective orientation from the public domain of work, to the more personal and intimate world of home and family during pregnancy. These women, Smith suggests, were preparing for motherhood by visualizing themselves as mothers and psychologically orienting themselves accordingly. While he also noted a shift towards a more outward orientation with impending birth, the period of post-birth adjustment could also be described as gradually more inward looking. The latter was coincidental with a major reconsideration of their life-plans in which work did not feature as strongly or in the same way that it did before.
There is nothing so private yet also, so public as motherhood in Western society, with many (often conflicting) cultural prescriptions for how to be a good mother (Burman, 1994). While on the one hand being urged back into the workplace, on the other, a mother may face extreme confusion as to how to be a good mother (or to avoid being considered a bad mother) if they do. By returning to work a woman may face heavy guilt (resulting from internalized cultural prescriptions for good motherhood) about using child-care facilities (Feldman, Sussman, & Zigler, 2004) and/or of perhaps having to stop breastfeeding sooner than is deemed ideal for the baby (Mlay, Keddy,...
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