Solo-living and childless professional women: navigating the 'balanced mother ideal' over the fertile years

Wilkinson, Krystal and Rouse, Julia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5967-6038 (2023) Solo-living and childless professional women: navigating the 'balanced mother ideal' over the fertile years. Gender, Work and Organization, 30 (1). pp. 68-85. ISSN 0968-6673

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Abstract

One in five women are childless at midlife, and for an estimated 90 percent of these women, childlessness is not actively chosen. In this article, we explore how solo-living and childless professional women navigate the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over their fertile years and what this means for organizations and organization studies. Drawing on biographical narrative interview data from solo-living professional women in the UK, we argue that identifications with the balanced mother ideal change over the life course as a result of futurity, ambivalence, and suppression of negative emotions—part of the logic of both postfeminism and neoliberal feminism—and the ‘disenfranchized grief’ of contingent childlessness. At the point of late fertility, the absence of alternative social narratives to the balanced mother ideal appears to create a crisis point for childless women, including in the workplace. We conclude our article with recommendations for how organizations can better cater to the needs of this significant, yet largely silenced, demographic group.