2 - Anticipating Motherhood

Summary

In this chapter, women’s expectations and plans for motherhood are followed, using qualitative, longitudinal interview data collected in the UK between 2017 and 2019. Their narrations are compared to key experiences from the original motherhood study conducted 21 years earlier. In both motherhood studies, familiarity with normative constructions of ‘good’ motherhood is apparent well before pregnancy. But in the contemporary study, these are now also informed by limitless digital resources, such as social media platforms, forums and applications (apps). The average age for first-time motherhood in the UK has increased so that women have longer established work biographies and career histories before experiencing maternal subjectivity. In this antenatal period, the women draw upon strands of different discourse to narrate pregnancy and their preparations for motherhood, including managing a pregnant body, plans for birth and a return to the workplace. Generational changes are also invoked, alongside hopes that grandparents will help fill anticipated childcare gaps, easing the financial burden of working parenthood. The discourse of ‘balance’ and ‘balancing work and family life’ is used to describe plans for managing working motherhood/parenthood, which either seem possible from this pre-baby vantage point or, for some, are already provoking a sense of anxiety.