‘I’m so much more myself now, coming back to work’ - working class mothers, paid work and childcare.



quality childcare are further identified as contributing to a preference of working class
and poor mothers to stay at home and look after their own children, rather than work
outside the home (Hays 2003; Power 2005, Crompton 2006a). In an analysis of
‘gendered moral rationalities’ Duncan and Edwards (1996) locate mother’s choices
vis-a-vis paid employment within a triangle of ‘primarily mother’, ‘primarily worker’
and ‘mother/worker integral’ identities. The working class mothers in their research
clearly connect with the ‘primarily mother’ identity (Edwards & Duncan 1996;

Duncan & Edwards 1999; Duncan et al. 2003; Duncan 2005). Different classed
attitudes towards women’s employment among mothers were also observed in
quantitative research, e.g. Crompton using the 2002 British Social Attitudes survey
finds that mothers from households which fall into manual and routine occupational
categories hold more traditional views than those who were categorised as managerial
and professional (2006b, pp. 668-669).

Mothers’ absolute commitment to their children is of course not restricted to working
class contexts, as Vincent and Ball observe, ‘the need to construct a morally adequate
account of oneself as mother requires women of all classes to present their
prioritisation of their children’s needs’ (2006, p. 72). Parenting is not practiced in
isolation and the models and influences of one’s peer group and immediate
surroundings play a part in the moral universe of mothering. As Duncan puts it,
choices ‘become social moralities [that are in turn] geographically and historically
articulated’ (2005, p. 73). Irwin notes the social context of ‘choosing’ and its close
links to locality, observing that mothers in her study who live in almost uniformly
white, working class neighbourhoods expressed more conservative or traditional
views with regards to mothers’ involvement with the labour market, than women with



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