Combining motherhood and work in the creative industries: Mothers have the problem

Abstract

This article examines film and television workers’ experience of mothering in Ireland and argues that not only are mothers constructed as a ‘problem’ in these Creative Industries workplaces because of their care work duties, but the ‘problem’ of work’s incompatibility with motherhood is presented as one to be ‘solved’ by mothers themselves. Drawing from the scholarship on motherhood in film and television work and 12 interviews with workers in the film and television Creative Industries sectors who are mothers, we undertake a thematic analysis to uncover common experiences and insights that are reflective of but depart in some ways from the literature. We identify four themes that suggest that motherhood remains Othered in film and television work and that balancing care work and motherhood remains a form of additional labour that mothers (almost exclusively) must undertake: managing pregnancy at work; maternity leave and the return to work; care for children while working; and mothers’ finding solutions.