Successful Women but “Bad Mothers”: Negative Motherhood Evaluations as Backlash Against Working Mothers

Abstract

Mothers are often held to unrealistic expectations that can create a significant amount of pressure. Guided by the status incongruity hypothesis and our conceptualization of motherhood as shaped by patriarchy, the present research proposes that women's pursuit of career success violates traditional gender norms, thereby eliciting backlash that undermines evaluations of their motherhood. Focusing on Chinese working mothers, we hypothesized that their advancement in the workplace would elicit negative motherhood evaluations and moral responses. Two experiments identified the existence of the backlash. Specifically, working mothers with higher ambition (Study 1, N = 396) or higher professional status (Study 2a, N = 400), but not working fathers (Study 2b, N = 260), were more likely to be judged as bad mothers and to elicit stronger moral emotions and blame than their lower-ambition or lower-status counterparts. In addition, as a mirror of social evaluations, new mothers’ fear of being evaluated as bad mothers was positively associated with their career ambition and work income (i.e., fear of backlash; Study 3, N = 200). By extending the status incongruity hypothesis to the domain of motherhood, this research contributes to the current understanding of how evaluations of motherhood help reinforce the gender-based hierarchy. Together, these findings highlight how patriarchy constructs a direct trade-off between career success and being a good mother, offering new insights into mothers’ work–family conflict.

Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843261422417

Keywords

backlash motherhood gender hierarchy work–family conflict status incongruity hypothesis

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