Unemployment influences life experiences and outcomes, but how it does so may be shaped by gender and parenthood. Because research on unemployment focuses on men’s experiences of unemployment, it presents as universal a process that may be gendered. This article asks: how do college-educated, heterosexual, married mothers experience involuntary unemployment? Drawing on in-depth interviews with unemployed mothers in the US, their husbands, and follow-up interviews, this article finds that the experience of job loss is tempered for mothers as they derive a culturally valued identity from motherhood which also anchors their lives. Husbands’ support emphasises that employment is one of several options mothers can pursue. Couples pivot attention to husbands’ careers as they worry about finances, often resulting in marital tensions. Using mothers’ unemployment as a case, this study demonstrates that unemployment has more divergent implications depending on gender and parenthood than prior theories suggest.
BarnesR (2016) Raising the Race: Black Career Women Redefine Marriage, Motherhood, and Community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
2.
BernardJ (1982) The Future of Marriage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
3.
BittmanMEnglandPSayerLFolbreNMathesonG (2003) When does gender trump money? Bargaining and time in household work. American Journal of Sociology109: 186–214.
4.
Blair-LoyM (2003) Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5.
BuffelVMissinneSBrackeP (2017) The social norm of unemployment in relation to mental health and medical care use: the role of regional unemployment levels and of displaced workers. Work, Employment, and Society31: 501–521.
CharmazK (2006) Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis. New York: SAGE.
8.
ChenVT (2015) Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
9.
ChesleyN (2011) Stay-at-home fathers and breadwinning mothers: gender, couple dynamics, and social change. Gender & Society25(5): 642–664.
10.
ChristopherK (2012) Extensive mothering employed mothers’ constructions of the good mother. Gender & Society26: 73–96.
11.
CohenP (2018) Enduring Bonds: Inequality, Marriage, Parenting, and Everything Else that Makes Families Great and Terrible. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
12.
CollinsC (2019) Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
13.
CongerRDElderGHLorenzFOCongerKJSimonsRLWhitbeckLB, et al (1990) Linking economic hardship to marital quality and instability. Journal of Marriage and Family52: 643–656.
DemantasIMyersK (2015) Step up and be a man in a different manner: unemployed men reframing masculinity. The Sociological Quarterly56(4): 640–644.
16.
Dotti SaniGMSchererS (2018) Maternal employment: enabling factors in context. Work, Employment and Society32: 75–92.
17.
DowDM (2016) Integrated motherhood: beyond traditional ideologies of motherhood. Journal of Marriage and Family78: 180–196.
18.
DowDM (2019) Mothering While Black: Boundaries and Burdens of Middle-Class Parenthood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
19.
FarberHS (2015) Job Loss in the Great Recession and Its Aftermath: US Evidence from the Displaced Workers Survey. Working Paper. 21216. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.
20.
FeulsMFieselerCSuphanA (2014) A social net? Internet and social media use during unemployment. Work, Employment and Society28: 551–570.
21.
GlennEN (2002) Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
22.
GushKScottJLaurieH (2015) Households’ responses to spousal job loss: ‘all change’ or ‘carry on as usual’?Work, Employment and Society29: 703–719.
23.
HaysS (1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
24.
JahodaM (1982) Employment and Unemployment: A Social-Psychological Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25.
KillewaldA (2016) Money, work, and marital stability: assessing change in the gendered determinants of divorce. American Sociological Review81: 696–719.
26.
LandivarLC (2017) Mothers at Work: Who Opts Out?Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
27.
LaneCM (2011) A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-collar Unemployment. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
LegerskiEMCornwallM (2010) Working-class job loss, gender, and the negotiation of household labor. Gender & Society24(4): 447–474.
30.
LopezSHPhillipsLA (2019) Unemployed: white-collar job searching after the Great Recession. Work and Occupations46(4): 470–510.
31.
MillerT (2005) Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
NewmanKS (1999) Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
33.
NorrisDR (2016) Job Loss, Identity, and Mental Health. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
34.
O’ConnorJSOrloffASShaverS (1999) States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35.
PedullaDSThébaudS (2015) Can we finish the revolution? Gender, work-family ideals, and institutional constraint. American Sociological Review80: 116–139.
36.
PepinJRCotterDA (2018) Separating spheres? Diverging trends in youth’s gender attitudes about work and family. Journal of Marriage and Family80: 7–24.
37.
RaitoPLahelmaE (2015) Coping with unemployment among journalists and managers. Work, Employment and Society29: 720–737.
38.
RaoAH (2017) Stand by your man: wives’ emotion work during men’s unemployment. Journal of Marriage and Family79(3): 636–656.
39.
RoyKZvonkovicAGoldbergASharpELaRossaR (2015) Sampling richness and qualitative integrity: challenges for research with families. Journal of Marriage and Family77: 243–260.
40.
SchneiderD (2012) Gender deviance and household work: the role of occupation. American Journal of Sociology117: 1029–1072.
41.
SchneiderDHarknettKMcLanahanS (2016) Intimate partner violence in the great recession. Demography53: 471–505.
42.
SharoneO (2013) Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
43.
SmallML (2009) ‘How many cases do I need?’ On science and the logic of case selection in field-based research. Ethnography10: 5–38.
44.
StoneP (2007) Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
45.
TownsendNW (2002) The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
46.
WeisshaarK (2014) Earnings equality and relationship stability for same-sex and heterosexual couples. Social Forces93: 93–123.
47.
YoungC (2012) Losing a job: the nonpecuniary cost of unemployment in the United States. Social Forces91: 609–633.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
