The shifting work-life experiences and cultural habitus of motherhood: an Australian perspective

There is now a burgeoning literature on the ways in which women's paid work, care and family life orientations have changed in recent decades, particularly in countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Despite the significant attention in recent years by some researchers, politicians as well as in popular discourse, on 'individual/personal choices' for explaining women's paid work and family orientations and outcomes, little of this detail figures in the experiences of the women who are the focus of this study. Rather, women's work-family arrangements are complex with constant adjusting, accommodating and juggling between the fixed and immutable factors. In this paper, I argue that there is an absence of 'individual/personal choice' as represented in the dominant rhetoric about 'free/genuine choice', in relation to women's paid work and care experiences and arrangements after childbirth. The main focus is on the Australian context, drawing on select case stories from a longitudinal, qualitative research project in progress with 27 women. I demonstrate that women's paid work, care and family arrangements after childbirth are located in an internalised cultural 'habitus' of motherhood, which constructs women's paid work and family realities more than notions of 'individual/personal choice'.