The GoodWorkingMother: Managerial Women’s Sensemaking and Feelings About Work–Family Issues

Getting Past the Dream of a Bounded Life? An Analysis of Advertisements in Working Mother Magazine

“…Once we recognize this in full, we can have much healthier and more comprehensive discussions of what "good" motherhood might represent. Buzzanell et al (2005) suggests that the "good" working mother is a very "fragile" creature in the United States, who is constantly dreaming of and working towards a division between paid work and motherhood but finds that division almost impossible to create and maintain. Very similar to the prescriptions for action that surround beauty norms or hegemonic masculinity, prescriptions for action (or purchase) that exist in Working Mother advertisements alsostill encourage women to continue an endless pursuit of work-family balance and separation that cannot exist in most women's real lives.Even though we are glad to see some evidence of the difficulty women have in drawing a boundary between paid work and motherhood within the advertisements (enough to poke holes in the notion of a strict boundary), we believe more outright acknowledgment of work-to-family and family-to-work spillover in advertisements is necessary if Working Mother truly aims to advocate for their readers.…”

“…Nonetheless, a positive image that Working Mother might currently be selling is that of the "good enough mother" or "managerial mother" that both Quindlen (2005) and Buzzanell et al (2005) discuss. If one peruses the attention to motherhood throughout the magazine, the reader comes away with the sense that it is okay to make shortcuts in motherhood in order to prioritize paid work at times.…”

“…Knowing that motherhood time can be organized and controlled at times is a good thing for working mothers to know. iv Thus, Working Motheris (perhaps unconsciously) approving a "good enough" motherhood (Buzzanell et al, 2005) for professional working women that may be much healthier than any rush towards intensive motherhood. Advertisements do not fault women readers for the lack of time spent with children, the rushing of motherhood time, or the work-to-family spillover that might occur.Working Mother advertisements infer that motherhood does not need to be all-encompassing in time or energyin order to be done well.…”

“…Part of this work is upkeeping a very strict boundary between motherhood and paid work (or at least the appearances of a boundary) so that motherhood time is protected.This image work is the responsibility of individual working women (FirstAuthor, 2008) and is the "manic motherhood" reported on by Quindlen (2005), as working mothers frantically attempt to (1) carry out intensive motherhood despite working, and (2) maintain the boundary betweentheir two worlds. The most that working mothers can be, however, according to some recent research, is "good enough mothers," as they try to balance and divide paid work and motherhood demands (Quindlen, 2005;Buzzanell et al, 2005). i 22 International Journal of Gender and Women's Studies, Vol.…”

Making Sense of Mobile Technology

“…Sensemaking theory was used to gain deep understanding of the phenomena under study (Buzzanell et al, 2005;Stensaker & Falkenberg, 2007) by providing a lens through which to examine the process, whereby individuals come to terms with new and constantly changing situations. Although sensemaking theory is commonly used in a number of fields such as management and education, we found few examples of its use in information systems research.…”