First-Time Mothers' Accounts of Inequality in the Division of Labour

Abstract

The early months of motherhood represent an acute transitional period in which mothers are thrown back upon their intimate relationships with their spouse or sexual partner. The research reported here looks at the experience of mothering for a group of mothers from both stable and disrupted backgrounds using a time-use diary and in-depth interviews. It examines the relationship between the structural and environmental factors in these women's lives, and their experience of support and stress in the early months of first-time motherhood. The focus is upon gender-based inequality in the division of labour in early parenting and the way in which mothers come to terms with this. Mothers' accounts of the relative allocation of power and distribution of resources within the household are indicative of their struggle to come to terms with structural gender imbalances within the context of a close, and notionally reciprocal, relationship. Gender relationships are seen as a competition for scarce resources in which mothers are hampered by current sex-role ideology which characterizes motherhood as intrinsically rewarding and the fathers' contribution as an optional extra.