Identity integration: The narratives of working mothers

Previous research emphasizes the challenges and bifurcation in career and home life that working mothers often encounter. Less is known about how working mothers integrate working and mothering into their identity. This qualitative study adopts a matricentric feminist pragmatic paradigm to explore the process of identity integration in working mothers. Participants consisted of seven working mothers who engaged in paid work when children were five years old and younger and identified as being content in working and mothering. Participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Using narrative thematic analysis, four identity processes were produced, which consisted of “developing an expectant working mothering identity,” “experiencing motherhood as an identity disruption,” “integrating working and mothering,” and “maintaining a working mother identity.” These four identity processes encapsulate an additional 10 themes, which describe the specific actions that working mothers undertook to integrate work and motherhood into their identity.