Feeling Flexibility

Abstract

This chapter explores the hitherto underexplored affective dimensions of the lived experience of ‘doing’ flexible work arrangements for mothers in professional and managerial jobs. It focuses on the effects on mind, body, and spirit. For women navigating the transition simultaneously with a return to work following maternity leave, the maternal body was at the centre of the experience. Tiredness was not exclusive to new and nursing mothers, the physical and emotional impacts of working intensively in largely unadjusted jobs or inhospitable workplace contexts are viscerally present in women's accounts. Hochschild's concept of emotional labour is highly relevant to the professional motherhood project and this analysis shows how the scope and span of women's emotional workload increases when they work outside the home.