Compromised Choices

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the compromise that has come to characterise the experience of combining careers and motherhood. For eight women in this study, compromise defined their part-time and flexible work transition in marked ways. They are highly aware of the constraints that stymie their personal goals. One woman recounts her experience of negotiating access to flexibility in her paid work arrangements with a line manager who was unsupportive. Another explains her success and failures negotiating with her husband to share her domestic workload. Compromised choice intention narratives reflect working-pattern choices that are structured by external circumstances and are made in situations that are not as open or free as they could be in terms of facilitating women's achievement of their ideal ways to combine work with family life.