Mother, Musician, Performer: Living the Impossible?

Abstract

This article draws on 19 qualitative in-depth interviews with classically trained musicians in Australia and the UK, who have an active performing career and identify as mothers. Building on pioneering research on motherhood, work, and leadership in the creative industries, this article explores how mothers navigate the challenges of a precarious career in the music industry, thus adding to our understanding of the systematic barriers to women's leadership in the creative industries. In addition to highlighting widely discussed themes relating to the juggle of combining having children with a career, such as the unavailability and unaffordability of childcare, the article sheds light on hitherto unexplored issues—at least in the field of classical music studies—around the embodied aspects of pregnancy, breastfeeding and sleep deprivation and the ways in which they affect performing and career development. As the article will demonstrate, and despite more public awareness and discussion of ongoing inequalities in the classical music profession and the cultural and creative industries more broadly, the personas of “mother” and “performer” continue to be seen as mutually exclusive. Constructions of “the ideal worker” as fully committed do not only affect how mother-performers navigate the practical challenges of organizing childcare in a context where work is unpredictable and offered at very short notice, but also how they understand and construct their own, almost unintelligible, working selves.