ABSTRACT
In this chapter we return to the women who were partnered mothers at the time of their interview, some combining this with casual or part-time employment. In Chapter 5 the post-education work and family history of these women were traced. This is resumed in the first section of this chapter which establishes that most of the women returned to employment quite soon after becoming mothers. This was overwhelmingly a return to part-time work. The immediate reasons for returning to work and the kind of work taken are explored and act as a basis for revisiting Hakim’s theory of work orientations. These women were clearly ‘modern home-makers’ in the sense that their priority was the work associated with caring for their children, husbands or partners and homes. It is only around this priority that paid employment was fitted. The question is whether this is an expression of ‘family orientation’. In Hakim’s theory women make choices on the basis of deep-seated and stable commitments to either career or family. Modern home-maker behaviour is the result of such a broad value orientation to the priority of family. In considering this we turn to two bodies of evidence drawn from the early mothers. It is first established that these women were hardly in a position of choice, given their own labour market options and the kind of relationships they had with their husbands or partners. Here the constraints of the women’s situation are emphasized. However, many of these women were recognizing what Hakim apparently does not, that children grow up and women’s primary child-care role diminishes. When, second, we look at the women’s aspirations for the future, the majority were looking to opportunities to develop their lives in different directions from the modern home-maker pattern. This again seems to be more a result of the interaction of agency and structure than a manifestation of a stable work orientation.
