ABSTRACT
This chapter describes early childhood education (ECE) teachers' lives and work by presenting four portraits drawn from teacher life histories. It explores these histories in relationship to a prominent issue that ran across the data set. Working mothers, including ECE teachers, commonly struggle to balance home life and work demands. For single mothers the issue was especially pressing, as it was for women whose husbands' employment proved precarious for a variety of reasons from industry downsizing to health problems. For the third of lead and assistant teachers who were highly dissatisfied with their jobs, low pay was a central issue which contributed significantly to the difficulty of achieving balance. Life course concepts have proven themselves useful for making sense of life narratives, as Tomlinson demonstrates in her study of the work/life balance issues confronted by women.
