Good Working Mothers as Jugglers: A Critical Look at Two Work-Family Balance Films

We examine the portrayals of two good working mothers in popular work–family balance films—Melanie in One Fine Day (1996) and Kate in I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011). Using a critical standpoint, we build on communication work–family/life scholarship to extend theoretical understanding of underlying ideological notions of the good working mother. In particular, we analyze Melanie and Kate’s performances that reflect the underlying cultural ideologies of being an ideal worker, a true domestic woman, and an intensive mother. Further, we explicate how this juggling of identities portrays good working mothers as perpetually defensive. We go beyond the analysis of ideologies to lay out some of the consequences of the performance portrayals of the good working mother, in that she should (a) accept “punishments” from her children, (b) conceptualize fathers as secondary parents, (c) solve problems on her own, and (d) choose family over work.Citation: Kirby, E. L., Riforgiate, S. E., Anderson, I. K., Lahman, M. P., & Lietzenmayer, A. M. (2016). Good Working Mothers as Jugglers: A Critical Look at Two Work-Family Balance Films. Journal of Family Communication, 16, 76-93. doi:10.1080/15267431.2015.111121

An Embodied Approach in a Cognitive Discipline

Academia can be an uncomfortable place to work. Academics are examples of professionals who have multiple stresses and pressures. Being an academic is often a fundamental part of someone’s identity. Academia can be a cerebral, critical, competitive and judgmental environment. This chapter draws from a study using creative research methods with academics who self-identified as having an embodied practice. There are different definitions of embodiment. I use embodiment to mean both a state of being and a process of learning about the self, and so embodied practices are ways of bringing conscious self-awareness to and about the body. The academics reflected on the meanings they attributed to these embodied practices, tensions with their embodied identity, and how they used them to impact on their wellbeing