NorM - Norms around Motherhood

Nowadays, mothers are no longer constrained to the role of family carer and they increasingly participate in education and labour markets. Yet, the idea that women are mainly responsible for their childrens care persists in social norms about motherhood. Despite many studies investigating this incomplete revolution, a differentiated view on social norms about motherhood remains elusive, particularly regarding collectively constructed and potentially conflicting norms, their meanings and consequences for individual mothers, and their integration into strategies of action. The proposed study will address these research gaps by pursuing two main objectives: (a) evaluating similarities and differences in collective constructions of good mothers among Austrians with different regional, educational, gender, parental status, and age backgrounds and (b) providing in- depth insights into individual mothers strategies for dealing with normative discourses. Our main research questions are as follows: What are normative models of good motherhood in different Austrian contexts, and how are they constructed, justified, and handled collectively and individually? Norms and discourse around motherhood strongly depend on policy. For example, welfare states have legal constructs of good motherhood that outline specific policies for work leave, employment, and childcare. As such, these policies make assumptions about what defines a good mother. In the European Union, Austria represents a comparably conservative welfare state with policies that offer a wide range of childcare options. It also has relatively long parental leaves of two or more years, on average. We will analyse how different normative constructions of good motherhood relate to each other and to legal regulations, institutional settings, and structural settings within the Austrian context. We will take a differentiated view on motherhood, following and extending the cultural approach, to evaluate whether and how concurrent normative constructs coexist. Relying on a multi-method sequential research design, we will conduct focus group discussions in Austria, using vignettes. To capture accurate social norms about motherhood, focus group members will include a mix of genders, education levels, regional backgrounds, ages, and parental status. Using individual interviews, we also will reconstruct mothers strategies in dealing with normative accounts. Data analysis will involve using the documentary method to capture concurrent normative tendencies and their relevance in individuals lives. By identifying norms in their plurality, this project established a basis for future research on the individual and social consequences of conformity to and deviance from norms. Through a planned cooperation with Université Catholique de Louvain, our results will be extended by comparing them with the Belgian country as a most different context regarding institutional, legal, and structural settings. Research team: Ulrike Zartler (PI), Eva-Maria Schmidt (post-doctoral researcher), Viktoria Parisot (pre-doctoral researcher)

The study NorM (Norms Around Motherhood) provides findings on what is expected of mothers in Austria today, and how these expectations are negotiated on a collective level in society. The study also analyses on an individual level how mothers deal with these expectations, what challenges they experience and what strategies they develop to deal with them. The expectations relate to social norms. On the one hand, these norms affect mothers themselves because they behave in the way they believe is expected of them, and on the other hand, they also affect many other actors in a mother's network, who expect and demand certain behaviors from mothers. The study shows that the expectations for mothers are diverse and often utopian. The results are based on a systematic literature review and an analyses of qualitative data: We conducted 24 group discussions with 173 women and men from all over Austria, and interviews with 23 mothers with at least one child under the age of two. The results reveal a set of social norms around the ideal image of the child-centred mother. A 'good' mother is seen as responsible for ensuring that her child receives optimal care. As the child's primary caregiver, she should provide intensive and loving care, be devoted to the child, and spend as much time as possible physically with the child. In return, she should be given the necessary self-care. When mothers deviated from these expectations, the discussants developed different strategies to justify, concede or criticize their behaviour. The results show also that mothers themselves develop strategies to best integrate these social norms into their everyday mothering. These range from self-care practices to practices of controlling and adapting their emotions in order to mother as positively and (outwardly) happily as possible. These empirical findings fit well with our analyses of research findings from Western democratic industrialized countries over the past two decades. We show how social norms around the present and happy, future-oriented and publicly controlled, but also employed mother prevail and are central to mothering practices in other countries as well. The results show that neither neoliberal demands nor the associated diversity in maternal behaviour have had a significant impact on social norms around motherhood. Rather, both collective discourses and individual strategies tend to reinforce or even idealise expectations of the child-centred and happy mother. The idea that only a happy mother can be a good mother gives mothers some leeway. However, this does not change the normative expectation that a mother's happiness should only come from her being child-centred, and that her own needs should be subordinated to those of the child.