Evolving Beyond the Shadow of Motherhood: A Call for New Work Structures

There is a well-established concept in the field of law and society that negotiations and other actions of people occur “in the shadow of the law” even when there is no direct legal involvement. Throughout my work in gender equity in the legal profession, I find that all genders function in the “shadow” of motherhood at work—regardless of whether or not they actually have children or ever intend to. Our cultural ideas of motherhood as a feminine, selfless and all-encompassing “calling” and role, is infused in the way that we look at women in the workplace, casts a shadow upon masculinity and fathers in the workplace, and even the experience of those who do not have children. This shadow of motherhood—and all of the expectations and assumptions that come with (or without) it—influences our interactions in the workplace, our organizational structures, and inevitably creates disparate experiences for everyone trying to achieve the mythical “balance” between their work lives and their lives outside of the (sometimes virtual) office. In order to achieve equity, we need to move beyond flexibility as an accommodation to parents and move to an overall structure that is flexible for all employees.

While giving all due respect to the (glacial) progress we’ve made in dismantling general roles and binaries, our society and workplaces still remain quite gendered. Overt expressions of gender, race, homophobia, and ableism as the basis for disparate policies, treatment, and interactions have largely given way to more subconscious and structural disparities that continue to have a very real effect on people. For example, the experiences of all genders with regard to being (or not being) a parent while working in a professional setting occur in the shadow of an idealized and feminine notion of motherhood. It is well established in countless years of research that professional mothers have to constantly rebut assumptions about their commitment to their career at work and their commitment to motherhood to society, risking inadvertently being “mommy-tracked” if they work reduced hours or take a longer period of time off for care work. Pitfalls of the mommy track include: working part-time with part-time pay but still doing the uncompensated work of a full-time employee to constantly reinforce your commitment to your career; a limitation in promotion opportunity; constantly pretending at work that you don’t have a second more-than-full-time job of being a mother in a society with outrageous standards for motherhood and a lack of social support like affordable day care; desperately researching ways to achieve a mythical (and impossible) “work-life-balance;” and a boatload of mom guilt. This shadow of idealized motherhood also influences the way we view parenthood in general and specifically how people and organizations treat fathers. We know that when men become fathers, they benefit from a “fatherhood bump” (increase) in salary and promotion as they are assumed to be extra-committed to their careers so they can be “providers,” while also simultaneously risk backlash if they decide to use parental leave offerings, due to outdated cultural norms about masculinity.