The Guilt Thing Analysis

In the article, “The Guilt Thing: Balancing Domestic and Professional Roles,” Jackie Guendouzi (2006) conducted a study to determine whether mothers experience guilt while balancing professional and domestic responsibilities. The author hypothesized that women feel a sense of guilt due to the societal pressures placed on women to meet the expectations of the traditional model of intensive mothering. The traditional model of mothering shows that the mother had to be accessible for the child, the mother had to be happy in order to promote happiness to her child, and motherhood and employment have to be separate spheres. The author analyzes the conversations between five teachers at a British high school over a span of seven months by audiotaping

In Canada, mothers are a significant part of the workforce and it has been recorded that 73 percent of women with children under the age of 16 are employed (Stastna, 2012). The conventional model of the male breadwinner is slowly disintegrating. However, as the number of working mothers increase, they have more roles to play. Working mothers still suffocate under society’s stereotypical social norms of motherhood and face various challenges when trying to meet the expectations while working full time. In this piece of writing, I will discuss the unequal division of labour among men and women in the household, the struggle to balance the demands of work with the needs of the family, and the relational conflict which all lead to stress and regret for working mothers. Ultimately, three themes will be mentioned, home role stress, work role stress, and interaction and relationship

There is often a casual link that is made by society that a working mother equals a failed child (Guendouzi, 2006). Working mothers often feel that they are bad mothers for going to work and bad workers if they put their children first (Knapton, 2008). Thus, employed mothers frequently worry about their children, and often feel anxious when child care arrangements are not the greatest or when their children are home alone afterschool. Researchers have found that women spend more time agonising about their jobs at home and more time worrying about their families at work, than men do (Knapton, 2008). This can also be referred to as mental labour which is defined as constantly worrying which can have a negative impact on these women’s performance at work. Furthermore, working mothers are mostly the ones who adjust their work schedules to meet family demands, such as taking their kids to a doctor’s appointment or to soccer practice. Working mothers may feel that they do not allocate enough time to their job and have to catch up, which makes them preoccupied with job-related matters outside the workplace (Knapton, 2008). These women face a pressure to be good mothers and good workers that results in stress and