Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers  
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Interview analysis  
The answers of each respondent were categorised separately along the core 
concepts of this study, and bundled along the four groups of mothers with 
different employment patterns (mothers who work weekly hours of 0 to 11 hours, 
12 to 24 hours a week, 25 to 35 hours and 36 hours or more). In this way, four 
large matrices were created to outline the results. While thematically analysing 
the matrices, the main focus was firstly whether the similarities within the groups 
of mothers and the differences between the groups of mothers had enough 
grounds to maintain the four groups which had initially been based solely on their 
employment patterns. The narratives proved to be sufficiently similar within, and 
discerning enough among, the groups, and so therefore it was decided to keep the 
four groups intact. The research was specifically sensitive to perceiving the lives 
of the respondents in terms of continuity and process, which is important in order 
to understand decision-making processes throughout life. Therefore, the interview 
transcripts of each respondent were not cut in different codes, but kept as close as 
possible to each story told by the respondents. The second part of the analysis 
consisted of searching for sensitising concepts that could be uses as pegs to 
describe the central narratives of, and the similarities within, the different groups. 
How do mothers within each group make sense of their own world and their own 
decisions? With what words and characteristics do they describe their lives, 
situations and decisions? What is not included in their stories, but taken-for-
granted or ignored? There were also exceptions within each group, and these are 
addressed where relevant. There are also similarities among different groups, and 
even among all groups, which are described as well. 
3.6 Findings 
1. Stay-at-home 
mothers: 
“Child-minded mothers, hesitant workers”:  
Drifters 
Narrative of choice 
The narrative of choice regarding work among stay-at-home mothers appears 
rather weak. Their sense of self-agency, i.e. the feeling that one causes one’s own 
actions and their outcome (Aarts et al., 2009), is hesitant – happenings are 
experienced as outside their reach of influence and they seem to drift into new 
situations. Mothers describe diverse circumstances that have led to their decisions 
to give up their jobs: a hard-working spouse (despite earlier promises to work 
less), the availability, high costs and poor quality of childcare provisions, job 
dissatisfaction, illnesses (such as being burnt-out), redundancy, sick relatives in 
need of care, or their lack of knowledge of the Dutch language or the right 
diplomas. “If I had enjoyed my work more, I would have kept working” (Astrid).  

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Chapter 3 - A qualitative typology of Dutch mothers’ employment narratives 
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“I didn’t like my new job, I didn’t have a good child minder, I was very busy 
with our new house, my partner had an accident and was off: I couldn’t see 
the forest for the trees. And then I asked myself: for whom am I doing it?” 
(Nora). 
Each mother’s decision to give up work was generally a gradual, sliding 
process. A conscious individual decision to give up work and a desire to be a full-
time homemaker was often absent. Most of the full-time homemakers interviewed 
missed having work, a life outside their home, and subsequently they felt restless. 
They would like to work, mostly part-time (20 to 24 hours) and preferably during 
school hours.  
The findings reveal that despite positive work preferences, personal and 
structural constraints can limit mothers’ options to put their work preference into 
practice. In addition, stay-at-home mothers do not seem to adjust their 
preferences to the situation to smoothen feelings of uneasiness, as is argued by 
interest-based theories. Nevertheless they might still justify their behaviour to the 
interviewer, because Dutch society expects mothers to work, albeit part-time. 
Zimmerman (2000) already showed that in Western countries, stay-at-home 
parenting is not supported. “They have to work harder to feel good about their 
choice because they receive little validation from society for the work they are 
doing” (p.349). Stay-at-home mothers sometimes feel guilty or are a bit 
shameful, because they didn’t develop themselves much, even though they had a 
lot of potential.  
Work attitude 
There are some particular features of the working attitudes of stay-at-home 
mothers, which I will now address. The narratives of full-time homemakers 
reveal that, as juveniles, they often lacked a clear professional preference: “I 
didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be” or, “I really couldn’t picture myself at 
any job when I was young”. Because of this indecisiveness, and sometimes due to 
a lack of support from their direct environment, they often did not follow (the 
right) continuation courses. The absence or wrong choice of a continuation course 
was then repeatedly followed by mismatch jobs, which later pushed them out of 
the labour market. At present, negative or irrelevant work experiences and the 
lack of the right diplomas make it difficult for full-time homemakers to put their 
work preference into practice.  
Stay-at-home mothers especially value the intrinsic and social aspects of 
work. They do not consider having their own salary as essential. They can cope 
well without their own salary and having less money than before. “I found it 
really difficult to give up my economic independence, but I could easily cut the 
tie” (Mieke).   
As mentioned, stay-at-home mothers desire something from work – such as 
having an escape from home, or having something useful to do – and yet they do 

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