Balancing Between Roles and Duties – The Creativity of Mothers

Abstract

We raise two issues in the article at hand: how women who are mothers fulfil their creative needs, and what significance they ascribe to creativity in their role as mothers. A thematic analysis of structured interviews with twenty-seven women suggests that for mothers, creative activity mostly concerns fulfilling one’s responsibilities as part of the role taken on (be it parental or professional), and the main creative challenge they face is achieving a balance between their private and professional lives. Creativity in their role as mothers relates predominantly to two areas of activity: communication with the child and activities creating a climate conducive to the child’s development of creative ability. We discuss the obtained results in relation to those of previous research on the relationship between motherhood and creativity.

Creativity in Adulthood

“…A number of studies shows that parents who spend time on playing with their children, especially if this play is pretend play (Russ, 1993), are more efficient in stimulating children's curiosity, imagination, and divergent thinking. Yet creative parenting is also considered a kind of lifestyle orientation (Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017), with flexibly managing different family-and-work related tasks and being open to children's needs. In a qualitative study of mothers, being creative was most often understood as being able to manage demands of different social roles effectively (Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017).…”

“…Yet creative parenting is also considered a kind of lifestyle orientation (Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017), with flexibly managing different family-and-work related tasks and being open to children's needs. In a qualitative study of mothers, being creative was most often understood as being able to manage demands of different social roles effectively (Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017). Importantly, creativity was rarely mentioned in the context of thinking alone, not to mention artistic activities.…”

Rozwijanie dziecięcej kreatywności w procesie uczenia się rozwiązywania problemów

“…uszyńska-Jarmoc 2003(np. uszyńska-Jarmoc , 2007Czelakowska 2005;Magda-adamowicz 2005Magda-adamowicz , 2012bonar 2008;Zbróg 2009Zbróg /2010adamek, bałachowicz 2013;Czaja-Chudyba 2013;bałachowicz, adamek 2017;Kwaśniewska, Lebuda 2017;Schmidt 2018) wiadomo, że najważniejsze cechy budujące klimat sprzyjający rozwijaniu kreatywności są następujące:…”

Parents’ Creative Self-Beliefs and Creative Activity as Predictors of Family Lifestyle

“…Also, in qualitative analyses it was shown that mothers who valued creativity associated it mainly with a specific lifestyle and personal life and less so on professional creative activities. Their creative functioning tended to focus on two main areas: building a flexible, empathic relation with the child and creating a climate conducive to the child's creative development (Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017).…”

“…This kind of activity, usually called everyday creativity, refers to non-eminent, non-professional behaviors defined in terms of "human originality at work and leisure across the diverse activities of everyday life" (Richards, 2010, p. 190). In this perspective, arranging family life and supporting children's development could be a creative activity (see Kwaśniewska & Lebuda, 2017). Parenthood, besides mating and work, is one of the primary forms of an adult person's creative form of expression (Karwowski & Wiśniewska, in press).…”