Identity in Transition: Women’s Narrative Identity Work on the Path to Professional and Mother

Abstract

Although numerous scholars claim that identity is an integral aspect of engaging in work and family, the extant literature falls short of explaining how women's identities evolve over time through the significant transitions involved in pursuing professional careers and raising families. In fact, much of the literature is grounded in the assumption that work and family represent competing identities for women. Missing from this body of literature is a conceptualization of pursuing a professional/managerial career and having a family as a complex set of transitions that provoke the questions, "Who am I?" and "Who/what do I want to be?" Through a narrative study of 35 professional/managerial women, I uncover novel forms of narrative identity work that illuminate how women construct, revise and present their identities as they transition from university students to young professionals, from non-mothers to mothers, and from childless employees to those with childcare responsibilities. Further, I posit that these forms of narrative identity work reflect three higher-order identity processes: identity exploration, identity adaptation, and identity expression. Through a within and between-case examination of the configurations of identity processes across the three transitions, I uncover four dominant patterns that provide novel insights into how women's identities evolve over time on the path to professional and mother.ii