Who am I? Mothers’ shifting identities, loss and sensemaking after workplace exit
基于对伦敦前职业女性母亲的深度访谈，分析她们从职业女性转为全职妈妈过程中的身份转变、失落感及意义建构，揭示了职场退出是一个持续的身份调整过程，而非一次性的“选择”。
We analyse mothers’ retrospective accounts of their transition from professional worker to stay-at-home mother using a framework that integrates sensemaking and border theory. The data come from in-depth interviews with former professional and managerial women in London. Continuing struggles to reconcile professional and maternal identities before and after workplace exit illustrate how identity change is integral to workplace exit. The concept of ‘choice’, which takes place at one point in time, obfuscates this drawn-out process. Mothers pay a high cost in lost professional identities, especially in the initial stages after workplace exit. They cope with this loss and the disjuncture of leaving employment by moving back and forth across the border between home and work – a classic action of sensemaking. Subsequent communal sensemaking and community action bolster mothers’ fragile status at home, eventually leading to reconciliation of their loss and finally enabling them to view their exit ‘choice’ as right.