Solo‐living and childless professional women: Navigating the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over the fertile years
研究独居无子女职业女性如何在生育年龄中应对‘平衡母亲理想’，发现认同随生命历程变化，受未来性、矛盾心理和负面情绪抑制影响，并在晚育期因缺乏替代叙事而陷入危机，为组织如何服务这一群体提供建议。
Abstract One in five women are childless at midlife, and for an estimated 90 percent of these women, childlessness is not actively chosen. In this article, we explore how solo‐living and childless professional women navigate the ‘balanced mother ideal’ over their fertile years and what this means for organizations and organization studies. Drawing on biographical narrative interview data from solo‐living professional women in the UK, we argue that identifications with the balanced mother ideal change over the life course as a result of futurity, ambivalence, and suppression of negative emotions—part of the logic of both postfeminism and neoliberal feminism—and the ‘disenfranchized grief’ of contingent childlessness. At the point of late fertility, the absence of alternative social narratives to the balanced mother ideal appears to create a crisis point for childless women, including in the workplace. We conclude our article with recommendations for how organizations can better cater to the needs of this significant, yet largely silenced, demographic group.