Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR)
Date of this Version
May 2001
Abstract
Weaving Work and Motherhood is an engaging challenge to conventional “orientation” approaches to work or motherhood, offering instead the metaphor of weaving. Beginning with the experiences of 37 mothers employed at a hospital, Anita Ilta Garey’s goal is to understand “what it means to be a worker with children and a mother at work.”
Garey favors the metaphor of weaving as a way to “step back and view the whole, to think of the fabric of a life, the strength of the weave, and the intricacy of design. It reminds us not to get lost in the close examination of one moment or one strand, and to remember that moments and strands are parts of the weave but not the weave itself. Work, family, friendships, reflection, vocation, and recreation are parts of a person’s life. They are not separately and on their own, the life or the person” (p. 192).
Comments
Published in Journal of Marriage and Family 63:2 (May, 2001), pp. 595–596. Copyright © 2001 National Council on Family Relations; published by Blackwell Publishing. Used by permission.