This article examines film and television workers’ experience of mothering in Ireland
and argues that not only are mothers constructed as a ‘problem’ in these Creative
Industries workplaces because of their care work duties, but the ‘problem’ of work’s
incompatibility with motherhood is presented as one to be ‘solved’ by mothers
themselves. Drawing from the scholarship on motherhood in film and television
work and 12 interviews with workers in the film and television Creative Industries
sectors who are mothers, we undertake a thematic analysis to uncover common
experiences and insights that are reflective of but depart in some ways from the
literature. We identify four themes that suggest that motherhood remains Othered
in film and television work and that balancing care work and motherhood remains a
form of additional labour that mothers (almost exclusively) must undertake: managing
pregnancy at work; maternity leave and the return to work; care for children while
working; and mothers’ finding solutions.
