Achieving respectable motherhood? Exploring the impossibility of feminist and egalitarian ideologies against the everyday realities of lived Welsh working-class femininities

This paper explores the tension between post-feminist discourses of freedom and the everyday negotiation of feminised identities in private and public spaces, for mothers residing in a marginalised locale in urban south Wales, UK. Applying the lens of gender to examine and foreground the place of 'choice' in mothers' lives, the paper works with visual and narrative accounts of the negotiation of acceptable motherhood. The paper argues that despite a pervasive rhetoric of agency and equality, the practice and performance of motherhood continues to operate within asymmetrical gendered and classed spaces inside the confines of respectable femininity. Challenging the concept of new motherhood, where women are led to believe that they can maintain the status of breadwinner, domestic goddess and primary care giver, the paper theorises agency as operating within the impossibility of unachievable ideals.