A Qualitative Study of the Barriers and Challenges of Motherhood among Employed Women in Tehran City

Employed women face with a lot of difficulties and challenges in their motherhood process. The employed mothers usually have multiple roles, and they might be under the pressures of all these roles. In this paper, we aim to understand the perceptions and experiences of employed women from the motherhood process and the challenges associated with it. Using the qualitative research and in-depth interviews with 30 highly educated employed and married women, who are between 20 to 40 years old in Tehran city, the data gathered. The collected data has been has been analyzed via a conventional qualitative content analysis approach. The results of research are derived and discussed in four categories including: the difficulty and joyfulness paradox of the motherhood, multiple roles identity of the motherhood, the roles pressures of being both a mother and an employee, and the carrier barriers to the motherhood and childbearing. The findings indicated that employed and educated women experience more difficulties and challenges compared with the other mothers due to having multiple responsibilities as a mother, a wife, an employee and in some cases even as a student. Moreover, these women suffer from lack of necessary social and family supports. In general, despite all the problems that employed women are facing with them, they consider motherhood as an important and valuable concept. However, this value is mainly lead to having only one child due to the job conditions and lack of implementation of policies and support programs for these women.