Part-time working and the teacher mother: panacea or poison?

Part-time work is often suggested as a panacea to the work/life challenge for teacher parents, and most notably, mothers. This paper reports findings from a wider study on the experiences of Primary and Early Years teachers who are also mothers. Four participant stories are draw upon, collected through unstructured life-history interviews with current teacher-mothers, then analysed using ecological systems discourse analysis (ESDA) to highlight predominant discourses. These include the benefits of flexible working, as well as barriers to accessing part-time work. The barriers include perceptions of flexible working and reticence from school leaders to offer job-share, as well as practical and emotional challenges that securing part-time work can bring. It concludes that whilst the option of part-time work may be a supportive measure for some, for others it is an invitation to ‘work full-time effort for part-time reward’, both financially and emotionally.