[M]otherhood: Navigating Work-Family Constraints and Strategies in Pink-Collar Jobs

Working mothers continue to confront cultural norms and workplace practices that frame paid labor as incompatible with caregiving. In the workplace, these norms often result in motherhood bias and discrimination due to the incompatibility between norms of the ‘ideal worker’ and the ‘ideal mother’ (Acker 2006; Williams, Blair-Loy and Berdahl 2013). This tension is especially acute in pink-collar jobs, women-dominated occupations in service and care sectors, which are often mischaracterized as mother- friendly despite offering limited flexibility, low pay, and minimal structural support (Sartor, Lange, and Tröster 2023; Deming 2022; Ervin et al. 2022). While prior research has explored the motherhood penalty in elite white-collar professions (Stone 2007), the experiences of mothers in pink-collar work remain underexamined, particularly at the intersection of race, gender, and class. This study uses intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological lens to explore how mothers navigate structural constraints and cultural expectations in pink- collar jobs. Drawing on eighteen semi-structured interviews, I examine how racialized labor expectations, motherhood discrimination, and institutional neglect shape both the constraints mothers face and the strategies they employ. I ask: (1) How do mothers navigate pink-collar jobs? and (2) How do gender, race, and class shape the constraints, strategies, and needs of mothers in pink-collar jobs? Findings demonstrate that pink-collar jobs are not inherently mother-friendly. Instead, these occupations often demand emotional, physical, and mental labor without reciprocating care or accommodation. Mothers report facing wage penalties, limited autonomy, pregnancy discrimination, inadequate breastfeeding accommodations, and work-life imbalance. By centering both white mothers and mothers of color, this study reveals how motherhood in pink-collar work is shaped by overlapping systems of oppression. The findings call for structural changes in workplace policy, including paid leave, employer flexibility, affordable childcare, and protections against racial and maternal discrimination. This research contributes to sociological understandings of gendered labor by demonstrating that caregiving work is not only feminized, but also racialized- and that any meaningful support for mothers must confront these intersecting inequalities.