In the master's thesis we discuss experiences of women, who are balancing parnthood and professional career, which is very popular topic nowadays. Based on previous investigations and accessible literature, we formulated hypotheses about women's experiences and we tested them by conducting phenomenologycal research. This method gives us the opportunity for an insight into the experience of balancing motherhood and career from the aspect of participants. The selected participants were between 30 and 35 years old and were employed mothers with professional career (or were in the period of its' creation). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with them. Participants reported adjusting the maternity time to career aspirations and permanent residence. Half of them already took into account the desire for having children when deciding on a career choice, and the other half did not. In most cases, when pregnant, they did not experience negative reactions at the workplace; but three participants experienced unpleasant reactions from the superiors. It turns out, that the majority of mothers with professional career, when they are on maternity leave experience worries associated with further career development . They are afarid to be behindback because of such a long absence in professional field. Formal or informal forms of childcare, especially grandparent care is experienced as indispensable for balancing between motherhood and career. They perceive the role of a partner in caring for children and the household as unequal to themselves; they also stated that their partners had more free time than they did. The reactions from the society (especially from parents and friends) on balancing between professional and family sphere are participant perceiving as reprehensible and stereotiypically based. Balancing causes most participant to experience stress, overload and chronic lack of time.
However, the findings of our investigation are not generalizable to the wider population of employed mothers with professional careers , due to the choice of phenomenological approach used, but rather other employed mothers with careers may have similar experiences to those reported by our participants.
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