"I never thought about how much of a juggle it would be": motherhood and work in contemporary Lithuanian and Irish creative industries

This article explores the experiences of Irish and Lithuanian mothers
in creative work who detail challenges they face and the various
strategies they develop to sustain creative work and care for their
children. The study draws from 24 interviews which were carried
out with mothers in both countries at various stages in their careers.
Our study stresses the importance of national context in research
on European creative workers, since national and localised differences
feature little in creative industries literature. By assessing
mothers in their national contexts, we argue that mothers may
share overall experiences of juggling work and family life, of the
requirement to solve childcare issues and of challenges they face
while working in creative industries. However, crucially, key differences
emerge in how Lithuanian and Irish mothers position their
professional and maternal identities. Differences arise in the solutions
that Lithuanian and Irish mothers use and in the extent to
which challenges may be negated, particularly across generations.
We relate each of these differences to the localised contexts in
which the creative workers mother.