Balancing Between Roles and Duties – The Creativity of Mothers

Abstract

We raise two issues in the article at hand: how women who are mothers fulfil their creative needs, and what significance they ascribe to creativity in their role as mothers. A thematic analysis of structured interviews with twenty-seven women suggests that for mothers, creative activity mostly concerns fulfilling one’s responsibilities as part of the role taken on (be it parental or professional), and the main creative challenge they face is achieving a balance between their private and professional lives. Creativity in their role as mothers relates predominantly to two areas of activity: communication with the child and activities creating a climate conducive to the child’s development of creative ability. We discuss the obtained results in relation to those of previous research on the relationship between motherhood and creativity.