“Consultants Who Pick Up Their Children Every Day Don't Exist”: How Professionals Experience Conflicting Norms Through Successive Gendered Trials

ABSTRACT Norms surrounding ideal workers and parents are gendered: the ideal worker is fully dedicated to the job and outsources care responsibilities, whereas the ideal mother is expected to be entirely devoted to her children. Working mothers can use flexible work arrangements (FWAs) to reduce resulting tensions. However, little is known about how different work situations and power dynamics affect the way individuals navigate gendered expectations and employ FWAs. Based on 58 biographical interviews with consultants, we demonstrate that professionals navigate the organization of work and home through repeated “trials.” The way they face such trials does not solely depend on their gender and family status but also on their internalization of the ideal worker and parent norms. We discuss how informal FWAs can be helpful resources to address such trials, albeit with ambivalent outcomes. Their utilization reinforces existing power positions and intensifies gendered professional and parental ideals of performance. This sheds light on the gendered nature of trials.