The Biographical Experience of Being a Stay-at-Home Mother of a Large Family Versus Online Activity. A Case Study

Kaja Kaźmierska

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.21.2.03

Authors

Kaja Kaźmierska University of Lodz

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.21.2.03

Keywords:

Motherhood, Large Family, Online Creator, Autobiographical Narrative

Abstract

The article presents the analysis of two cases of women reconstructed based on autobiographical narrative interviews. They are mothers of many children and are active online, having accounts on Instagram and creating content. Most research focused on the activities of online creators is based on an analysis of their web content. Due to the type of research data, autobiographical narratives and the interpretations of one’s biographical experiences and actions are the main frame of this analysis. Both narrators represent contemporary modern women, combining opposing patterns of tradition and modernity, which are often presented in public discourses as contradictory or mutually excluding. Internet activity seems to remedy the accompanying experience of tension and supports women’s biographical work. What stands out is the identity work undertaken by the two narrators, whose frame of reference is the tension between the planned and voluntary entry into traditionally understood motherhood and the plan for one’s development inscribed in the identity of an educated modern woman socialized in a culture of individualism. In this respect, their online activity appears to have a compensatory function in their biographies.

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Author Biography

Kaja Kaźmierska, University of Lodz

Kaja Kaźmierska is a professor of sociology and head of the Department of Sociology of Culture at the University of Lodz. She specializes in biographical research, collective and biographical identity, and memory. She is the author of books and articles on these subjects. She edited a selection of texts, Biographical Method in Sociology. An Anthology of Texts (Nomos, Cracow 2012) and recently co-edited: K. Kaźmierska, K. Waniek, Telling the Great Change. The Process of the Systemic Transformation in Poland in Biographical Perspective (2020), K. Kaźmierska, K. Waniek, Autobiographical Narrative Interview. Method—Technique—Analysis (2020). She also authored many articles.

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