Entanglement’s risks and rewards: exploring the experiences of women social workers who are mothers

This doctoral study explores the emotional complexities arising for women who are child protection social workers in the UK and mothers. Despite the critical intersection of these roles, research into how they influence one another is limited. Situated within a Critical Realist (Bhaskar 1979) epistemological position, it is theoretically informed by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1979), alongside feminist and intersectional (Crenshaw 1989) perspectives, enabling analysis of how individual emotional experience is shaped by organisational, cultural and structural contexts. Using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke 2022), this research systematically examines data collected from semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann 2015) with 15 child protection social workers who are mothers. Four key themes emerged: enhanced empathy and deeper parenting insight derived from their dual roles; heightened vigilance and protective behaviours towards their own children; the impact of racism encountered by Black and Asian social workers; and the critical role of support systems - personal, peer, and professional - in sustaining their wellbeing and practice. These themes illustrate the entanglement of personal and professional identities and demonstrate how motherhood reshapes risk perception, emotional labour and decision-making in child protection practice. The findings indicate that female child protection social workers who are also mothers experience significant emotional impact from the interplay between these roles. They employ coping mechanisms to maintain boundaries, yet their personal and professional lives frequently become intertwined. The study contributes to knowledge by foregrounding the lived emotional experience of women who are mothers and child protection social workers - a group largely absent from existing literature - and by conceptualising motherhood not as a boundary challenge but as a professional resource that influences empathy, practice wisdom and reflective capacity. The findings have implications for supervision, workforce wellbeing, anti-racist organisational practice and leadership approaches, highlighting the need for reflective spaces, culturally responsive support and organisational recognition of identity-based emotional labour.