A maternal identity? The family lives of British women graduates pre- and post-1945

Abstract

In contrast to the first generations of university-educated women, this article will suggest that later cohorts no longer transgressed conventional expectations by rejecting marriage and motherhood on the same scale as their predecessors. Post-1945 society was a period within which theoretically women could 'have it all' and arguably graduate women were under even greater pressure to conform. By exploring the life-histories of a group of women who graduated between 1947 and 1979, this article explores the individual stories behind the quantitative data to consider the attitudes of highly-educated women to marriage and motherhood and how they have balanced their personal and professional lives. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.