The Realities of Motherhood: Patriarchy and Unpaid Labor Along the Wasatch Front

Parenthood introduces a time when parents negotiate how to complete competing tasks within the home and often results in couples adopting more traditional gender norms temporarily or more permanently. These factors can disrupt the career trajectories of women as they often increase participation in unpaid labor while men often increase their participation in the paid labor force. Despite the understanding of how children impact new parents' careers and household responsibilities, detailed accounts of how parenthood is experienced within Utah have yet to be identified as of the time of this writing. I used semistructured interviews to collect detailed stories from four cis-gendered mothers along the Wasatch Front. I found five emergent themes which detail the gendered experience of motherhood in Utah and how the local culture influences gender expectations within families. My findings confirm or complement existing literature related to the gendered division of labor among parents and suggest there is ample room for gender equity improvement in Utah.