Maternal Guilt and Self-Employment: A Qualitative Study of Self-Employed Mothers in Dalmatia, Croatia

Maternal guilt has become an increasingly prominent topic in sociological research on motherhood and work, particularly in the context of the expansion of dual-earner families, changing labor markets, and persistent gendered expectations surrounding care and family responsibilities. This study examines how self-employed mothers experience and negotiate maternal guilt and how these experiences contribute to the reproduction and renegotiation of norms of “good motherhood.” The study is based on twenty-four interviews with self-employed mothers in Croatia. The findings demonstrate that maternal guilt emerges at the intersection of intensive motherhood ideals, neoliberal expectations of productivity and availability, and the unequal distribution of household and emotional labor. Guilt is particularly pronounced in everyday situations involving perceived absence from one’s children and feelings of inadequacy in fulfilling maternal responsibilities. Although self-employment is often represented as a form of work that enables greater work–family balance through flexibility and autonomy, the findings show that it does not necessarily reduce time pressure or emotional burden. Instead, flexibility is often achieved through extended working hours, blurred boundaries between work and family life, and expectations of continuous availability. Mothers respond to these tensions through strategies of time reorganization, reliance on informal support networks, and the redefinition of “good motherhood” through a narrative of quality time and meaningful presence. The study concludes that self-employment increases mothers’ control over the organization of work but does not substantially transform the emotional dynamics of motherhood or the gendered distribution of care. Rather, it shifts the responsibility for managing work–family tensions onto individual mothers, thereby reproducing broader gendered expectations surrounding maternal responsibility.