Christopher, Karen2020-11-012020-11-012015-06Christopher, K. (2015). Paid leaves as buffer zones: Social policies and work-life balance among Canadian mothers. <i>Journal of Research on Women and Gender, 6</i>(1), pp. 24-39.2375-0944https://hdl.handle.net/10877/12875In this article, I use in-depth interviews with 26 Canadian mothers to explore their accounts of paid leaves and work-life balance. Drawing from a theoretical framework that emphasizes the structural, cultural, and interactional influences on mothers' experiences, I find that among higher-income mothers, paid leaves serve as "buffer zones" in two ways: they postpone the typical conflict between paid and unpaid work, and they assuage the guilt associated with employment under an intensive mothering ideology. However, low-income and non-citizen mothers have less access to the "buffer zones" of paid leaves, and mothers' reports of work-life balance vary considerably by social class after paid leaves end. Among this non-representative sample, higher-income mothers report the most work-life balance. The paper ends with the implications of this research for the policy and work-life balance literatures.Text16 pages1 file (.pdf)enpaid leavework-life balancemotherhoodemploymentsocial policyintensive motheringArticle