Creating a life: the role of symbolic and economic structures in the gender dynamics of Swedish artists

This article examines the prevalence of parenthood among professionally practising artists in Sweden. The overall aim of the article is to employ feministic and sociological perspectives to provide a theoretically-based understanding of the problems of balancing work and family life in the arts. Data are presented that reveals that female artists are more frequently childless compared to their male counterparts and women in the overall population. Male artists, however, are less frequently childless than men in general. The article develops a theoretical explanation focused on the effect of economic resource structures, which leave women artists to cope with lower incomes with which to pursue careers in the arts, and symbolic structures, which present creative work as difficult to combine with everyday domestic work. Given that motherhood continues to be associated with more comprehensive caring responsibilities than fatherhood, women are more frequently confronted with a choice between starting a family and pursuing their artistic calling.