“Do You Want to Be My Mother?” A Personal, Professional, and Spiritual Inquiry into the Life of a Social Worker, Practitioner, Academic, and Mother

Abstract

Drawing on findings from in-depth interviews utilizing a narrative approach, this article considers the experiences of one woman, Ksenija Napan, who is both a mother and a social worker engaging in social work education and practice. Throughout the interviews, Ksenija reflected on the reciprocal, interactive, and deeply transformative relationship of being a mother, a social worker, and a researcher in the field of social work education. The interviews explored how mothering can transform social workers as professionals and how being a social worker affects motherhood. Ksenija also considered her social work practice as an academic across two diverse countries: Croatia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The positionality of the paper is that the narrative approach has much to offer social work particularly by highlighting the stories that ordinary people tell. The paper argues that personal narratives illustrate the social role of stories and also provide insights into understanding the interactions that occur in the cultural contexts of both private and public spaces.