Mothers in Diaspora: An Interview with Sharon Findlay

Sharon Findlay is a Project Manager at the University of Guelph’s Live Work Well Research Centre (LWWRC), providing leadership, strategic planning, and oversight for major long-term SSHRC- and WAGE-funded grant projects. Her research at the University of Guelph for her BA and MA in European Studies centred around connecting people and their stories; her work looked at migration, oral history, individual and collective memory and the concept of home, with a particular interest in the representations of narratives through art and performance. Since 2015, Sharon has co-developed Italian Heritage Projects in collaboration with the Italian Studies program at the University of Guelph to collect and curate stores of Italian immigrants to Canada. In addition, she is also the project developer for a SSHRC-funded oral history Italian Heritage Project initiative at the University of Waterloo 2023-24.
Sharon consults as a freelance grant writer and project developer in the heritage and arts sectors. When not at work, Sharon can be found hiking with her daughter and dog, biking, exploring areas of natural beauty, and spending quality time with friends and loved ones. 

Sharon was featured on Season 3 Episode 2 of Dispersion, a Podcast by the Zoryan Institute, on the topic Expectations of Motherhood: You Can’t Just Leave it at the Airport. We wanted to find out more about how Sharon’s work on migration, oral history, and motherhood intersects with the work of the LWWRC on livelihoods.  

Sharon was interviewed by Sakhi Sanghvi, one of the Centre’s Co-op students, who is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a minor in French.   

How do you see your research on mothers in diaspora as relating to a livelihoods framework?  

For my MA research, I concentrated on a community-engaged research project in European Studies, with an emphasis on Memory Studies and Oral History. I worked with my academic supervisor, Dr. Sandra Parmegiani, to create an experiential learning course to teach students how to conduct oral history interviews, transcribe them, and mount them on our website (Italian-Canadian Narratives Showcase - ICNS) with photos and recordings. Our website now hosts similar work from various academic institutions and community projects. 

My research looked at Italian-Canadian mothers in diaspora and how motherhood impacted their cultural sense of identity and belonging. I believe the Livelihoods framework can be a relevant and useful tool for exploring lived experiences and the unique challenges of immigrants in Canada. Despite facing language barriers and difficult living conditions, the women I interviewed built strong networks and kinship structures to support one another and connect with other immigrant groups. I believe that the Italian-Canadian community in Guelph was particularly successful because of their efforts to reach across cultural lines and support other immigrant groups rather than being insular. 

On the podcast, you talked about there being no 'one-size-fits-all' approach to being a 'good mother.' Do you think 'good mothers,' by definition, need to have a strong, sustainable livelihood to support themselves?  

That is a complex question that can be answered in different ways. In many traditional cultures, being a "good mother" is synonymous with self-sacrifice. In my interviews, it emerged that especially second-generation mothers sometimes face an inner conflict between traditional expectations of self-sacrifice, which is unarguably a significant part of parenthood, and their desire to balance it with a sense of personal agency and acknowledgement of other aspects of their lives and livelihoods. 

Similar to the stereotypes and stigma around what makes a 'good mother,' are there any stereotypes about what makes a 'good/sustainable livelihood'? 

Society seems to emphasize being ambitious, building a successful career, and earning money, but that's only part of a fulsome livelihood—one slice of the pie! Beyond the pressure of career and income, adventure and opportunities await if one remains open to them. Becoming a mother is one such adventure; doing so in a new country adds dimensions of hardship but also accomplishment and gratification. Balancing work, familial obligations, and financial constraints is challenging. The women I interviewed were, by necessity, adventurers who took risks to build the lives they did here in Canada. 

You mentioned that when interviewing a couple who had moved to Canada, there were stark differences in their opinions on shared experiences. The wife's thoughts and takeaways from an experience were very different from those of the husband.  

Yes, it appeared that some men, not all, tended to describe their immigration experience in a more positive light, often overlooking or downplaying the difficulties and sharing charming anecdotes. On the other hand, women from the first and second generation whom I interviewed talked about both the positive and negative aspects of their immigration journey. They were quite candid about the challenges, doubts, and struggles they faced when embarking on their journey and after arriving in Canada. For example, I learned about the experience of giving birth in a hospital where no one spoke your language and of navigating the public transit system in the winter without speaking English in the pre-internet and cell phone era. There were many such barriers and challenges in their day-to-day lives. 

You talked about gender differences and their impact. Being a working mother yourself, have you noticed any gender differences when it comes to professions/livelihoods? 

It's hard for a mother to leave her children or work to pay someone else to care for them, and there's a lot of stigma surrounding that decision in every culture. It's a tough set of choices, especially for women without material resources. I sense that since men traditionally worked outside the home, they have an easier time with that. However, many of the women I interviewed described how helpful their husbands were in the domestic sphere and how supportive they were of their wives’ taking courses and night school to obtain an education and increase their job prospects. 

Do you think having a livelihood is important when one becomes a mother? Why? How does one effectively tackle work-life balance in the early stages of motherhood? 

It's hard to balance motherhood and career in today's society; a mother may face criticism if she pursues a career and leaves her children with a caregiver. On the other hand, if she chooses to stay at home and put her career on hold, she might re-enter the workforce late and lag behind colleagues of the same age. There's no strictly correct path, as it all depends on each person's unique constellation of livelihood circumstances and priorities. 

It's helpful to remember that there are different seasons for things in life; I think we can actually have it all—just not all at once! 

The Italian mothers in diaspora interviewed for this project were resilient; most took jobs outside their homes and pursued night courses to educate and train themselves in various careers. They embraced opportunities to provide for their families and took pride in creating vibrant, thriving communities, neighbourhoods, and entire streets of people they could turn to for help with childcare and who they, in turn, supported through life's challenges.  

In our modern global society, urban life has become so anonymized, and I think everyone could benefit from more community, more extensive networks of support, a sense of belonging, and a sense of finding one's place in "the family of things" as Mary Oliver describes in her poem Wild Geese.