This text is an exploration of the interplay between employment and domestic relations within a specific group of young women, which includes single working women without children and working mothers. It is based on actual experiences, as related in interviews, and uses longitudianl data to chart the experience of young adult women living a contradiction between work and family. The text also employs social theory to interpret interview data showing the interdependence of young women as active agents, and the constraints and opportunities of the social structure. The main conclusion is that the social structuring of women as primarily mothers who also work is falling away, but that it is left to individuals to work their way through the contradictory system facing them.