Becoming a mother

Becoming a mother
Motherhood is not a unitary experience, nor is it a simple one. To be a mother demands that a woman takes on a complex identity.

She is still herself but she is also a mother, with the incumbent roles, responsibilities and relationships which this entails.

The idea of becoming a mother has been part of most women’s identities since childhood and although many accept that they did not really know what motherhood was like until they experienced it, the fact of becoming a mother is no surprise in itself.

Why do women become mothers or at least take the option of becoming a mother so seriously? On an individual level, women recognize their biological capacity to have children and through socialization into the female role, come to equate femininity with marriage and motherhood, often seeing women who do not do this as ‘inadequate’.

Motherhood potentially provides girls/women with entry into womanhood.

Many women believe that they can only achieve adult, feminine status through becoming mothers.

One research with teenage mothers supports this view, in that their desire for motherhood as entry to womanhood is not so much a biological desire to become pregnant and nurture a child as an implicit recognition of apparent privilege unavailable to childless women.

This system of beliefs is related to the patriarchal idealization of women as mothers, which is part of women’s subordination.

The romanticisation of motherhood, and the sets of relationships which accompany it, dictated patriarchal power relations. It suits men for women to mother.
Becoming a mother