Chapter 14: Transitioning Between Personal and Collective Worlds: How Agency Emerges in the Transition to Motherhood

The mother-child relationship has always been an issue in the social sciences, especially psychology. Over a long period, mothering was thought of as intrinsically related to motherhood, as a female role par excellence, deriving from women’s own nature (Moura & Araújo, 2004). The discussion on the existence of an innate and universal “maternal instinct” brings some interesting questions for this field of research and problematizes the influence of social discourse in this seemingly biological event, the process of becoming a mother.

A review of anthropological studies conducted by Rodrigues (2005) shows the understanding that pregnancy and childbirth are not merely biological events, because they are determined by material conditions and social relations. Within a psychological perspective, Moura and Araújo (2004) point out that, when the role of women in this relationship is put in the foreground, the biological function of motherhood should be, in principle, different from what is usually called maternal care practices or mothering. That is, “being a mother” assumes in our society not only the meaning of generating a being, but is also linked to subsequent care practices. On the latter, institutions and social agencies throughout history have established conventions guided by the production of the most varied fields of knowledge, using these semiotic-cultural regulation mechanisms. These mechanisms range from the formal guidelines forwarded by medical professionals, to the traditions, family recipes and recommendations passed from generation to generation, which directly influence the individual trajectories of young mothers who build their maternal identity from participation in (or even defense of) these discourses. Conforming to this idea, Miller (2007) notes that, in work on expectations and experiences of motherhood, attention turns to the “skills and natural instincts” that women allegedly carry with them, ignoring the relations of power and interests underlying the current discourse, which puts the entire responsibility on women. That is to say, a discourse prevails that is highly charged with the notion of a natural responsibility on woman, which ignores the idiosyncrasies and individual trajectories present in the process of becoming a mother. Moreover, it ignores the power that these social discourses have on the individual trajectories. The idea of a maternal instinct is actually a social discourse constructed throughout history and still influences how individual women experience the transition to motherhood.