Chapter 19: Negotiating Motherhood: Practices and Discourses¹

Processes of transition to motherhood have had a great deal of attention, resulting in a consistent range of research and literature. Globally, and considering the different directions and motivations of these studies, the consequential body of research basically points out the complex and diverse character of this personal experience, whether focused in a more quantitative approach intended to isolate the variables influencing the psychosocial adjustment to this transition (Glade, Bean, & Vira, 2005), or oriented toward a qualitative exploration of the individual experience of these women (see Nelson, 2003, for a review).

Nevertheless, the knowledge that the transition to motherhood constitutes a highly challenging task that presents several emotional, affective, and social nuances, the cultural view of this life event seems to continue emphasizing the element of self-fulfillment of the feminine nature that motherhood experiences also carries. At the realm of lay social discourses, seemingly a traditional idealized view of motherhood as a source of intense positive emotions prevails, that often ignores some less pleasant dimensions of this experience (Leal, 2005; Solé & Parella, 2004). This narrow vision of motherhood also carries a set of believes and stereotypes around what is socially and culturally accepted, in contemporaneous western societies, as an adequate practice of “mothering,” which are largely sustained by the myth of motherhood as a universal need and “natural” choice of women and by the expectation of a full-time mothering (Fursman, 2002; Johnston & Swanson, 2006; Oakley, 1984; Solé & Parella, 2004). In other words, it is expected that all women long for motherhood and that they become almost exclusively devoted to their children, always being there to love, educate, stimulate, and care for them (Fursman, 2002).