Chapter 6: Negotiating Motherhood: A Dialogical Approach¹

The topics of motherhood, and specifically of transition to motherhood, have been devoted a great deal of attention, resulting in an expanding body of research and literature. Consequently, we have now at disposal a consistent wide range of studies that point 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 towards a qualitative exploration of the individual experience of these women (Nelson, 2003). Despite the knowledge that the transition to motherhood constitutes a highly challenging task that presents many emotional, affective and social nuances, the cultural view of this life event continues to emphasize the element of self-fulfilment of the feminine nature that motherhood experiences also carries. Several authors have highlighted the fact that motherhood, more than a mere biological event, constitutes a social phenomenon, loaded with inherited cultural and ideological images and lay theories that influence the experiences of any new mother (Johnston & Swanson, 2006; Letherby, 1994; Sévon, 2005; Woollett, 1991). In social discourses there prevails a traditional idealized view of motherhood as a source of significant personal fulfilment, development and enjoyment of intense positive emotions (Leal, 2005; Solé & Parella, 2004). This narrow vision of motherhood also carries a set of beliefs and stereotypes around what is socially and culturally accepted, in contemporaneous western societies as an adequate practice of “mothering.” These are largely sustained by the myth of motherhood as a universal need and “natural” choice of women and by the expectation of full-time mothering (Johnston & Swanson, 2006; Oakley, 1984; Solé & Parella, 2004). This myth of an “intensive motherhood” as the reflection of what constitutes a “good” mother, yet being in absolute dissonance with the present role of women in western society, still influences the imaginary of many women that fight with a difficult dilemma of irreconcilable aspirations, causing distress and guilt.