Motherhood

Defining the meaning of motherhood is more complex than once thought. Due to technological and legal changes there is more and more variation among mothers with respect to age, marital status, and sexual orientation. Adoption has long shown that social motherhood is not contingent on giving birth, and surrogacy and in vitro fertilization now create a possible distinction between the gestational mother and the genetic mother. As a result, the very definition of who is a mother can be contentious. The very process of conception, pregnancy, and birthing has undergone much transition, with much greater involvement of medical professionals. The meanings associated with motherhood and motherhood practices vary across historical, sociocultural, and political contexts. Despite the great variation, even within specific countries at one point in time in the practices of motherhood, discourses about what exactly constitutes “good” mothering and who should and should not mother exist. Those at the “frontier” of motherhood, such as queer mothers, continue to shape and reshape the very concept of motherhood and mothering. For many mothers this means they are caught between cultural expectations on how to mother and the realities of their everyday life: for example, breastfeeding practices and childcare arrangements. Although rates of mothers’ labor-force participation are high or increasing in many countries, mothers still face the primary burden of arranging, managing, and even financing childcare solutions for their children; work-family conflict remains a problem for mothers much more so than for fathers. Polices designed to ease the conflict between employment and motherhood, both those implemented by governments and those created by employers, vary greatly across countries, which reemphasizes the context dependency of the meaning of motherhood for women’s lives. Many aspects of research on motherhood suggest that motherhood, and especially the link between motherhood and employment continues to be an important component of persistent gender inequality. In addition to contributing to inequalities between men and women, and between women within any given society, motherhood also contributes to global inequality (through the transnational market for care workers), international adoptions, and international surrogacy.