The Challenge Of Being A Woman And Motherhood In History

The challenge of being a woman and motherhood in history

In each era of history there are changes according to certain paradigms: in the conception of health, in education, politics and interpersonal relationships. The same changes also include motherhood, each era has its particular conception over it.

At the end of the Middle Ages, children lived their lives in the world of adults without being worried about them. It was not always biological mothers who took care of their children.

In the nineteenth century with pedagogy, and in twenty with industrialized society, the movement accelerated and a radical cut was established between the adult and the child that was.

The Judeo-Christian tradition inscribes in women a mandate of sacrificial maternity, selfless, unconditional, which results in a model of "good mother", transmitted by the environment.

Advertising and consumption machinery meanwhile idealized images, which we should remember that they are paper so as not to support them.

Maternity is currently subject to changes due to the following factors: globalization, ambiguity, contradiction, speed, etc.

There is at this time a majority of unconventional maternity, women who consider not having children (Spain has, for example, the lowest birth rate in Europe) women who have children at peak ages: adolescents on the one hand and greater than 40for other. Assisted fertilization techniques and adoption are developed and questioned.

Many women also consider having children without a partner and assembled families grow.

Late maternity

A conflict that affects women is this desire to be a mother and at what time in her life. At present, women are independent, professionals with future projects who know how to say no to motherhood as a mandatory role. But, the late decision does not imply missing this important role for many.

More and more women decide to be mothers after 40 years.

Professionals and independent, they no longer guide their decisions for their biological clock. Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and genetic compatibility tests, is what is taken into account for the most important decision of a woman’s life.

We are interested in examining the cultural motivations that lead women to plan a life without children or to postpone more and more postpone.

The challenge of being a mother and professional woman

Being a mother is not a title that is acquired by studying at the university, it is a recognition that is achieved with the energy of loving, guiding, caring, accompanying and protecting with devotion to children. Therefore, I think all women feel made when children arrive in our lives, although many times they get caught ’in full professional task.

At present, there are other centers of interest beyond motherhood such as the work and development of a professional career, studies or hobbies, and women are beginning to warn that, although the desired motherhood can make us happy, thisIt is not always like that or for all the same.

Professional life and maternity: Vocations found

We will investigate the modifications that the models associated with motherhood are suffering, among professional women.

Women’s work performance has resulted in new forms of motherhood exercise. Depending on the type of work that women develop (part -time or complete, outside or inside their home, with fixed or flexible schedules) the relationship modes with their children are also modified. The type of mother dedicated exclusively to the house and children, a model that the middle classes knew how to adopt for themSuccessful professional.

In relation to mothers with tertiary or university training who exercise the professions for which they studied by vocational impulse, or women who work successfully in business, work is a source of satisfaction, which competes with the so -called ‘obligationsmaternal ‘.

While everyday practices break with the model of ‘exclusive maternity’ and are directed towards ‘shared’ and less face -to -face maternity, the weight of the imaginary of ‘exclusive motherhood’ continues to generate frustration and ambivalence in women who are notwilling to see your professional career diminish;But those who, at the same time, would like to be able to dedicate more attention to their children. All this, framed within the lack of male co -responsibility in the reproductive sphere, causing these women to perceive that it is their quality of life that deteriorates and not that of their spouses, with the arrival of the children.

That professional life is for them a source of satisfactions of equal or greater importance, that their family domestic space contradicts ideology according to which motherhood should be the scope of ‘natural’ realization for women.

Maternity (or its mere possibility) does not collaborate with the promotion of women in the working world – and in Argentina there are few cases of dismissal and termination of contracts for pregnancy, despite their illegality – since companies consider thatThe positions of responsibility will be better covered by men who, even if they have children, do not socially assume the ‘double burden’ that motherhood supposes for women.

Gender stereotypes, old models and new mandates

The types of parenting and the feelings of mothers towards their children have also been the product of various social changes, which were impacting the mentalities.

Great historical changes have occurred in private life in general and in the exercise of motherhood in particular and how the different socially installed maternal models have been the result of postulates found throughout history. In relation to motherhood, women are questioned by the social mandates of their time and social sector.

For women who enjoy their work, their vocation, their professional life and the achievements that it reports both at the material and symbolic level in terms of prestige and recognition, motherhood is not a total life project, in thesense that it cancels or subsumo to other vital projects. Just as a male hardly rethink their vocation or work because they have children, women aspire to make both tasks. However, the imaginary of full -time motherhood, or at least as a priority, is still valid and women experience an ambiguous sensation regarding the decision to have children, as if due to their other interests they were not going to be’What it implies exercising as’ mothers that are precuy’. Although there is currently no single maternity model, the installed budget is still that, for mothers, the most important thing is their children.

At present, the primary socialization modes of men and women continuevalues’ such as dependence, care and softness of manners (associated with weakness). Although of course there have been changes in the raising of girls, for example in relation to their intellectual formation, a ‘female’ position that accounts for these ‘attributes’. Because although today the perspective valued within the middle sectors is that women do not circumscribe their aspirations to the private scope and form money and are independent, it is those other ‘attributes’ that, in the social imaginary, continueoperating as a guarantee of his value ‘as women’. That is, in a way, the woman’s model continues to operate under the role of the immediately previous generations model, that we could call the model of ‘as yes’: that women live as if studying, achieving a good job and being independent were independentHis vital aspirations (which corresponded to the ideal of ‘modern woman’) until the time comes to consolidate a couple and family project that, with the arrival of the children, relieve them of these obligations, until then lived (or puton stage) like its maximum ambitions. This is the inherited model of the women who began to think about an alternative way to be carried out outside the traditional domestic sphere, but that after taking some first steps, they decided that innovation was already sufficient in this field and they retreated again in the traditional model. Women who knew the advantages and worries of the wage labor world, but decided to abandon it in pursuit of a full -time family and maternity ideal.

How to make the difficult transition from a family to family without the shipwrecked relationship

This is an aspect of vital importance for the optimal development of the project that begins: "The fact that parents are well as a couple is good for the whole family"

The socioeconomic context, together with the difficulties inherent in motherhood and paternity (loss of independence, more work, less rest, changes in the management of time, new roles), in some way propitiate that break between the family and couple binomial

Put to having to cut time for somewhere to dedicate it to the needs of the newborn, it is always "much easier" to cut that time in the couple’s area, but it is a dangerous strategy, since when the children grow up and are less dependentAnd plaintiffs is when the distancing that has been in the couple becomes evident, and sometimes they are tried to remedy too late .

In order not to reach these extremes, it is recommended that the care of the couple be behind ("but very close") in our priorities for the care of the baby, since in the middle of the male of changes, tiredness, exhaustion and frustrations that thePaternity "We need to have strong pillars that support us and the best support point at this time is, without a doubt, the couple"

We must achieve that the everyday is something that reinforces us, trying to create a good weather: smile, thank, gestures of affection, of love, without a single day when we do not remember our partner why it is specialfor us.

CONCLUSION

In recent decades there have been great changes in relation to women’s projects and aspirations. Detached – in some social sectors – of the domestic imperative to focus exclusively to the care of children, current’Professional vocation’) while new mandates have emerged. ‘The change of the traditional dominant female model (development in the family’s sphere, of the private) is being made to the new model (woman who works, development in the public sphere). This last model has already become the dominant image of women although today, it is only real for a minority of women and a large part of the female population has not yet incorporated it into its existence. These elite women are the

First that have made effective the social and cultural capital that the traditional model denied them, compared to their class brothers, men ’

Just as mandates persist towards motherhood, new social pressures also act towards their postpone. This is reflected in some of the figures already mentioned by demographic studies (censuses, permanent household survey, etc.) that account for a decrease in birth rate and a growth of the average age of women when having their first child in the city of Buenos Aires, especially in areas where the highest income sectors are concentrated.

Although there have been important cultural changes regarding the sexual division of labor and a greater male presence in domestic tasks is noticed, in the raising of children they tend to subsist traditional roles despite the fact that women no longer exclusively build their identity tofrom the functions of mother and wife. The mandates linked to ‘good’ performance of motherhood and permanence of traditional models, generate in women with professional careers whose exercise is a valued source of satisfactions both at material and symbolic level, contradictions still not skipped.

Although other projects have gained land, motherhood continues to be a key experience in the constitution of female trajectories although in the middle sectors it operates for women, along with the freedom to develop in other areas, a new mandate: that of not becomingOnly in mothers.

The cultural heritage that historically circumscribed the feminine identity to its social role as a mother continues to operate at the level of representations regarding the social construction of the woman’s model. Being a mother or does not remain meaning as an attribute or lack, and even manifests itself in the plane of language in terms of possession: ‘having or not having’, that is the question.

Women are socially thought and think of themselves in relation to motherhood: the social budget of female biographies is still closely linked to offspring. The uniqueness of each woman, the deployment of her individual identity, is built in the shadow of her biological power, even if she renounces her. The symbolic framework in which the dichotomous pair ‘Mother/No Mother’ is part of a socio -historical context in which women’s subjectivities are made up, in which the categories and representations associated with having children operate as a strongIdentity brand. ‘To become a mother, it is necessary to be a woman, to act as a mother, the fulfillment of certain acts is required. Women’s destination, image of a fence, on whose confinement the voice of future mothers [and not mothers] will build their own stories ’