Towards a deconstruction of the woman-mother union.

Abstract

This work proposes an approach on motherhood based on the disciplinary fields of philosophy, sociology, history and psychology, as well as studies on gender and theories developed by feminisms. In this sense, in a first section, we seek to define and characterize motherhood, discussing certain approaches that, from different perspectives, have focused their critical view on the univocal association between women and motherhood and the reduction of femininity to motherhood that has been built throughout history. In a second section, we stated how around the maternity some cultural discursivities and operations that tend to perpetuate the woman-mother union are formed. To encourage the unravelling of these cultural operations, the socio-political construction of motherhood is deepened, and with it the categories of: women’s maternalization, maternalization and maternalism. This analysis allows us to determine how different systems of legitimacy of motherhood were created as a destination for all women. The objective of thinking and conceptualizing motherhood under these critical reading is to seek that motherhood also means an experience of emancipation for women and a space to obtain the necessary rights to exercise this role.