Motherhood and Care: (still) Women’s Destiny?

Resumen

The aim of this paper is to look at a theme which has been much analysed in Women’s Studies and elsewhere: motherhood. There has been a return to viewing motherhood as an experience with obvious biological foundations but above all as a social construct which patriarchal societies have used to control women. Specifically, we give a voice to ‘non-mothers’, who are still today seen as surprising, as somehow anomalous, strange, even threatening. Noting that motherhood rhetoric and cultural pressures – still very much a feature of Italian life – have not sufficed to reverse a demographic trend, we explore the category of ‘care’. The idea is that questioning the intrinsically feminine nature of caring as exalted in motherhood, gives us the chance to construct a ‘culture of care and conviviality’ on the basis of their shared role as ‘sons and daughters’. Shared origins on which to build new, non-hierarchical, sharing relationships.

Keywords: gender, maternity, patriarchy, gylany