ABSTRACT
Why would a woman want children? And how and when does the wish for a child begin? What does it mean to a woman to ‘become a mother’? Maternity is an experience of body and of mind in equal measure, consciously experienced but also resting on unconscious beliefs, expectations and anxieties. Life events can greatly infl uence it, but, as we shall see, it is rooted in early infancy, in the fi rst exchanges with the mother interwoven with the early Oedipal vicissitudes.
