ABSTRACT
Procreation and motherhood are central creative experiences for women, but they are neither the only ones, nor are they the straightforwardly satisfying experiences that our society would like to believe. This chapter looks at how the construction of womanhood as motherhood denies other avenues of creativity for women. It also looks at how the idealization of motherhood as always “good” and “nurturing” constrains women’s expression of their own true experiences as mothers and makes it more difficult for them to explore their aggressive and ambivalent feelings towards their children. A woman’s experience of being a mother is as multi-faceted as there are mothers. The idea that womanliness and motherhood are interchangeable has been questioned and interpreted through the differing lenses of sociology, feminism, gender politics, and psychoanalysis since 1792, when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The women and children are separated off from the living, working world and enter the idealized yet denigrated world of motherhood.
