ABSTRACT
Motherhood is central to my life and to many women’s lives and identities. The feminist debate has revealed that motherhood is likely to be a crucial but sensitive part of women’s lives, involving deep ambivalence in a central part of our self identities (Ribbens, 1994). Adrienne Rich’s quote at the beginning of this paper, sums up, the richness, ambivalence and centrality of the experience of motherhood for me. Being a mother is integral now to my identity and my life and is both a source of oppression and liberation. It is both burden and joy and a continual responsibility - not something to be done before and after work or at weekends. It is not always a reciprocal relationship. It is however, a uniquely pleasurable relationship, through which I continue to learn and develop (e.g. vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses, interpersonal skills, self-reflection, negotiation, mediation). Thus while motherhood may at times be analysed as the cornerstone of women’s oppression, recent feminist writers have been concerned to point out the ways in which it may also offer women the scope for an experience of active agency (Ribbens, 1994).
