ABSTRACT
Although focused on romantic rather than familial relationships, I use Bauman’s words here because the incompatibility of ‘freedom’ and ‘belonging’ he identifies invokes a similar paradox to the one in which my interviewees found themselves enmeshed: although they wanted freedom for their daughters and sons, they simultaneously craved a continuation of the mother/child relationship and a sense of belonging, which I suggest hinged on their desire to feel needed. As established previously, my participants were immersed in a conceptual framework which promoted independence and autonomy as the main goal of their childrearing. At the same time, they acknowledged that ‘keeping young people close is the mother’s role, in line with the principal defining feature of modern motherhood, which is emotional attachment to children’ (Brannen et al., 1994: 182). The construction of their identities as mothers therefore rested upon a contradictory set of discourses, the incongruities of which were only made manifest at the time of the child’s emerging adulthood and home-leaving.
