ABSTRACT
My purpose in this chapter is to explore what it is in the experience of having a child (or children) that alters a woman’s subjectivity and to consider what this has to do with the development of a capacity to care, a capacity that has been closely associated with mothers, probably in all historical periods and all places. ‘Mother’ is both a universal identity and one that varies markedly over time, place and situation. It is reducible to neither the natural nor the social but requires an approach that transcends both. It is an identity that is passionately felt and rigorously regulated; still experienced as women’s destiny but recently subject to choice. Because becoming a mother involves huge changes that affect women’s sense of themselves, it is a particularly good example of where bodily, psychological and social processes intersect. Hence my questions pose fundamental issues about how subjectivity is theorised, with consequent implications for the capacity to care.
