Facets Of Motherhood

The character was illiterate and thus excluded her from others. In the beginning of the story, the shame from the daughter and others was made prevalent as the author wrote “I learned to be ashamed of my mother” (58). The shame and prejudice began to grow when the mother goes to the school to register her daughter. The mother needed and asked for help when she was filling out the forms that were required for her daughter to go to school. The author wrote “The women asks my mother what she means . . . The women still seem not to understand. ‘I can’t read it. I don’t know how to read or write,” (60) showing that the women the mother was asking for help, did not understand her question, because her ignorance of other people. Her poor understanding of the question clearly made the mother feel even more ashamed of herself. The author goes on to write “My mother looks at me, then looks away. I know almost all of her looks, but this one is brand new to me.”(61) exhibiting how the mother never felt so ashamed and embarrassed in front of her daughter. Once the woman realizes that she was on a higher “level” than the mother, she agreed to help, the author wrote “and suddenly appears happier, so much more satisfied with everything”(61). The mother was being ridiculed and humiliated by the second, as the other

“The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood.” This quote from Margaret Sanger highlights many first wave feminists views about the restrictions of motherhood, marriage, and household responsibilities. Many women saw being a mother as a chore or as something out of their control. Sanger fought these restrictions through bringing birth control to the general public who suffered from poverty due to large families. Others, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote social critiques in her texts “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Herland to bring attention to how society treats women and ideally how motherhood should be. Both of these women believed motherhood was a responsibility of women and they should take it more seriously to create better future generations. This goes beyond the suffrage and equality movement because it dictated that women’s sexual emancipation was equally important as women’s legal emancipation. Being a mother was considered a woman’s most crucial task at this time, therefore the power behind female sexual education and birth control challenged society to feminist.

1.) Overall main topic of this book connects between the issue of motherhood and feminism. One major key point I found while reading this book is the author, Amber Kinser explains the growth and progress of the role of mothers in the american society meaning how the roles have changed overtime. A major theme of Kinser’s book is that the public debates may focus on mothering, but the issues affect us all.  Cutting back on health care for women, on education, and on jobs for teachers, social workers and others in the service sector have their greatest impact on mothers, but they affect all of us. Motherhood becomes a symbol for how men and women, single and married, gay and straight, deal with the need for individual options and the need to act for the good of others.

In this essay I will explore the different schools of feminism such as Marxist, liberal and radical feminism, who share the view that women are oppressed in a patriarchal society but differ in opinion on who benefits from the inequalities. Each school of feminism has their own understanding of family roles and relationships which I will assess through this essay.

The spacing and structure of the poem is set up to allow flow and momentum in the poem and its narrative. The speaker’s voice is present with emotion as emphasised in a natural rhythm of thought offering an honest and bare interpretation of motherhood. The open “blank space” of the poem encourages a calm and breathy atmosphere, fulfilling a mood of tranquility and bliss. Each stanza is short with a couple quick fragmented thoughts before closing each section with the power of a single word. Each stanza breaks apart a separate thought filled with a loving passion the speaker uses to stress the beauty, wonder, and over-flowing love present in motherhood. To better the structure, the poem itself is broken into three parts, each representing a stage of motherhood. The first segment of motherhood that is represented is during the moments while the baby is still in the womb and the mother waits in anticipation for the baby to arrive. This “honeymoon” phase is expressed with a tone filtered through a perception of rose-coloured glasses and excitement as the mother is in utter bliss to carry a life into the world. The

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

This myth of marianismo exercised by the mothers provided them with a stable identity; however similar to Taylor this identity also restricted them . This identity through marianismo restricts them to be women dedicated to the home and forces them to meet cultural expectations; further it creates the notion that “ a woman's role as mother becomes her central identification” ; hence, one cannot go without the other and a woman’s role is dependent on motherhood. Taylor describes the use of motherhood as a contradiction that questions the responsibility of a good mother and a problematic choice. Farj further shows the reasoning for such

“Being a parent is dirty and scary and beautiful and hard and miraculous and exhausting and thankless and joyful and frustrating all at once. It’s everything. (Confessions of a Scary Mommy, Gallery Books 2012).”

A wise man by the name of Revathi Sankaran once said, “If I were asked to define Motherhood. I would have defined it as Love in its purest form. Unconditional Love.” Universally, mothers strive to make their child feel loved, nurtured, and valued. However, the specific ways a mother does this, and the experience of motherhood altogether, differs from culture to culture. In Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Secret Daughter, there is a powerful manifestation of how the way that a women is perceived and the gender roles that she is expected to take in her country impacts her experience in motherhood. Kavita, who lives in India, looses her two daughters due to the harsh outcomes of gender discrimination, and is forced to move to the city in the hopes of creating

Maya Angelou said, “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow” (Wanderlust 1). The relationship a mother has with her child transcends all other relationships in complexity. Maternity largely contributes to the female identity in part because the ability to sexually reproduce is uniquely female. With this ability often comes an unparalleled feeling of responsibility. That is, mothers experience an inherent desire to protect their children from the world and guide them through life. Serving as a child’s protector then transforms a woman’s perspective, or the female gaze. While these protective instincts often arise naturally, they are also reinforced by the ideas society’s perpetuates about motherhood. Globally, women are expected to assume the roles of wives and mothers. The belief that motherhood is somewhat of a requirement assists in the subjugation of women and reinforces a plethora of gendered stereotypes. While some women enjoy the process of childrearing, others feel that having a family comes at an irreparable cost: losing sight of oneself. In response to the polarized views surrounding maternity, several authors have employed different writing techniques to illustrate the mother-child dynamic. Through the examination of three narratives, spanning fiction and non-fiction, one is able to better define maternity and the corresponding female gaze in both symbolic and universal terms.

Feminist theory shares much common ground with Marxism and many of the ideas of European Marxists have been appropriated and used by feminists. It has been suggested that this is particularly true of the ideas of Althusser and Gramsci (Gramman and Marshment in Strinati.1995.p180). Both of these theorists place emphasis on the idea of ideology as a means of control. Althusser suggests that ideology is not merely inherent in popular cultural practices but becomes `material practice' (Storey.1998.p97) and a part of daily existence. For Althusser ideology is found in the customs, traditions and patterns of behaviour of everyday life in such a way that social actors are not aware of their participation in the acceptance and propagation of the ideas of the most powerful group in society. Using Althusser's theories feminists may suggest that a tradition such as the celebration of Mother's Day can be seen as valourizing that particular role for women, while failing to recognize any other. This may lead women to see the maternal role as the most important one for them in society, thus serving the interests of the dominant male group by encouraging women not only to become mothers, but also to assume the position of primary child carers. Such an interpretation suggests that many traditions and customs are to a large extent ideological.

In the 1960s to 1970s, a feminist movement began and sparked a change in attitudes towards women in familial roles and pushed against gender inequality. This movement’s effects trickled down to the opinions and actions of people in the later 1970s to mid-1980s. The period saw a decline in the backing of the traditional family wife role for women and greater acceptance for women finding employment (Mason, K.O., Lu, Y., 1988). However, the change also encountered backlash, with the growth of employed mothers came concerns of the negative effects on the children and their relationship with the mother (Mason, K.O., Lu, Y., 1988). This triggered an inconsistent time for family structure. The nineties saw

The books I’ve chosen to review are set on two different continents. This makes the comparison of the lives of women across the world more efficient and broader. What makes the comparison more practical, realistic and interesting is the fact that the characters in the two books 'The Woman Warrior ' and 'Wild ', lived in the same century. The authors specifically bring out the duties and the expectation that mothers were held to in the upbringing of their daughters as at that time and place. The authors, however, present the picture of motherhood in a fairly narrow view. They ignore the role of mothers in the upbringing of their sons and instead dwell on their duties and responsibilities in the bringing up of their daughters (Kingston & Gordon 2005). Therefore, I chose to compare how the theme of motherhood has been portrayed in the two ethnically diverse texts.

"Voluntary motherhood implies a new morality—a vigorous, constructive, liberated morality. That morality will, first of all, prevent the submergence of womanhood into motherhood. It will set its face against the conversion of women into mechanical maternity and toward the creation of a new race." (Sanger, Woman and the New Race)

When a woman becomes a mother she takes on the expected responsibility of bonding with her child. In The Flats the "mama" is the women who "raises" the child, usually for life (Stack, 1974, p.48). The "mama" may raise the child and the natural