Gender and Maternal Identities

Abstract

What effects do contemporary changes in women’s gender identity have on women’s experiences – in their variety and particularity – of becoming a mother? How do these identities accommodate, conflict with, sit well with, the core experience of birth-mothering a new infant, central to which is the asymmetrical demand of care by a vulnerable dependent infant, to which that mother has given life? This is a large question, larger than can be answered here, but this article will try to open it out further.