Motherhood as feminine ideal, from the dominant, the residual and the emergent

desde lo dominante, lo residual y lo emergente

Abstract

Conceiving and bringing to the world a new human being is a biological fact; making it the ideal and exclusive role of women is cultural. The socializing definition of motherhood is the result of a cultural construction that, although it has evolved and transformed, does not lose sight of discourses, practices and meanings that try to establish a totalizing dimension for women, minimizing the possibilities of including the own differences with respect to what one can be and desire. The objective of this article is to analyze feminist theoretical positions regarding the conception of motherhood as the exclusive role of women, in light of the elements considered by Raymond Williams necessary to understand a complex cultural phenomenon: the dominant, the residual and the emerging; seeking to identify which is the dominant element present in the discourse about motherhood as an inescapable experience for the women’s, by the historical evolution, what remains of the residual and what is seen as emerging, for new rhetoric’s and meanings. All within a framework of feminist positions that deconstruct the conception of motherhood as the main character of female identity.