Unmasking motherhood : a poststructuralist study of motherhood and its meanings for women

The intention of the following paper is to explore from a poststructuralist perspective the reasons why women choose to have children and the consequences resulting from this choice. Interviews were conducted with women who were mothers, and a selection of contemporary feminist literature, some related to motherhood and some to poststructuralist feminist theory, reviewed, in order to develop an understanding of the subject positions available to women in the discourses of motherhood. Two paradoxical and contradictory discourses of motherhood emerge, which are described in the concluding chapter of the paper.