How Biology, Society, Economy, Culture and Power Shape the Experience of Motherhood Across Human Civilizations
-Ramphal Kataria
“A mother is not born holy. She is born human.”
Society often imagines the mother as a sacred figure suspended above ordinary humanity — endlessly patient, selfless, nurturing and emotionally invincible. Literature crowns her with divinity. Religion turns her into sacrifice. Culture expects her to forgive infinitely, endure silently, and love unconditionally.
But beneath every glorified image of motherhood stands a woman made of flesh, fatigue, desire, fear, hormones, memory, deprivation, instinct, wounds, and survival.
The mother is first a woman.
Before she becomes “maa,” “mother,” “ammi,” “mom,” or “amma,” she exists as a human being shaped by class, caste, race, labour, violence, education, economics, emotional history, and social power. Her motherhood does not emerge in isolation. It emerges within circumstances.
The romantic imagination of motherhood often conceals the brutal material realities surrounding women’s lives. A woman raising children in an affluent urban household with institutional support, healthcare, nutrition, domestic help, emotional freedom and financial security cannot be understood in the same way as a migrant laborer carrying bricks with an infant tied to her back, or a beggar mother nursing a child on a railway platform while fighting hunger.
Both are mothers.
But society grants dignity to one while reducing the other to invisibility.
This contradiction lies at the heart of the sociology of motherhood.
Motherhood is neither purely biological nor purely emotional. It is biological, psychological, economic, cultural and political all at once. The maternal role is deeply affected by the position of women within society. Therefore, any serious study of motherhood must begin not with idealized sentiments but with the material and emotional conditions of women.
The question is not whether mothers love.
The real question is:
What conditions allow love to flourish, and what conditions suffocate it?
I. The Biological Foundation: Woman as Life Bearer
Motherhood begins within biology.
The female body carries one of nature’s most extraordinary evolutionary functions — the capacity to conceive, gestate, nourish and protect developing life. Human reproduction imposes immense physiological demands upon women.
Pregnancy transforms the entire biological architecture of the female body:
Hormonal systems fluctuate dramatically.
Nutritional requirements increase.
Sleep, metabolism and immunity change.
Emotional processing alters.
Pain thresholds expand.
The brain itself undergoes neurological adaptation.
Modern neuroscience confirms that pregnancy and caregiving reshape neural circuits associated with empathy, vigilance and attachment.
A landmark study by Hoekzema et al. (2017), published in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrated that pregnancy produces long lasting changes in brain structure, especially in areas associated with social cognition and emotional bonding.
The female body literally reorganizes itself around caregiving.
After childbirth, lactation begins — an act often romanticized poetically but fundamentally biological and physically exhausting. The mother converts her blood nutrients into milk, often while sleep deprived, nutritionally depleted and emotionally overwhelmed.
Anthropologists argue that human motherhood is among the most demanding forms of parental investment among mammals because human infants are unusually dependent for extraordinarily long periods.
Unlike many species that become functionally independent within months, human children require years of intensive emotional, social and material support.
This prolonged dependency intensified the evolutionary role of mothers.
Yet biology alone cannot explain motherhood.
If maternal instinct were sufficient in itself, all mothers everywhere would experience motherhood identically.
They do not.
II. Is Maternal Instinct Universal?
The idea of an automatic “maternal instinct” has been celebrated across civilizations. Yet psychology, anthropology and sociology complicate this assumption.
Maternal attachment has biological roots, but its expression varies significantly across individuals and societies.
Some women experience overwhelming attachment immediately after childbirth. Others develop bonding gradually. Some struggle emotionally due to depression, trauma, abuse or economic stress.
Studies on postpartum depression reveal that motherhood can coexist with emotional numbness, anxiety, resentment or psychological breakdown.
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 10–20% of women globally experience mental health conditions during pregnancy or after childbirth, particularly depression.
This challenges the myth that maternal love is always automatic, pure and emotionally stable.
Feminist scholar Adrienne Rich, in Of Woman Born (1976), distinguished between:
1. The experience of motherhood
2. The institution of motherhood
The first is intimate and biological.
The second is social and political.
Society imposes ideals upon mothers:
Be nurturing.
Be forgiving.
Sacrifice endlessly.
Suppress individuality.
Prioritize children over self.
Remain emotionally available at all times.
When women fail to match these ideals, society condemns them more harshly than fathers.
Thus maternal instinct is not absent, but it is mediated through mental health, social support, economic stability and cultural expectations.
Motherhood is both instinct and circumstance.
“Nature gives the woman the capacity to nurture life; society decides whether that nurturing will bloom with dignity or collapse under suffering.”
III. Motherhood Across Social Classes
1. The Affluent Mother
An affluent mother occupies a position within society that offers her material advantages which profoundly shape the quality and nature of her motherhood. These advantages are not merely luxuries; they are structural protections that reduce suffering and expand the possibility of emotional engagement with children. Access to quality healthcare ensures safer pregnancies, better prenatal monitoring and lower maternal mortality risks. Nutritious food improves both maternal wellbeing and child development. Financial stability provides safer housing, educational opportunities and freedom from the constant anxiety of survival.
Such a woman often has institutional and domestic support systems around her. She may have paid maternity leave, domestic workers, private childcare services, psychological counselling, and access to advanced educational resources for her children. These conditions create emotional space. She can invest time in conversation, emotional bonding, intellectual stimulation and developmental care because her existence is not entirely consumed by physical survival.
However, affluent motherhood is not free from suffering. Modern urban upper class motherhood frequently produces a different form of psychological pressure. Sociologists have observed the emergence of what Sharon Hays called “intensive mothering,” where mothers are expected to become hyper involved architects of their children’s future success. Such women are pressured to optimize every aspect of childhood — nutrition, schooling, extracurricular activities, emotional regulation, digital exposure and social development.
The affluent mother therefore often lives under the burden of perfectionism. She is expected to remain professionally successful, physically attractive, emotionally composed and endlessly attentive to her children. Failure in any domain generates guilt. Social media intensifies this pressure by creating competitive displays of ideal motherhood.
Thus privilege does not eliminate emotional conflict. But privilege changes the environment within which motherhood is performed. The affluent mother may struggle psychologically, yet her struggle generally unfolds within structures that continue to protect her and her children from the brutal uncertainties faced by poor women.
2. The Working Class Mother
The working class mother inhabits a social world where motherhood and labour exist in constant collision. Unlike affluent women who may outsource domestic responsibilities, the working class mother is often required to carry both economic and caregiving burdens simultaneously. She works in factories, farms, domestic labour, construction sites, shops, offices, service industries or informal sectors while continuing to shoulder responsibility for cooking, cleaning, caregiving and emotional management inside the home.
This dual burden produces chronic exhaustion. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild described this condition as “the second shift,” referring to the unpaid domestic labor women perform after completing paid work outside. For working class mothers, rest itself becomes a privilege.
A woman returning from physically exhausting labour frequently continues working late into the night for her family. She prepares meals, supervises children, washes clothes and cares for elderly relatives while suppressing her own fatigue. Over time, this continuous labour affects both mental and physical health.
The emotional life of working class motherhood is therefore shaped by scarcity of time and energy rather than scarcity of love. Such mothers may deeply love their children but remain unable to provide the forms of emotional attentiveness idealized by middle class parenting cultures. A tired mother may appear emotionally distant not because she lacks affection but because labor has consumed her psychological reserves.
At the same time, working class motherhood often creates strong cultures of resilience, solidarity and interdependence. In many working class communities, siblings care for one another, neighbors participate in collective support and children learn cooperation early. These adaptive strengths emerge from necessity.
Yet society frequently romanticizes this suffering as noble sacrifice. Poverty is portrayed as producing stronger families or greater moral purity. Such romanticization is deeply problematic. Human beings should not be forced into hardship in order to prove emotional strength. The resilience of working class mothers should inspire respect, but it should also provoke moral outrage at systems that normalize their exhaustion.
3. The Mother Below the Laboring Class
Below the visible working class exists another category of women whose motherhood unfolds at the edge of human survival. These are homeless mothers, migrant mothers, refugee mothers, displaced women, women in informal economies, abandoned women, beggar mothers and women trapped in cycles of hunger and social invisibility.
For such women, motherhood is inseparable from desperation. Their days are organized not around developmental ideals or emotional enrichment but around immediate biological survival — food, water, shelter and physical safety.
Consider the image of a mother begging on a roadside with an infant in her arms. Society often looks at her with pity or irritation but rarely with sociological understanding. That woman may herself be starving while attempting to produce milk for her child. Chronic malnutrition directly affects lactation, mental health and infant growth. Continuous stress increases cortisol levels and contributes to depression, anxiety and emotional instability.
Research in developmental psychology repeatedly demonstrates that extreme poverty affects maternal responsiveness. A woman struggling daily against hunger and insecurity cannot consistently provide calm emotional caregiving because her nervous system itself remains trapped in survival mode.
Yet society judges poor mothers harshly. Malnourished children, unclean clothing or lack of education are often interpreted as evidence of maternal failure rather than structural deprivation. This moral judgment ignores the absence of resources.
The affluent mother is supported by institutions; the destitute mother is abandoned by them.
Anthropologist Nancy Scheper Hughes, in her study Death Without Weeping, examined impoverished Brazilian mothers living under extreme deprivation. Her work revealed how chronic poverty alters emotional responses themselves. Under conditions where infant mortality becomes common, emotional detachment may emerge as a tragic survival mechanism.
Such studies do not prove that poor mothers love less. Rather, they show that suffering reshapes emotional expression.
The motherhood of socially abandoned women therefore reveals one of civilization’s deepest inequalities: society glorifies motherhood symbolically while refusing material dignity to mothers who need it most.
IV. The Rural Mother and the Urban Mother
Rural Motherhood
The rural mother exists within a social environment profoundly shaped by tradition, community structure, agricultural labour and patriarchal expectations. In many rural societies across Asia, Africa and Latin America, motherhood is not simply a personal experience but the primary basis of female social identity. A woman is often considered fully accepted within the social order only after becoming a mother, particularly after bearing sons.
This expectation creates enormous emotional and reproductive pressure. Childlessness may result in stigma, emotional abuse or social exclusion. The rural woman’s value is frequently tied to fertility rather than individuality.
Rural motherhood also involves intense physical labour. Many women continue agricultural work during pregnancy. They carry water, collect firewood, tend livestock, harvest crops and perform domestic work with limited medical support. In developing regions, rural women frequently experience anemia, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate maternal healthcare.
Yet rural motherhood cannot be understood only through deprivation. Rural societies often preserve collective support systems that urban life has weakened. Grandmothers, sisters, neighbors and extended families may participate actively in caregiving. Childrearing becomes socially shared rather than individualized.
However, communal support may coexist with social surveillance. The rural mother is often monitored by family elders and community norms regarding behavior, sexuality, mobility and parenting practices. Her reproductive choices may not truly belong to her.
Thus the rural mother simultaneously experiences support and control. She may never feel emotionally alone, yet she may rarely feel entirely free.
Urban Motherhood
Urban motherhood emerges within a radically different social structure shaped by industrialization, nuclear families, individualism and capitalist work culture. Urban women generally possess greater access to education, healthcare, employment opportunities and reproductive awareness. Smaller family sizes and delayed pregnancies often allow women greater personal choice.
However, urban life produces another kind of emotional strain.
The urban mother frequently raises children in relative isolation. Unlike rural joint family systems, urban nuclear families reduce intergenerational caregiving support. Mothers may spend long hours alone with children while simultaneously balancing employment responsibilities.
Modern urban motherhood is also deeply influenced by digital culture. Social media platforms constantly circulate idealized images of parenting, beauty, discipline and emotional perfection. Mothers compare themselves continuously with carefully curated lifestyles displayed online.
This creates anxiety, guilt and burnout.
Urban mothers are expected to excel simultaneously as professionals, partners and caregivers. The conflict between career ambition and maternal expectation often produces identity fragmentation. A working woman may feel guilty for spending insufficient time with children, while a stay at home mother may feel guilty for sacrificing career aspirations.
Urban children additionally grow within environments shaped by academic competition, technological dependence and reduced communal interaction. Consequently, urban mothers increasingly perform emotional management roles — supervising screen exposure, educational performance and psychological wellbeing.
Thus urban motherhood provides greater autonomy but often less emotional infrastructure. Freedom increases, yet loneliness deepens.
V. Motherhood in Developed and Developing Economies
Developed Economies
Women in developed economies generally benefit from:
Better maternal healthcare
Lower maternal mortality
Institutional childcare
Legal protections
Education
Reproductive rights
Psychological awareness
Yet capitalist individualism creates another paradox.
Motherhood increasingly collides with productivity culture.
Women are expected to:
Excel professionally
Maintain appearance
Parent intensively
Remain emotionally composed
Achieve financial independence
The result is burnout.
Studies in Scandinavian countries show that even in welfare states with advanced gender equality, women still perform disproportionate domestic labour.
Equality in law does not always produce equality in lived experience.
Developing Economies
In developing societies, mothers face compounded structural vulnerabilities:
Malnutrition
Limited healthcare
Child marriage
Maternal mortality
Informal labour exploitation
Lack of sanitation
Economic dependence
Patriarchal restrictions
UNICEF data consistently shows that poverty directly affects maternal and child outcomes.
A woman struggling to secure food, water and shelter cannot experience motherhood in the same psychological space as a socially protected woman.
Here motherhood becomes survival labour.
The mother’s body becomes the battlefield where poverty, patriarchy and policy failures intersect.
“The quality of motherhood cannot be separated from the quality of a woman’s existence.”
VI. Traditional Society versus Free Society
Motherhood in Traditional Societies
Traditional societies often glorify motherhood while simultaneously restricting women.
Motherhood becomes:
Duty
Moral expectation
Religious responsibility
Social identity
Family honor
Women who reject motherhood may face stigma.
Motherhood is treated not as choice but destiny.
Such societies frequently value women primarily through reproductive contribution.
This creates emotional contradictions.
A woman may be worshipped symbolically as “mother” while denied:
Inheritance
Freedom
Decision making power
Sexual autonomy
Education
Thus symbolic reverence may conceal structural subordination.
Motherhood in Liberal Societies
Liberal societies recognize motherhood increasingly as one possible dimension of womanhood rather than its sole purpose.
Women possess greater control over:
Reproductive rights
Career choices
Marriage
Divorce
Family planning
Yet liberal societies also commercialize motherhood.
Motherhood becomes:
Marketed
Psychologized
Individualized
Consumerized
Children become “projects.”
Parenting becomes performance.
The pressure to optimize children emotionally and intellectually creates another form of maternal anxiety.
Freedom reduces coercion but does not eliminate pressure.
VII. Bigoted Societies and Liberal Societies
In bigoted societies — shaped by casteism, racism, religious extremism or patriarchy — motherhood itself becomes politicized.
Women are pressured to reproduce for:
Community survival
Religious identity
Ethnic continuity
Nationalist narratives
Their womb becomes symbolic territory.
History repeatedly demonstrates how women’s reproductive capacities become controlled during communal conflict, slavery, colonization and nationalist politics.
The mother is no longer merely a parent.
She becomes:
A carrier of identity
A reproductive instrument
A cultural battlefield
Liberal societies attempt to individualize motherhood.
However, social prejudice still persists subtly:
Single mothers judged morally
Poor mothers stereotyped
Minority mothers over policed
Immigrant mothers marginalized
Thus no society entirely frees motherhood from ideology.
VIII. Are All Mothers the Same?
Biologically, certain maternal tendencies appear across humanity:
Protection of offspring
Emotional bonding
Responsiveness to infant signals
Distress at child suffering
Yet mothers are not identical.
Human beings differ in:
Temperament
Emotional capacity
Trauma history
Mental health
Social conditioning
Economic security
Education
Attachment style
Therefore motherhood varies.
Some mothers are affectionate.
Some are emotionally absent.
Some are violent.
Some are nurturing.
Some sacrifice enormously.
Some abandon.
Some protect heroically.
Some perpetuate trauma.
To deny these differences is not compassion.
It is sentimental dishonesty.
The myth of universal maternal purity often silences children who suffered neglect or abuse.
A critical sociology of motherhood must acknowledge complexity.
Women are human.
Human beings possess both tenderness and cruelty.
Motherhood magnifies neither sainthood nor evil automatically.
It magnifies the conditions under which women live.
IX. Human Mothers and Other Mammals
Comparative biology reveals striking parallels between human mothers and female mammals.
Across mammals:
Females nurse offspring.
Hormones influence bonding.
Maternal protection emerges strongly.
Mothers prioritize infant survival.
Separation produces distress.
Primatology studies by Jane Goodall and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reveal that maternal behavior among primates involves both affection and adaptive strategy.
Chimpanzee mothers cuddle, groom, protect and teach offspring.
Elephants display collective maternal behavior.
Dolphins assist injured calves.
Yet animal mothers also abandon weak offspring under extreme scarcity.
Nature itself is not purely sentimental.
Human motherhood differs because humans possess:
Language
Social institutions
Morality
Culture
Long childhood dependency
Complex emotional memory
Thus human motherhood is simultaneously biological and symbolic.
Women mother not only through instinct but through social meaning.
“Maternal love is natural, but the conditions required to sustain it are profoundly social.”
X. Psychological Dimensions of Motherhood
Attachment Theory
John Bowlby’s attachment theory demonstrated that early maternal responsiveness influences emotional development.
Secure attachment produces:
Emotional stability
Trust
Social confidence
Insecure attachment may contribute to:
Anxiety
Fear of abandonment
Emotional dysregulation
Yet attachment itself depends on maternal wellbeing.
A psychologically exhausted mother cannot consistently provide emotional responsiveness.
Thus child psychology cannot be separated from maternal psychology.
Maternal Mental Health
Maternal mental health remains deeply neglected globally.
Women experience:
Postpartum depression
Anxiety disorders
Sleep deprivation
Identity crises
Emotional burnout
Domestic violence trauma
Many societies shame mothers who express exhaustion.
A “good mother” is expected to suffer silently.
This silence becomes psychologically destructive.
Studies indicate that maternal stress significantly affects:
Infant brain development
Emotional regulation
Long term health outcomes
Therefore protecting mothers psychologically is not charity.
It is social investment.
XI. Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood
Feminist scholarship transformed the understanding of motherhood.
Simone de Beauvoir argued that women are socially conditioned into restrictive gender roles.
Adrienne Rich exposed the difference between authentic maternal experience and institutional expectations.
bell hooks emphasized how race and class shape maternal experiences.
Black feminist scholars particularly highlighted how slavery, racism and economic exploitation distorted motherhood historically.
Enslaved women were denied control over their own children.
Similarly, poor women across societies experience state surveillance over motherhood:
Welfare monitoring
Reproductive control
Forced sterilization historically
Moral judgment
Feminism therefore insists:
Motherhood cannot be understood apart from power.
XII. The Invisible Economy of Mothers
One of the greatest contradictions in human civilization is this:
The labour most essential for sustaining society is often unpaid.
Motherhood involves:
Childcare
Emotional labour
Household management
Education
Healthcare support
Socialization
Elder care
Economists describe this as the “care economy.”
Without maternal and caregiving labour, societies collapse.
Yet GDP calculations historically ignored unpaid domestic labor.
Women sustain economies invisibly.
The International Labour Organization repeatedly notes that women perform significantly more unpaid care work globally than men.
Thus motherhood becomes economically exploited under patriarchy and capitalism alike.
The mother produces future citizens, workers and social continuity — often without recognition.
XIII. The Sexualization and Sacralization of Women
Society often divides women into contradictory categories:
Pure mother
Desirable woman
This artificial division creates psychological violence.
A mother is expected to become desexualized after childbirth.
Her identity as woman disappears behind caregiving.
Yet she remains:
Emotional
Sexual
Ambitious
Individual
Desiring
The denial of womanhood inside motherhood produces emotional fragmentation.
A mother is not merely a reproductive function.
She is a complete human being.
XIV. Mothers and Violence
Many mothers raise children under violent conditions:
Domestic abuse
War
Communal conflict
Economic displacement
State violence
Hunger
Studies from conflict zones demonstrate that maternal trauma directly affects children.
Yet mothers frequently become the emotional shield between violence and childhood.
Refugee mothers walking across borders carrying children embody one of humanity’s deepest survival images.
Motherhood under violence becomes resistance itself.
XV. The Myth of Endless Sacrifice
One of the most dangerous social myths is that a good mother must erase herself completely.
Self destruction is glorified as maternal virtue.
Women are praised for:
Neglecting health
Suppressing ambition
Enduring abuse
Remaining silent
Sacrificing endlessly
This expectation becomes exploitative.
A mother who preserves her individuality is often judged selfish.
But psychologically healthy motherhood requires balance.
Children benefit not from a broken mother but from an emotionally stable one.
The glorification of suffering traps women inside guilt.
XVI. Motherhood and Policy
Public policy profoundly shapes motherhood.
Countries with:
Maternal healthcare
Paid maternity leave
Childcare systems
Nutrition programs
Equal wages
Education access
produce better maternal and child outcomes.
Thus motherhood is not merely private.
It is political.
When governments neglect women:
Maternal mortality rises.
Malnutrition increases.
Psychological distress expands.
Child development suffers.
A society reveals its moral character through how it treats mothers — especially poor mothers.
XVII. Motherhood in Literature and Culture
Literature across civilizations portrays mothers as:
Sacred
Protective
Suffering
Enduring
Forgiving
Yet literature also reveals contradictions.
From Greek tragedies to modern novels, mothers appear not only nurturing but conflicted, wounded and complex.
The idealized mother often exists more in cultural imagination than reality.
Real mothers:
Become tired.
Feel anger.
Experience regret.
Need affection.
Carry unfinished dreams.
Fear failure.
Humanizing mothers does not reduce their dignity.
It restores it.
“To worship mothers while ignoring women’s suffering is one of civilization’s oldest hypocrisies.”
XVIII. The Child’s Perception of Mother
Children initially perceive mothers as absolute emotional worlds.
The mother becomes:
Safety
Nourishment
Recognition
Attachment
Identity
Over time, adulthood reveals another truth:
The mother herself was struggling.
Many adults discover late that their mothers were:
Traumatised women
Economically trapped women
Lonely women
Uneducated women
Silenced women
Unfulfilled women
This realization deepens empathy.
The mother stops appearing divine and begins appearing profoundly human.
And perhaps that humanity is more moving than perfection.
XIX. The Ethics of Remembering Mothers
Modern culture frequently sentimentalizes mothers after death while neglecting them during life.
Mother’s Day celebrations often reduce motherhood to emotional symbolism.
Flowers, quotes and nostalgia cannot substitute:
Respect
Equality
Healthcare
Emotional recognition
Freedom
Economic dignity
True honour toward mothers requires transformation of women’s conditions.
Otherwise society celebrates motherhood while exploiting mothers.
XX. Toward a New Understanding of Motherhood
A mature understanding of motherhood must reject two extremes:
1. Romantic deification
2. Cynical reductionism
Motherhood is neither pure sainthood nor mere biology.
It is one of the deepest intersections between nature and society.
A mother is:
Biological being
Emotional being
Economic being
Cultural being
Political being
Psychological being
Historical being
To understand motherhood is to understand civilization itself.
Because every society reproduces itself not merely through institutions but through women carrying life under conditions created by that society.
Conclusion
The mother is not a goddess suspended beyond humanity.
She is a woman shaped by blood, labor, instinct, emotion, memory, deprivation, care and circumstance.
Nature grants her the extraordinary biological capacity to nurture life, but society determines whether that nurturing unfolds with dignity or under suffering.
The affluent mother, the rural mother, the labouring mother, the refugee mother, the urban professional mother, the homeless mother and the beggar mother all share the biological burden of motherhood — yet they inhabit radically unequal worlds.
To say “all mothers are same” may sound emotionally comforting, but sociologically it is incomplete.
Mothers differ because women differ.
And women differ because societies distribute:
power unequally,
resources unequally,
freedom unequally,
safety unequally,
dignity unequally.
The maternal instinct exists, but instinct alone cannot overcome hunger, violence, trauma, exploitation or structural inequality.
A psychologically secure and socially respected woman is more capable of expressing nurturing motherhood than a woman crushed beneath deprivation and fear.
Thus the quality of motherhood cannot be separated from the quality of womanhood.
The tragedy of civilization is that it often glorifies mothers symbolically while abandoning women materially.
It worships sacrifice but ignores exhaustion.
It celebrates care but undervalues caregivers.
It praises maternal love while tolerating conditions that destroy women internally.
A truly humane society would not merely celebrate mothers once a year.
It would build conditions where women can mother without losing themselves.
For the deepest truth about motherhood is this:
Before every mother was a mother, there was a woman trying to survive her world.
And the fate of motherhood ultimately depends upon how humanity chooses to treat women.
“The mother’s lap may feel sacred to the child, but the woman carrying that child often walks through a world that has never treated her sacredly at all.”
References
1. Adrienne Rich — Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)
2. Simone de Beauvoir — The Second Sex (1949)
3. Sharon Hays — The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (1996)
4. Arlie Hochschild — The Second Shift (1989)
5. John Bowlby — Attachment and Loss (1969)
6. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy — Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species (1999)
7. bell hooks — Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (1981)
8. Nancy Chodorow — The Reproduction of Mothering (1978)
9. Judith Butler — Gender Trouble (1990)
10. Pierre Bourdieu — Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979)
11. Hoekzema et al. — “Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure,” Nature Neuroscience (2017)
12. World Health Organization — Maternal Mental Health Reports
13. UNICEF — Reports on Maternal and Child Welfare
14. International Labour Organization — Reports on Unpaid Care Work
15. Jane Goodall — Studies on Chimpanzee Maternal Behaviour
16. Donald Winnicott — “Good Enough Mother” theory
17. Nancy Scheper-Hughes — Death Without Weeping (1992)
18. Elisabeth Badinter — The Myth of Motherhood (1980)
19. Silvia Federici — Caliban and the Witch (2004)
20. Carol Gilligan — In a Different Voice (1982)
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