Women who are mothers: The experience of defining self

Feminist poststructuralists maintain that the self develops through the process of social interaction and is constituted and reconstituted through the various discursive practices in which people participate. For mothers, Western culture provides a confusing blend of conflicting discourses. Whereas discourses around healthy self-definition stress the importance of autonomy, differentiation, and separation of the individual from others throughout the life cycle, discourses around mothering emphasize women's abnegation of the self, self-lessness, and self-sacrifice. Drawing on elements of phenomenological research and feminist inquiry, this study examined the experience of self-definition for women who are mothers. The study revealed three elements within mothers' process of defining self, including (a) nonreflective doing, (b) living in the shadows, and (c) reclaiming and discovering self. Within each of these elements, a number of themes were described and illuminated. In revealing the process of self-definition, the women described an integral relationships between the process of defining self and their experience of health.