Published: 2009-01-01

Madre prestada? Mothering, Singleness and Social Change in Urban Mexico

Renata Hryciuk

Abstract

This text was written on the basis of field research on the cultural construction of motherhood carried out in Santa María Tomatlán: one of the colonias populares of Mexico City, in the period 2005–2006. I analyze coping strategies used by women – mostly women of the younger generation – to (re)construct lifestyles, expectations and gender discourses in the local community. I focus on the creativity and agency of women in the existing cultural conditions and in the specific cultural moment, taking into account the possibilities and restrictions of the local context. Female inhabitants of Tomatlán create various strategies enabling them to fulfill the role of mother in a manner which they find most suitable and which makes it possible for them to pursue their goals. Skillful use of both traditional and new discourses of motherhood enables them to delay the decision to have children, construct new styles of mothering or of refusing motherhood altogether. In result, the local model of wife and mother is subject to negotiation; is constantly contested and even rejected as the only possible life project. It becomes one of the fields where the local specificity of social transformation becomes apparent.

Keywords:

organisation, social transformation, strategies, motherhood, maternity, Mexico

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Hryciuk, R. (2009). Madre prestada? Mothering, Singleness and Social Change in Urban Mexico. Ethnologia Polona, 59–76. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/635

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