Women and the Law: Has the pregnancy of an elderly woman changed the myth of Motherhood in a legal context aswell as social attitudes?

Essay by huf008University, Bachelor'sB-, December 2006

download word file, 8 pages 4.0

Downloaded 35 times

Every class had two tiers, one for men, and one for women . The myth of an ideal mother is an idealised woman, full of love, forgiveness and selflessness, and can be seen as a tradition includes certain responsibilities and duties, but women's authority is limited. Women's power in both the public and private spheres is subject to the rule of men, both as individual and as shown by patriarchy.

Women's post-natal experience has been explained by clinicians that well adjusted, normal and 'good' mothers are those who are happy; and mothers who are nervous or depressed are ill. On an individual level, women recognise their biological capacity to have children and, can come to equate feminity with marriage and motherhood, often seeing women who do not do this as 'inadequate' , motherhood is seen to potentially provide girls/women with entry into womanhood .

The 'maternal instinct ' suggests all women want to have children, and are capable of looking after them without training.

It cuts across ideas that women are socialised into wanting children: it is a biological imperative . Feminist research has challenged such myths by showing contradictions with this idea . Married women are encouraged to seek fertility counseling and condemned for wanting abortions. Unmarried women are challenged for wanting children .

Matriarchy is not known in most societies and is surely not an influential way of social organisation. Fathers' participation has been seen as improving children's academic and social capacities. Feminist studies of motherhood visibly demonstrate the ways in which the mothering role exists to stop women's own development .

Radical feminists argue that men avoid sharing child care because they do not want to, not because they're incapable of it. Ruth Bleier argued that women's role is always of a lower status of those compared...