the problematics of motherhood in twentieth century women's fiction

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them to be childrearers once the children are there.
everth he less, as Oakley comments:
the 'maternal instinct' 1s a phenomenon of
established popularity today It is suggested
that all women have thls instinct, and asserted
confidently that all mothers must have it.
Irreparable damage to maternal mental health is
clalmed to follow from a sltuatlon In whlch a
woman gives birth to a chrld and then hands over
its rearing to someone else (1974 . 1991
Adrienne Rlch shares thls vlew
According to her
"rnstltutionallzed motherhood demands of women maternal
'~nstlnct' rather than lntelllgence, selflesness rather than
self-reallzatlon, relaclon to others rather than the
creatlon of self" (1976 42) By abandoning the motherhood
myth, the protagonists of Meridian, The Dark Holds No
Terrors, The Diviners, The Millstone and The Summer Before
the Dark exercise thelr lndivldual
intelligence rather than instinct,
cholces, choosing
self-real~zatlon rather
tnan selflesness, creatlon of self rather than relatlon to
others
3.5.0 To achleve thls self-realization, the 'new
mothers' move out to establish an rdent~ty vls-a-vis thelr
career, when they reallze that thelr work at home 1s
undermined and 1s a thankless lob
A they move away from
the boundaries of the home and step into the professional
fleld, one question that alarms them 1s how to balance both
motherhood and career
To strlke a mean between the two