Women's motherhood role in gender context: Elisabeth Badinter and critical motherhood theory

Being one of the crucial roles of the women in the society, motherhood has been a controversial issue both in gender and feminist theory context throughout the history. Women's biological ability to give birth paved the way for the maternal instinct ideology and the acceptance of this ideology without being questioned properly for ages. On the other hand, the terms of womanhood and motherhood were used interchangeably and synonymously for a long time since the responsibilities of motherhood have been attributed to women as a feminine task in the gender context. Lack of academic studies from a gender perspective in this field and inadequate recognition of French feminist and philosopher Elisabeth Badinter in Turkey have been one of the most important starting points of this thesis. Within the framework of Elisabeth Badinter's two books, The Myth of Motherhood: An Historical View of the Maternal Instinct and The Conflict: Woman&Mother, this study aims to demonstrate that maternal instinct does not exist, the concept of the motherhood is built together within the historical and societal process and womanhood and motherhood should be perceived separately. The findings of the study were obtained through comparative reading of aforementioned books of Badinter, which were published in thirty years interval, in a theoretical way.