Womanhood and motherhood construction in intergenerational transference

This study mainly aims to see how the identity of women is built in urban women, including the relationship between motherhood and femininity, and on an intergenerational level. Earlier research reveals that motherhood is often seen as a part of female identity. With the increasing importance given to children and the strengthening of the nuclear family, motherhood becomes central to womanhood. However, in the world and in Turkey, modernization process, economic requirements of women moving into the public sphere and the working life, and birth control, research claim that motherhood holds increasingly smaller place on female identity. Therefore, in this thesis, women's identity is discussed in the context of its relationship with motherhood and how individuals construct women as a gender identity is studied on an intergenerational level. In this study, in order to include family dynamics, which have an important role in the construction of gender identity, femininity has been handled by including women in the same family. The constructions on womanhood, and the relationship of these constructions with motherhood was examined, and the manifestation of femininity in intergenerational transmission was revealed. 18 women from 7 families participated in the study conducted through semi-structured interviews. The data, collected through one-on-one interviews with women, were analyzed using the Grounded Theory, and as a result of this analysis, a model of womanhood construction process was created. In this model, there are three processes. Rules and boundaries regarding womanhood are observed in the Limitation (Ecosystem) process. In the Sense Making process, woman realizes her position as a woman in the Ecosystem and grip the sense of being a woman. In the last process, called Negotiation process, woman takes a step towards maintaining or transforming the existing ecosystem by constructing a Transformational or Maintaining Identity via gender performance. One of the important points of this model is that womanhood is built on balance. Moreover, it has been found that the female body is influencing the identity-building process and that the transformative or maintaining identity construction does not only affects the individual but also alters the ecosystem for herself, younger and older generations. Keywords: Womanhood, motherhood, grounded theory, gender indentity, intergenerational tranference