The body is one of the fundamental territories of social control. While States urge us to reproduce, and control our fecundity and its products, we are left alone with our children, as parenting is framed as something intimate and secluded to domestic spaces.
Our ability to construct reality and relate through social and personally significant experiences are limited in a system that is increasingly fragmented and individualistic. Validated family models can act as compensatory structures with meaningful impact to the social-political context. In the images of the mother, encoded during centuries, the material conditions needed for the production of a representation are combined with the material conditions of reproduction. Although being a mother is a rich and complex experience, oftentimes infused with tensions and disappointments (precisely generated by unrealistic expectations), the mythical motherhood designed by the patriarchal system is naturalized as the impulse of female and presented as a relationship without conflicts or contradictions. Given the fetishizing and normalizing character that is given to motherhood in patriarchy in order to perpetuate the social order, do we truly choose to be mothers? Why is care, or fundamental vital labor, presupposed as an especially appropriate task for women?