Personal and Cultural Shadows of Late Motherhood

Book excerpt: Personal and Cultural Shadows of Late Motherhood explores the topic of delayed motherhood from a Jungian psychoanalytic perspective, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including interview transcripts, diaries, dreams, and Jung's world renowned Word Association Experiment. It provides a unique contribution to our understanding of the pressures faced by women today on the topic of delayed motherhood. We may consider an affect to be in place when a woman allows her relationship to her body and its procreative capacity to slip away from consciousness, only to awaken at a point when redeeming her past choices becomes a hunger. This book delves into personal, cultural and collective spheres of influence that have been split off waiting for the right moment to reintegrate. Working with Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and Jung’s Word Association Experiment, the author identifies aspects of the psyche arousing late procreative desire and considers the differing accounts of maternal and paternal parents, within affective experience of growing up female beside a male sibling. The book examines women’s procreative identity in midlife, identifies complexes of a personal, cultural and collective nature and considers how the role of mother is psychosocially performed, taking in feminist psychoanalytical thinking as well as Queer theory to explore new meanings for late motherhood. This book will be of great interest to clinicians, researchers, academics, postgraduate students of Jungian psychoanalysis, gender theory, psychosocial studies, and those travelling alongside a woman's journey into later motherhood.