A cultural analysis of maternal self-conceptions

This inquiry explores how culture frames adolescent and adult mothers' conceptions of themselves in relation to the maternal role. Interviews with primiparous adolescent and adult mothers revealed how they differentially appropriate cultural life-phase expectations and cultural representations of motherhood as they construct their maternal self-conceptions. The adult mothers expressed homogeneous maternal self-conceptions, reflecting cultural representations of motherhood as a normative adult role. In contrast, the adolescent mothers' varied conceptions of themselves as mothers reflect the variability of adolescent identity development, and the intersection of cultural representations that both favor and discourage motherhood as an identity constituent for adolescents.