Motherhood Impact on Professional Role

The thesis "The impact of motherhood on the professional role" examines 3 related aspects of contemporary female identity: formation of female identity, realization of the maternal role, and changes in the professional identity of a woman who has undergone the experience of motherhood. The paper consists of 4 chapters - 3 theoretical chapters and the description of empirical research. The hypothesis of the study is that by undergoing the transformative experience of motherhood, a woman actualizes the feminine in her identity and can transfer this new quality into her professional role. A woman in her psychosexual development faces a number of conflicts, the successful resolution of which is determined by the care shown by the mother in her relationship with her daughter and the positive image of the father. Pre-oedipal and oedipal stages, as well as the castration complex of girls in the presence of gender undervaluation on the part of the father and mother, lead to impairment of sexuality and conflicts when changing the object with getting stuck at certain stages or projecting unresolved confliтcts in family life and motherhood. Representatives of French psychoanalysis (J. Chasseur-Smirgel, J. Schaeffer and others) emphasize the presence of a specific female sense of guilt, which aggravates the conflict between sexuality and the Ego, leads to a rejection of the feminine and at the same time promotes the social achievements of women. The crisis of female identity, associated with the need to choose the combination of motherhood and career, as well as marital responsibilities, is associated with the increased impact of gender stereotypes and unconscious impulses of conflict identification with the mother and father. Pregnancy, the postpartum period, and emotional burnout in motherhood are important crisis stages in a woman's life journey, which inevitably entail a recourse to unconsciously dormant archaic conflicts. The more such conflicts accompanied a woman at the stage of sexuality formation, the harder it is to realize the function of motherhood. The choice faced by a woman associated with the need to combine the roles of wife and mother, and sometimes also of worker, leads to a negative emotional state, aggravation of fears, the experience of reunification with the motherly imago, which does not always form a positive attitude toward motherhood and female identity. The favorable transformation of the identity of a woman who has become a mother leads to a change in the attitude toward her professional role. The empirical part of the work aims to test the relevance of psychoanalytic theories on female identity formation and hypothesis based on the analysis of 9 in-depth interviews with women aged 31 to 55.