Filipino Women and the Work of Mothering

Abstract

Explores Filipino women's perspectives on motherhood, drawing on late-1980s open-ended interview data from 19 mothers in Manila. Responses fit squarely into conventional categories of thinking about marriage, motherhood, family, & children in the Philippines; ie, marriage is the most natural state for women, reproduction is a primary female role, self-sacrifice is more a woman's than a man's duty, & parental obligations continue after a child's marriage. A maternalist ideology is found to structure women's perceptions of their role in Filipino society. While the force of this ideology results at times in oppression, it is argued that, for these women, motherhood is attached to material & moral support of kin, thus representing an experience of unequaled joy as well as personal selflessness. D. M. Smith