Reflected Bodies: Women’s Perspectives on the Marital Experience and the Transformation of the Maternal Body. A Case Study of Middle-Class Women in Suburban Romania

• Authors: Silvia Butean
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Even if concepts of marriage and motherhood are subject to continuous changes and reinterpretations, women and men still marry and have children following more traditional or more unconventional patterns. My major interest in this research was to unveil Romanian middle-class women’s narratives regarding their perceptions over their own bodies and identities, by focusing my analysis on lived experiences, intimate scenes, daily practices and activities within marriage and motherhood. Qualitative empirical work was conducted in 2012 and 2015 in a post-socialist suburban neighbourhood, known as a place mostly inhabited by young, middle-class families. The analysis unfolds women’s class affinities and dispositions, their perception of the marital experience, identity and corporeal transformations, and their reflections on maternity as a transformative stage in terms of subjectivity, agency and body.

Keywords

EN

marriage; motherhood; experience; embodiment; intimacy

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai Sociologia
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 21-38

Dates

published

2015-12-01

online

2016-01-29

Contributors

author

Silvia Butean

• MA in Gender Studies at Central European University – Budapest and MA in Applied Anthropology at Babeș-Bolyai University - Cluj-Napoca

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/subbs-2015-0008