Future of Motherhood

When considering the future of motherhood, it is important to first acknowledge the multiple meanings the term motherhood may invoke. Definitions of motherhood typically include the state of being a mother, maternity, the character or qualities of a mother, and mothers collectively.

Within the developed world, the increasing emergence of a range of nontraditional family structures and technologically mediated motherhood are increasingly challenging traditional understandings of the term, including giving birth, adoption, intercountry adoption, and fostering. Blended families, same-sex partnerships, technologically assisted and biologically controlled parenthood, surrogacy, and gamete donation continue to stretch the definition and use of the term motherhood. The term may be equally bestowed upon any person undertaking the parenting tasks of developing kinship, providing nurture, and offering guidance and love in biological and nonbiological relationships with the children in their care. As the capacity for technological intervention in regulating and controlling fertility increases, the gendered construction of the term motherhood may also become increasingly open to challenge in the future.

In the developed world, the pathway to becoming a mother is strewn with an ever-increasing array of parenting options, socially achievable possibilities, and technologically mediated choices. In addition, the dwindling fertility rates across the Western world have been met in many countries with a range of pronatalist government policies, which seek to encourage more women to proactively choose motherhood and have more children. In the developing world, however, a different picture of motherhood is evident, with high fertility rates still being observed (although generally trending downward), and government support often limited. The future of motherhood is considered against this backdrop of social determinants; of simultaneous population growth in certain regions and marked decline in others; and the expansion of technological intervention (although this is likely to remain inaccessible to much of the world's population), which will arguably redefine and reshape the future essence, processes, expectations, and experiences of motherhood.