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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 Cover

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

By: Silvia Butean  
Open Access
|Jan 2016

Abstract

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.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/subbs-2015-0008 | Journal eISSN: 2066-0464 | Journal ISSN: 1224-8703
Language: English
Page range: 21 - 38
Published on: Jan 29, 2016
Published by: Babeș-Bolyai University
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2016 Silvia Butean, published by Babeș-Bolyai University
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.