The Emotional Experience of Motherhood in Planned Lesbian Families in the South African Context: “… Look How Good a Job I’m Doing, Look How Amazing We Are”

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on lesbian mothersʼ emotional experience of motherhood. It forms part of a larger qualitative and exploratory study with 10 lesbian couples in South Africa on their lived experience of planned motherhood. The study is located in a feminist phenomenological framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and interview transcripts were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants described many different emotions associated with new motherhood: hope, joy, love, anxiety, helplessness, exhaustion, and feeling companionship and togetherness as well as feeling compromised and deprived. Mothers described these emotions but also focused on the development of a new identity, that of being a mother.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesbian mothers
• motherhood experience
• planned lesbian families

Notes

^1. In the context of this paper and in reference to previous studies, the term “lesbian family” is used as an overarching term to include lesbian couples with children, where the mother is divorced from her husband, single lesbian mothers, as well as planned lesbian families. Where reference is made to a specific family form, this will be stated. Furthermore, reference to “family” should be understood as meaning “families with children living in the home.”

^2. In this paper, the category of “coloured” will be used to refer to South Africans said to be of diverse and mixed racial origins.