Tatiana Stacul: "The model of the super-powerful mother is laughable and unfair".

Psychologist Tatiana Stacul explains how gender roles skew the concept of motherhood.

Motherhood is a very important element in practically all human cultures that exist and have existed, but for this reason we have not managed to perceive and interpret it in a totally objective and realistic way.

In fact, precisely because of its importance, the way in which we have conceptualized the fact of being a mother is subject to many biases. Biases that are culturally reproduced and passed on from one generation to the next.... Although the way we do it is changing rapidly in recent decades.

In this interview we talk to psychologist Tatiana Stacul, a professional with experience in supporting people who have developed a problematic relationship with motherhood. in part because of these social dynamics linked to gender roles.

Interview with Tatiana Stacul: motherhood and deconstruction

Tatiana Stacul is a psychologist specialized in cognitive-behavioral orientation and trained in the care of people with gender-related problems; she treats adults and adolescents in her office in Córdoba (Argentina) and online. In this interview she talks to us about the way in which motherhood should be faced from feminist sensibilities and perspectives linked to the deconstruction of gender roles.

Why is it so complicated to have a realistic view of motherhood?

I think it is complicated because there are very few women who dare to talk about the costs that motherhood also brings.

There is always a romantic vision of the gestation process and the state of supposed fullness of a mother, where the duty to be happy occupies the whole picture, leaving aside everything that pregnancy implies for a pregnant body, its transformation to an unknown body, the hormonal turmoil, the fears and the new sexuality, the difficulties, the pains....

If there is the possibility of planning it, surely we will suspend our careers, we will not compete for any job promotion, we will have to save, we will have to give up activities and all this should be taken with pride and a smile just because we decide to be a mother, because this role has many rules.

It is very difficult, there is no place to complain, to regret; because yes, many mothers do regret, and there are very few safe spaces where you can talk about this without the sentence of "bad mother" falling on you, another construct that must be questioned. another construct that must be questioned.

What do you think are the social and cultural elements that encourage mothers to be under pressure when it comes to parenting?

To define these elements it is necessary to understand where they come from. In the history of mankind, motherhood was glorified, regulated and necessary for the constitution of societies. Women had the function of caring for the elderly, raising children and doing chores, because motherhood confined them to the private sphere.

And it was in this sphere that she found her value: valuable to society as long as she took care of children and the elderly, valuable to the man who chose her as a mother and took care of the home, and valuable as a woman as long as she was a mother. Therefore, the idea of being a mother fosters a pressure inherent to the role, which is what we are trying to dismantle.

The man, on the other hand, in charge of providing, was in the public sphere, being able to relate to more people, accessing diverse possibilities, handling money and being taken care of when he arrived home. We know this history, and the social and cultural ramifications that unravel over time are associated with these early roles, the passive, private woman and the active, public man.

And although feminist movements have managed to challenge this time and again, achieving countless advances (the discussion on female sexuality, the right to vote, parental planning, contraceptives, decriminalization of voluntary interruption of pregnancy, the division of household chores, and many other discussions that did not exist before), we are still questioning and dismantling these barriers that keep women pressured and cornered.

Another fundamentally cultural element is the internalized machismo in a large part of society, which explains and encourages many of the unequal situations in the workplace, in the home, in domestic economy and in childcare.

When you talk about deconstructing ideas and ways of life from feminism, what are you talking about?

It has to do with dismantling ways of seeing and thinking about our reality, detecting the inequality marked by gender and asking ourselves how to change it? We are talking about understanding that these roles are determined by history, that they are assigned stereotypes, and this understanding enables us to ask new questions.

And that's the fantastic thing about this, because it doesn't necessarily imply realizing that I don't do things at home and participating in the home, the deconstruction goes beyond that. It is trying to understand why as a man I think that cleaning the kitchen is "helping" and not simply working in the place I live. It is to ask myself why as a woman I think I "should" dress this or that way or have a certain hair removal habit.

It is to ask ourselves where our knowledge comes from and how to make something new out of it, to ask ourselves for example how we could raise our sons and daughters so that they feel free to express their emotions regardless of their gender. It is to ask ourselves why toys are segmented and to reflect on how they condition childhood and its future.

Deconstructing from feminism is to enable a new look, whose objective is the reassembly of a society constituted with beings who feel fully free by the simple fact of being people regardless of their genitality or sexual orientation.

How do psychotherapy and deconstruction processes relate to gender roles?

If in psychotherapy the subject is interested in deconstruction, my job as a therapist is to help him identify the mental rules that govern him, that make him wrong and that are associated with this role differentiation. How we hold ideas that are not our own, and on that basis we build a life that we do not want, just to fulfill the role that I am supposed to assume.

Sometimes, the consultation begins on one side and unfailingly ends in a process of deconstruction, which ends up being a liberating process, because it is the consultant himself who can no longer balance his own desire and what is expected of him on a social level, and this generates anguish.

Mothers also come to consultation full of guilt for feeling that they regret having given birth, and nobody talks about it; people who punish themselves for enjoying their sexuality, men who only cry in consultation because out there the hostile world never enabled them to feel that way, and a long etcetera of situations where the damage of such roles and stereotypes that we carry for having been born with this or that organ become evident.

Events such as the National Women's Meeting held annually in Argentina raise the need to come together to achieve social transformations. How to combine these resources that appeal to the collective, on the one hand, and resources such as psychotherapy oriented to individual patients, on the other?

Plurinational meetings in Argentina are very strong spaces of deconstruction. Those days thousands of women and femininities from different social classes gather in different workshops to talk about everything that is not talked about in the everyday life: topics such as trans childhoods, desired and unwanted maternity, women and mental health, women in prison, non-binary gender and dissidence, feminization of poverty, transsexuality and safe spaces, women and politics.

There are more than 100 workshops a year that are given throughout the city, and it is incredible, I believe that what is built in these spaces is a rethinking of the culture that we inhabit.

This validates and empowers women and contributes a lot to the individual spaces that are beginning to be created; social transformations are reflected in the individual, and this is reflected in the clinic. When the client comes out of therapy, he/she comes back to face the world, and when the world is in transformation, it is easier to work on these changes and to accompany the client in his/her own changes.

As a psychologist, what challenges would you highlight as the most important when it comes to giving rise to an idea of motherhood that does not entail an unequal burden of responsibilities based on gender roles?

In order to give rise to a new idea of motherhood, it is necessary to question the existing one. I consider it a challenge to get a mother to talk without difficulty about her fears and thoughts about motherhood, so the first challenge to achieve the goal is to make her understand that it is precisely in consultation where she will find a safe space without value judgments, to be able to express herself freely, understanding that everything she feels is valid.

"I can't stand my son", "I feel guilty for wanting him to go to sleep", "I don't know if I am a good mother" or "I regret being a mother"... many of the challenges that will come after expressing their fears and thoughts are linked to the stereotypes we mentioned, with rigid constructs of what parenting is, and the need to respond to family pressures and their own expectations.

By addressing these bases we can become more flexible in our personal demands, recognize that the model of the super-powerful mother is laughable and unfair, that we must know how to ask for help, know how to establish limits and negotiate shared parenting as much as possible, and create a more real and loving idea of what I consider my own motherhood to be.