This article examined the feminine representation through the speeches of five middle class, urban women about motherhood. All the subjects interviewed were between forty and fifty years old, were professionals, had university degrees and reported having had their children as single mothers in the eighties. Their generation experienced the discussions of liberation and feminism of the sixties. The results showed that the subjects shared the same ethos and presented similar values and beliefs concerning independence, freedom and the place traditionally assigned to women as mothers. The option to become a single mother appeared as an attempt to build a new place for women, starting from the acknowledge of motherhood as a feminine issue subjected, however, to the universe of modern individualism values.
Feminine; optional single motherhood; individualism; desire to have a child; procreation