In this dissertation, I examine the constructions, maintenance, and resistance to dominant discourses concerning motherhood and non-motherhood in contemporary Hungary, using the popular Hungarian women’s magazine Nők Lapja as my key illustrative example. I strive to illuminate how gendered discourses, bio-power, history, and geo-politics are implicated not only in the construction of nationhood but also in defining women’s roles in nation-building. I hope to contribute to research that helps to better understand women’s contemporary social roles in Hungary, and the power relations that construct them. I argue that ideas regarding motherhood and non-motherhood in Hungary are often bound up in ideas concerning who should, or should not, have children, and why, and I explore in detail how these ideas have formed through the history of the nation. My analysis reveals different sites of power—focusing on policy and print media—that seek to determine women’s procreative decisions. I argue that, under various regimes, women’s procreative choices have consistently been systemically constrained, and framed as key to the nation’s success—or failure. Concerning Nők Lapja magazine, my research reveals that it both supports and resists traditional gender roles, at times contributing to discourses that naturalize childbearing and motherhood (also defining for readers whose motherhood is deemed desirable), but at other times disputing such ideas and redefining conceptions of womanhood to include women without children. Although ultimately the magazine pathologizes, disbelieves and negates the choice to be childless, Nők Lapja does resist and redefine limited definitions of womanhood and motherhood by carving out a small space for discussions of childlessness, and also by challenging conceptions of singletons as necessarily lonely and mothers as necessarily better if they stay at home.

In this dissertation, I examine the constructions, maintenance, and resistance to dominant discourses concerning motherhood and non-motherhood in contemporary Hungary, using the popular Hungarian women’s magazine Nők Lapja as my key illustrative example. I strive to illuminate how gendered discourses, bio-power, history, and geo-politics are implicated not only in the construction of nationhood but also in defining women’s roles in nation-building. I hope to contribute to research that helps to better understand women’s contemporary social roles in Hungary, and the power relations that construct them. I argue that ideas regarding motherhood and non-motherhood in Hungary are often bound up in ideas concerning who should, or should not, have children, and why, and I explore in detail how these ideas have formed through the history of the nation. My analysis reveals different sites of power—focusing on policy and print media—that seek to determine women’s procreative decisions. I argue that, under various regimes, women’s procreative choices have consistently been systemically constrained, and framed as key to the nation’s success—or failure. Concerning Nők Lapja magazine, my research reveals that it both supports and resists traditional gender roles, at times contributing to discourses that naturalize childbearing and motherhood (also defining for readers whose motherhood is deemed desirable), but at other times disputing such ideas and redefining conceptions of womanhood to include women without children. Although ultimately the magazine pathologizes, disbelieves and negates the choice to be childless, Nők Lapja does resist and redefine limited definitions of womanhood and motherhood by carving out a small space for discussions of childlessness, and also by challenging conceptions of singletons as necessarily lonely and mothers as necessarily better if they stay at home.