Mother-women in modern Kazakhstan and her participation in national revival of the state

Abstract

In this article, the author issues the implementation of motherhood by young Kazakh women with 3–4 children in modern Kazakh society. The author questions the importance of ethnicity, family income, education and state ideology. In most post-Soviet states, the socio-political and economic reforms of the 1990s have been accompanied to varying degrees by major changes in the official ideology of the family and family politics. Kazakhstan has not become the exception in this case. In the mass media, in political and academic discussions, even in the documents of the women's movement, the increasing social importance of traditional female roles of wife and mother, the return to man of economic responsibility for the provision of the family, the important role of the «traditionally strong» family in the processes of consolidation and revival of the nation are stressed. Women play a special role in these processes when they influence the formation of the ethnic identity of children, which is formed through the process of socialization, the learning of the values and norms of the culture in which the child is born. Women act as frontiers of the nation through performing the biological role of the mother, and, at the same time, in the cultural role of the mother. The biological role is understood as a reproductive role of the woman, female mother, under cultural — her role as agent of traditions transfer and standard examples of behavior. In order to create a gender-sensitive analytical model of «production» and «reproduction» of collective identity in Kazakh society, there is applied the concept of women’s roles in the national projects of the Israeli researcher Yuval-Devis N. The main thesis of this article is the assumption that young Kazakh women design and reproduce the collective identity of the ethnic community through the birth of a large number of children and thus indirectly participate in the national revival of independent Kazakhstan.