Autonomy and Motherhood: An Echo of Montessori
Motherhood is not the opposite of autonomy — it should be the fruit of it
I first heard about Montessori while choosing a kindergarten for my daughter. Its method of fostering independence, curiosity, and respect for each child’s natural development intrigued me, and led me to watch the 2023 film Maria Montessori (La Nouvelle Femme). Set in Rome around 1900, the movie tells the story of an unlikely alliance between two women: Lili d’Alengy, a Parisian courtesan hiding her daughter, and Maria Montessori, one of Italy’s first female doctors, developing a revolutionary educational method for children. Walking Oceana to her Montessori kindergarten one crisp morning, under gold-leafed trees with our dog Moka trotting ahead, I felt a resonance: Montessori’s life mirrors my reflections on motherhood, autonomy, and womanhood.
Montessori’s story is one of paradox: a brilliant woman, a devoted mother, yet forced to hide her son for years in order to be taken seriously professionally. Her experience embodies a painful truth that echoes today: motherhood itself is not inherently limiting — it is society’s inability to accept mothers as complete, high-achieving individuals that creates constraint. We have transformed the biology of choice — egg freezing, reproductive technology, medical rights — but the mythology of motherhood still lags behind.
Walking through Vienna that morning, I felt how motherhood, when freely chosen, nourishes rather than diminishes. Like Montessori, I have learned that raising a child is not a private domestic chore — it is a vocation, a continuous exercise in management, logistics, hands-on work, but also empathy, ethics and emotional intelligence — skills I once thought belonged only to offices, boardrooms, and international programs. Motherhood is ambition in another form: crisis management, behavioural insight, strategic planning, and above all, leadership stripped of ego, devoted to building others before oneself.
The irony of our culture is striking. We celebrate professional endurance but stigmatize maternal exhaustion. We glorify burnout in the office yet view fatigue in the nursery as personal failure. We ask women to persevere professionally but make them doubt their choices as mothers. Montessori’s life reminds me that autonomy is not the opposite of motherhood; it is the condition that allows it to flourish — psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually.
At thirty-five, uncertain whether I wanted children, I chose egg freezing. Not because I was ready to be a mother, but to claim sovereignty over the decision itself. Those twenty-eight frozen eggs were not simply potential life — they were a form of freedom, an insurance policy on my future. Ironically, I never used them. Years later, after living boldly, traveling, and cultivating the emotional and personal maturity that motherhood requires, I gave birth to a strong, happy daughter, naturally. Motherhood had become an evolution of purpose rather than an interruption.
In Montessori’s philosophy, children thrive in a prepared environment — a space designed to support independence and agency. In parallel, women do not lack the capacity for motherhood; what we lack are the conditions to embrace it fully: social protection, economic equity, legal rights, emotional support, and cultural respect. Just as Montessori’s method empowers children, motherhood, when entered into with autonomy and support, allows women to grow, heal, and reawaken parts of themselves long neglected.
The bond with my daughter has revealed depths of compassion, creativity, and resilience I had never encountered in professional life. Each morning, as she reaches for my hand, I am reminded that motherhood, when chosen freely, is not the loss of self, but its reawakening. The little girl in me is being nurtured alongside my child, a mutual flourishing as grounding as it is transformative.
Across Europe and East Asia, fertility rates have plummeted. Governments attempt to incentivize births without realizing that women do not lack capacity — they lack conditions. The question should not be, “Should women have children?” It is: “Do women have the freedom and support to choose motherhood on their own terms?”
When a woman becomes a mother by choice — supported, respected, and autonomous — she does not suppress or lose her individuality. She expands into a new version of herself. Motherhood, at its healthiest, is not the erasure of identity; it is identity in bloom. Like Montessori’s children in her classrooms, women too flourish when empowered, guided, and allowed to grow freely. The result is not merely an act of giving, but an act of receiving; not sacrifice, but profound renewal. Motherhood is not the opposite of autonomy — it should be the fruit of it.