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The semantic structure of the image of a mother in female students // Pedagogical Review. 2026. Issue 3 (67). P. 144-152

The article presents the results of an empirical study of the semantic structure of the mother figure among female students. The image of the mother is important throughout a person’s life. As a fundamental category of the imaginal sphere, it includes representations of motherhood, which undergo changes with age. The relevance of the study is determined by the formation of readiness for motherhood during youth, a period when the development of the value system and personal attitudes is completed and a subjective position toward future parenthood emerges. At the same time, studying at a university contributes to the formation of a more definite and adequate view of one’s own future. To identify the semantic structure of the image of the mother, the personal differential method and factor analysis were used. The study involved 117 female students of a pedagogical institute aged 17 to 25 who had no experience of motherhood. It was found that the categorical criteria for evaluating the image of the mother are energy, responsibility, independence, relaxation, and restraint. Representations of the ideal mother and of oneself as a future mother are close to traditional notions of motherhood. A comparison of female students’ representations of the ideal mother, themselves as women, and themselves in the role of a future mother revealed significant differences in the factors of energy, responsibility, relaxation, and restraint. The semantics of the image “I as a woman” is predominantly negative among the students and includes such characteristics as silent, critical, passive, insecure, and selfish. In contrast, the semantics of the image “ideal mother” is defined by positive characteristics: energetic, responsible, talkative, and relaxed. The absence of significant differences between the semantics of the images of the ideal mother, oneself as a mother, and oneself as a woman on the factor of “independence” indicates that, in the students’ consciousness, a mother should be active not only within the family but also in other spheres of social life. The identified differences in the content of the image of the mother may indicate an insufficient level of readiness for motherhood among female students.

Keywords: motherhood, psychological readiness for motherhood, image of the mother, semantic differential (SD), semantics, image, semantic space