Mãe de primeira viagem: Narrativas de mulheres em situação de vulnerabilidade social

Abstract

Consistent with motherhood researches that emphasize the psychological transformations involved in the process of becoming a mother and the increase of Brazilian families living a precarious existence, according to the Sao Paulo Vulnerability Map, Metropolitan Research Center, we proposed to investigate psychoanalytically the affective-emotional meanings attributed to the experience of becoming a mother under social vulnerability conditions. Adopting the Interactive Narrative as a methodological procedure, we asked 17 women, among them, pregnant women and post -partum ones, who were living in a social shelter in Sao Paulo, to complete a fictional story that had been previously created by the researchers. The story concerned the distress of pregnant women. The narrative productions were considered psychoanalytically and interpretatively organized as fields of emotional -affective meanings that convey the participant's experience of motherhood. In this paper, we focus on the field "First -Time Mothers", regarding those participants' narratives that were produced around the experience of becoming a mother for the first time. The first-time mother is seen by this group as an insecure, anxious and scared mother at the beginning, but also as someone who is able of developing her own way of taking care of the baby as it grows, becoming more confident and mature. The participant's testimonies lead us to deconstruct prejudiced social conceptions about the adequate motherhood under social vulnerability conditions and to understand that child care can be provided, also in this situation, by means of family and social support, as well as when it is necessary psychological care, indicating the potentiality of preventive and therapeutic interventions.