Father’s presence in prenatal care: Study of social representations among pregnant women

Abstract

Objective:: to examine social representations held by pregnant women of the fathers’ presence in prenatal care. Method: this qualitative, descriptive study, based on Social Representations Theory, involved 28 pregnant women undergoing prenatal consultations, who answered an in-depth, scripted interview containing three open questions. Their responses were analyzed using Lexical Content Analysis, made possible by IRAMUTEQ software. Results: the analysis pointed to the word “no” as the most latent in the pregnant women’s cognitive system: it was found at high frequency in the Dendrogram of Classes, was present at the axis of intersection between ordinates and abscissas on the Factorial Correspondence Map, besides being central and showing strongest connectedness with the other words in the similarity tree. Conclusion: the pregnant women’s social representations of the fathers’ presence at prenatal appointments were elaborated on the basis of denial, evidenced in the group’s discourse in the term “no”.