Do útero à adoção: A experiência de mulheres férteis que adotaram uma criança

Abstract

This article refers to a research which aimed to understand the experience of being mother through adoption in the case of fertile women, but whose partner is infertile. Supported by an existential-phenomenological theory, it was used as a methodological instrument the narrative. The results showed that the motherhood stands as a female role very important to women, besides the fact that adoption can be an alternative to fulfill her desire of being a mother and, meanwhile, please her husband and guarantee the continuity of her love relationship. Through motherly care, the woman can achieve plenitude as a mother, what brings a new meaning for her live, although the pregnancy absence brings a frustration feeling and/or suffering. The end of the research suggests reflections that to become fulfilled herself as mother, the woman does not need, necessarily, to generate a child, being the maternity one of the uncountable possibilities that are shown, and that she can choose, or not, accomplish it.