La mère toxicomane, au carrefour des normes et des sanctions

Abstract

Drug addicted women who become mothers may be situated at the intersection of four sets of norms : legal norms since drug use is illegal, social norms defining what a good mother is, medical norms governing how high-risk pregnancies should be followed and gender norms, since drug addiction is perceived as essentially a male phenomenon. This conflict in norms involves various sanctions applied to them : penal sanctions due to illegal use, medical sanctions like compulsory care and finally for some women a combination and their exclusion from the child's life, in foster care. A local study in a French department was conducted interviewing more than forty personnel of medical, social service, judiciary, and child welfare services dealing with drug-addicted women describing their practices. In counterpoint it presents biographical accounts of a dozen of mothers who at some point in their lives lost custody of their child and observations accepted by some twenty mothers in a drug addict treatment center.