MATERNAL NARRATIVES

Abstract

The mothering experience promotes different changes in women. Was in order to understand how the women are affected by these changes that we propose to evaluate Maternal Narratives aiming to highlight the experiences of mothers during the gravidic-puerperal cycle until the baby's first three years, discussing their subjective transformations. In the present research the concept of maternal instinct was discussed, as well as the social construction of living as a mother, aspects that individualize and turn maternity and women's experience invisible. In order to do so, besides the bibliographic research, we collected data by interviewing five women, first-time mothers, with children ranging up to the age of three, in order to give voice to their experiences. This research was able to attest the existence of a gap between what is thought and said about motherhood as well as the daily experience of it, since the prioritization of the positive narrative leaves no room for ambivalent feelings to emerge, leading to both illness and increasing the elaboration’s difficulty of this experience. Thus, the need of a closer look by health professionals towards the mental health of women mothers was verified, not only in cases of postpartum depression, but as a form of welcoming, analyzing this topic in the social, collective and mental illness perspectives.