Narrativas de mulheres sem filhos e maternidade: questões para as políticas de saúde da mulher

Abstract

The changes in the values and practices experienced by women entailed new conceptions about the feminine functions performed both in the family and in the social scope. Due to these changes, the motherhood, still present in the collective imaginary as a feminine ideal, takes on a new value in the contemporaneity, and the choice between having or not having children becomes the fruit of the personal choices and of the very desire of each woman. The assumption was that the option for the motherhood or non-motherhood is related to the life history of each woman, but is influenced by historical, social, cultural and political changes. Nevertheless, the notion of reproduction as a duty and as a desire intrinsic to the female condition is still predominant in the health policies and programs. This assertion is based on the fact that the public policies, in general, direct their practices towards the pregnancy-puerperal cycle. This work defends the view that women without children have dimensions of motherhood and non-motherhood that need to be considered by womens health policies, as the service is focused on reproductive health, thereby reasserting the female ideal of woman-mother. It is intended to analyze narratives of women without children in relation to the motherhood and the non-motherhood, taking into account the issues of policies and programs aimed at caring for womens health. This is a qualitative study, with a methodological benchmark of Oral History. The nineteen participants are women without children, aged between 26 and 90, who know or use public health programs directed towards women since the 1950s until the current days. The choice of participants was intentional, according to the snowball sampling technique. Data collection took place through an interview with guiding questions, between January and March 2015. The use of analysis of narratives had the purpose of avoiding content fragmentation, in order to identify stories and hold the discussion and interpretation of them by means of holistic/integral content analysis, which focuses the narrative as a whole and of a categorial form for the specific meanings. The narratives gave rise to the perception of the interviewees with regard to the fragmentation of the female body into womb and breast by the public policies. The narratives also raised the fears and justifications of women who opted for the non-motherhood, their perception about motherhood, and the social and family charges due to the fact that they are childless women. Moreover, the changes in the feminine role are demonstrated, since the body takes on new forms of subjectivation. The ascertainment enables us to infer that the body is under construction and that the motherhood has different meanings according to the historical moment and the experience of each woman. One should consider the changes in the feminine role, the new family configurations and the freedom of choice of the woman in the re-elaboration of strategies for consolidating public policies that, although have programs for a comprehensive care of womens health, do not effectively meet the growing feminine demands for the non-motherhood.