Maternidade como não-direito: a construção da “má mãe” em decisões de destituição do poder familiar

Abstract

This study aims to understand how legal discourse constructs the figure of the “mother” when arbitrating the (il)legitimacy of the exercise of motherhood. For this investigation, we selected as our empirical material decisions on the termination of parental authority, one of the main legal institutions through which the judgment and restriction of motherhoods are currently operationalized. Using Discursive Textual Analysis as a methodological framework, we conducted a qualitative examination of 56 appellate decisions in cases seeking the termination of parental authority of mothers or of mothers and fathers jointly, issued between January 2022 and December 2024 by the Court of Justice of the State of Minas Gerais. Based on the analysis of these documents - most of which resulted in decisions severing the legal bonds between mothers and their children -, it was possible to identify the discursive construction of the “bad mother”, understood as one who cannot or should not exercise motherhood. The elements identified in the decisions, transformed into analytical categories, revealed a range of emotional, material, behavioral and circumstantial aspects deemed incompatible with motherhood. Through the analysis of these categories, we observed the influence of colonialist, hygienist, maternalist and neoliberal foundations on the hegemonic model of motherhood. We further found that all aspects associated with “bad motherhood” are interconnected and are structurally related to gender-, race-, and class-based discrimination and oppression. Finally, we conclude that these articulated axes sustain the existence of “negligent”, “omissive” or “incapable” mothers, thereby configuring motherhood, for certain women, as a “non-right”.