VISINTIN, C. D. N. Encontros com o cuidado infantil e a maternidade: investigando imaginários coletivos [Encounters with child care and motherhood: investigating collective imaginaries]. 209f. Thesis (Doctorate in Psychology) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas, Centro de Ciências da Vida, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Campinas, 2021.
Available on: http://repositorio.sis.puc-campinas.edu.br/handle/123456789/15591
Abstract: This thesis aims to investigate collective imagination about childcare and motherhood. This research is important as production of comprehensive knowledge which can contribute to improve the psychological clinic in preventive and interventive parts as well as provide support for social movements that intend to protect the children and to improve the conditions of women’s lives. It is methodically based on the approach of 36 medical students who were chosen as participants due to the fact that their professional formation allows them to be closer to the mothers that usually accompany the children when they need medical care. This study took place during psychological collective organized interviews based on The Thematic Drawing-and-Story Procedure. The psychoanalytical consideration of the material allowed the production of five fields of emotional-affective sense, named as “Sublime Love”, “Mater dolorosa”, “Full Time Service”, “Conciliating Activities”, and “Nor Fairy Neither Witch”. These fields were configured according to two different imaginative arrangements which formed two super fields: “Wonder Mother” and “Common Woman”. The interpretative results combined point up to a dominance of a strong idealization of the mother figure, imagined as biologically prepared to be strong, powerful and capable of unlimited generosity. This idealization is considered as an unachievable pattern for real and concrete mothers and this generates harmful effects on the feminine subjective and it serves therefore as a form of women’s oppression. Besides, this notion carries in a subliminal way the suggestion that the woman who doesn’t behave as the pattern would be violating the laws of nature. It also appears, although more rarely, notions which say that childcare is a woman’s work, but it would not demand that the mother should be an extraordinary human being. Conversely, it is verified the lack of notions bound to the idea that caring for a child is a reproductive work which can be undertaken by adults independently of their gender. The general context points up to a certain conservatism that doesn’t demonstrate other notions which allow direct childcare actions, one of the works that has more effect in the realization on ethical and affective potential in the human being, could be shared between men and women, not only in a familiar environment but also among extended family members, community members, or even social institutions.