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Keeping the Head Above Water

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Keeping the Head Above Water I dedicate this thesis to the memory of Odete Fernandes de Souza, my adoptive grandmother who I did not have the opportunity to meet but who keeps feeding my myth of origin. iv ―And that, you see, is my dilemma this afternoon. Both reason and seven decades of life- experience tell me that reason is neither the being of the universe nor the being of God. On the contrary, reason looks to me suspiciously like the being of human thought; worse than that, like the being of one tendency in human thought. Reason is the being of a certain spectrum of human thinking. And if this is so, if that is what I believe, then why should I bow to reason this afternoon and content myself with embroidering on the discourse of the old philosophers?‖ (Elizabeth Costello‘s quote in J.M. Coetzee‘s essay ―The Lives of Animals‖) v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The first persons I have to acknowledge as fundamental supporters are: Marcelo and Laura, my beloved husband and daughter who stood by my side during this entire process, facing the difficulties and joys of being Latin American immigrants in Europe. I should say that this thesis is also a result of a success- ful family project constructed with you guys – and yes, we finally did it! I must thank all the academic support from Professors Felismina Mendes and Marc Bessin, who had a great part in this work, taking me to new directions whereas also believing in my foremost insights. To Professor Laurinda Abreu and all the staff of Phoenix Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctoral Program Dynam- ics of Health and Welfare, who helped me a great deal in academic and administrative issues. Also I thank to the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency from European Commission for the financial support, which was fundamental to this whole enterprise. Finally, I could not mention all the names of the Brazilian friends and family relatives who accompanied me during these last four years and helped me in many ways, visiting us in our home in Portugal and France and welcoming us back in Brazil, comprehending my absences and being present the way they could. To all of them I want to say: thank you very much. Besides, I would like to especially mention my young sister Julia Pombo, with whom I was able to have very exciting discussions on Feminism, Philos- ophy, Social Sciences and the most trivial and important themes of life as love and family bonds. Thank you very much my dear sister and friend. vii Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vii Table and figure Index ................................................................................................................... 13 List of abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... 14 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ 15 Sumário ....................................................................................................................................... 16 Introduction: Transience by and despite motherhood ..................................................................... 17 The thesis‘ structure ............................................................................................................. 23 Part one: Setting the framework ........................................................................................................ 27 I.1 Research pathway: Public Health as a situation charnière ......................................................... 28 I.1.a The problem of the maternalist rhetoric of Brazilian social policies ..................................... 28 I.1.b The research questions and their context: choosing ―social presence‖ ............................... 36 From demographic crisis to care ethics at the transnational context ....................................... 36 I.2 Nature is not binary: epistemology for studying corporeity in motherhood .................................. 44 I.2.a Biology, gender and sex: new considerations to old issues in Motherhood Studies .............. 47 The complexity of reproductive development .......................................................................... 47 Sexual reproduction and the process of hierarchizing human experiences .............................. 49 Gender politics, science and the production of bodily experiences .......................................... 54 Experience and agency in the transition to motherhood .......................................................... 57 I.2.b Temporality and gender in situated experiences ................................................................. 62 Women‘s situation and social presence ................................................................................. 62 Temporality as social structure of gendered situations ............................................................ 64 I.3 The phenomenological method: inquiring experience(s) of presence(s)...................................... 68 I.3.a The fieldwork: methodological steps of an implicated subject ............................................. 68 Computer- Mediated Communication for a transnational research .......................................... 73 The recruitment and selection of participants ......................................................................... 75 ix The participants‘ profiles ....................................................................................................... 77 I.3.b The documentary research ................................................................................................ 84 I.3.c The interviews and daily diaries ......................................................................................... 90 I.3.d The material analysis ........................................................................................................ 92 Part two: Desire, presence and the choice of motherhood ................................................................. 94 II.1 Desiring presence and (not) choosing motherhood .................................................................. 94 II.1.a Chosen motherhood as mark of social class ..................................................................... 97 II.1.b The complexity within choice, planning and desire of motherhood ................................... 102 II.2 Searching for inteligibility in therapeutic motherhood ............................................................. 109 II.2.a From scientific to therapeutic motherhood ...................................................................... 111 II.2.b Ethic of desire as a mark of social class .......................................................................... 116 Part Three: Searching for humanization of childbirth ........................................................................ 129 III.1 Facing the perinatal paradox ................................................................................................ 130 III.1.a The complexity of Brazilian perinatal paradox ................................................................. 134 III.1.b The paradox of politicisation of birth in Brazil ................................................................. 136 III.2 Experiencing birth in European systems ............................................................................... 151 III.2.a Giving birth in France: childbirth as a social matter ........................................................ 154 III.2.b Negotiating delivery in Portugal: between rights and informality ...................................... 164 III.2.c Having midwifery philosophy and rhetoric of decision in Sweden .................................... 171 Part Four: Hesitation and ethical responsivity in early childrearing ................................................... 183 IV.1 Learning to give time ............................................................................................................ 184 IV.1.a Reproducing Inequality and fragmentation of family policies in Brazil .............................. 189 IV.1.b (Not) searching for responsive presences and becoming alone ....................................... 196 IV.1.c Trying to be a good mother through the ideal time balance............................................. 211 IV.2 Having responsive presences for generating hesitations ........................................................ 219 IV.2.a Sharing childcare through associative participation ........................................................ 222 IV.2.a Having the paradoxical presence of grandmothers ......................................................... 226 x IV.2.b Being racialized and deconstructing the ―good mother‖ ideal ......................................... 232 Final considerations: improving social presence for promoting care ethics ....................................... 240 The main conclusions ............................................................................................................. 240 Considerations about care ethics in the transition(s) of motherhood ......................................... 243 References ..................................................................................................................................... 247 Annex ............................................................................................................................................
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