Abstract
In this article, I analyse the meanings of motherhood present in the childbirth narratives of white heterosexual middle-class women in Rio de Janeiro, aged between 37 and 46 years old. The affective investment in birth preparations comes to the fore, with many of the births involving a humanized birth, reinforcing the idea of motherhood as a female project affected by the socioeconomic situations, forms of conjugality, and moral values of the women involved. How the baby figures in the narratives is also revealing of conceptions surrounding the bonds between mother and child, built and reinforced by a bodily experience of pregnancy and birth that is seen as necessary. Based on the concepts of Velho and Ortner of project, agency and subjectivity, I argue that a subjective formation that especially values an embodied motherhood can reveal the dynamic tensions involved in these women’s agency.
Keywords
Birth; narratives; motherhood; body; middle class