The article aims to develop a reflection about the models of motherhood and family implicit in the official document edited by the Ministry of Health about the Kangaroo Program. It also explores the way the Program is developed at a Maternity Hospital in the North-Eastern part of the country, as it is presented as humanized health care for premature and/or underweight babies. The methodological perspective adopted is the foucauldian discourse analysis which focuses on the role of language in the configuration of the social and psychological life of the social actors involved. The analysis shows that there exists a comprehensive, prescriptive, and authoritarian discourse, positioning women as passive objects of intervention, through the idealization of a healthy motherhood and a typical nuclear middle class family.
Prematurity; Kangaroo Program; Motherhood; Foucauldian Discourse Analysis