Pedras Preciosas: história e memória de mulheres sem filhos em Teresina-PI na segunda metade do século XX

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze how women born between the 1950s and 1970s, in which they had their social and cultural constructions entangled by the city of Teresina-PI, as well as how they lived their youth and adult life during the second half of the 20th century, configured their experiences from the alternative of non-motherhood. In the quest to respond to the proposed objective of the dissertation, it was decided to organize it through chapters, with the life history of the collaborator women as the guiding principle of the research, composed of thirteen subjects whose inclusion criteria were: not having children; having been born between the 1950s and 1970s; and having their social and cultural constructions enmeshed in the city of Teresina, in the state of Piauí. The research methodology is anchored in Oral History in the quest to analyze the collaborators’ narratives in the face of the new meanings that were attributed to their lives in the face of the absence of motherhood, such as: childhood, schooling, professionalization, loves, dislikes and the aspects around of health in the face of the impossibilities of a pregnancy, which differs of the choice of not having children. With a view to understanding the local medical discourse on issues that intertwine with female reproductive health, it was decided to insert the Revista da Associação Piauiense de Medicina, a specialized journal, written and organized by physicians, in the midst of the sources analyzed. was important for demonstrating that in the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, doctors from Piauí, despite not explicitly addressing the issue of non-motherhood in the analyzed articles, these articles screamed around it, since they recurrently addressed issues that trigger on women's reproductive health. Therefore, the Teresina medical society also followed the course of what was propagated nationwide – the appreciation of motherhood as a female social function. The analysis of the narratives of collaborators’ life stories showed that the women went through changes in the historical process, in which being single and not motherhood started to assume new values, the feminine experiences were being modified, since the realization of the women it is not shown to limit maternity and marriage. Motherhood, therefore, is a right of choice.