HAMES, Maria de Lourdes Campos. Morring cables of the freedom: maternal
representations of the process of breast-feeding/weaning of children with superior age the two
years. 2006. 176f. Thesis (Doctorate in Nursing) – Course of After-graduation in Nursing,
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, 2007.
Mastermind: Dra. Telma Elisa Carraro
ABSTRACT
The breast-feeding process reveals imbricated in a thick net of values consisting in a
multidimensional junction and demanding different approachings and interventions for an
effective performance accomplishes in the problematic of the current days. Considering the
scarcity of studies that approach the wean process while part of successful breastfeed in the
perspective of the woman, I accomplished the research that originated this Thesis,
objectifying to know the maternal representations of the process of breast-feeding/weaning of
children with superior age the two years. The research involved thirty-two resident women in
thirteen localities of the city of Biguaçu, in Santa Catarina, whose children had been born in
the period between October 2002 and October 2003. It was consisted of a research qualitative
of character exploratory-descriptive, that the Theory of the Social Representations had as
referencial theoretician, de Serge Moscovici. For the collection of the data instruments had
been used as the half-structuralized individual interview, the daily of field, as well as, sensible
listening. The gotten data had been transcribed and validated by the participants, to be used in
the study. The norms of Resolutions 196/96 and 251/97 of the National Advice of Health had
been fulfilled, that it deals with the research involving human beings. It was executed through
sixty-four meetings (thirty-two for collection of data and thirty-two for validation of the same
ones), face to face with the participants, in its domiciles, the gotten data had been analyzed to
the light of the theoretical reference of choice. In this analysis it was possible identify three
subjects. The first subject, called “I breastfed my son for more than two years and weaned,
although everything! ”, it deals with the representation of the maternal feelings in breast-
feeding/weaning and shows the complexity that involves the process for who lives deeply it.
In theirs representations, only and non-repeatedly, these women had placed feelings and
meanings, many times contradictories, showing the ambiguity that surrounds the process and
the symbolism which infix itself, while possibility of growth or ideological mooring cable. In
the second subject, “How did it happen the weaning”, I present the contours of the drawing
that breast-feeding/weaning scratched out in the life of these women. The identified practices
of weaning had left to be transparent the evidence that, of certain form, they act on basys in
the knowledge and accepted and known forms in the familiar and social way where they are
inserted, taking advantage the will and the interest of the child on the ones of the mother. The
third subject, “Who breastfed João, who weans him!”, it points the insistent attempts of social
camouflage of the violence perpetrated in the private sphere of breast-feeding/weaning in the
perspective of the being woman, alerting for the existence of silenced realities and it becomes
imperceptible for the social acquaintanceship, whose familiar and professional practices are
conniving, they become generating of a careful abandonment. In the deepening of the
interpersonal relations it was possible identify the influence of the social construction of the
maternity model (ideal of the good mother) and the mystique of the unit mother-child, as well
as, the necessity of individuation of the involved citizens in the process. Finally, the study
allowed me to conclude that it does not have, currently, an epistemological positioning, that it
gives sustentation to the arguments of the wet nurse woman in its crises and conflicts in the
process breastfeed-wean.
Key Word: Woman’s health. Breast-feeding. Weaning.