Chapter 15: “I-Mother The Caregiver”: How a Strong Sign Persists Through Semiotic Self-Scaffolding Along Life Transitions

Women, especially when they are mothers, do not take good care of themselves. Studies in the field of medical anthropology have shown that most healthcare practices happen within the family context, with women as the main caretakers (Hellman, 1994). Bastos and Almeida Filho (1999), studying families from a poor area in Salvador, in the state of Bahia (Metropolitan Region), Brazil, observed the same tendency, but have discovered also that the same mothers who were the primary caretakers for their families were negligent about their own health conditions in several respects.

The responsibility of raising children, particularly small children, can be exhausting, even overwhelming. In our Western society, one could say it is “normal” for women to prioritize family care over personal care, and that such neglect is rarely discussed—in the same vein, to expose negative feelings around this reality is considered taboo. Mothers are supposed to love unconditionally, by “maternal instinct;” they should be “infinite”— the epigraph above illustrates well that ideology. The so-called ideology of intensive mothering, commented on by Bell (2006), claims that one woman, usually the biological mother, “should take almost exclusive responsibility for taking care of children during their formative years” (p. 233)—she should hold herself “accountable for keeping her children fed and housed and for shaping the kinds of adults these children will become.” This ideology portrays a self-sacrificing mother, devoted to the care of others. Abandonment of children by mothers used to be considered much more shocking, weird, even pathological, than that by fathers—as dramatic as the consequences may be, in both cases. A strong affective set of socially guided and interpersonally constructed semiotic barriers is set up to keep mothers from rejecting requests for unconditional love. The almost impossible demands imposed on mothers, accompanied by the exigency of perfection (fed enough by psychological prescriptive discourse) are relegated to the domain of unspoken, silenced subjects, to be intrapersonally elaborated upon and overcome by each woman needing to face these constraints. As Bell recognizes, “intensive mothering ideology is dominated by and exhibits a logic of family and private life that requires a moral commitment to relationships grounded in affection and mutual obligations” (p. 233). In such a semiosphere, signs like unconditional love and care are likely to gain additional strength and persistence throughout the life course.