Studies of attachment in the community suggest that most people have secure attachment styles, but as many as 40% may have an insecure attachment style (Bakermans-Kranenburg & van Ijzendoorn 2009). Frightening parental behaviour has been found to predict disorganised attachment in infants, which in turn is associated with clinical disturbance in adolescence (Van Ijzendoorn, Schuengel & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 1999). Insecure attachment has been found to be disproportionately more common in many psychiatric disorders than the general population: including substance misuse, eating disorders, and Personality Disorder (PD). Transgenerational transmission of attachment has become widely researched over recent years and evidence has shown that a mother's attachment style can predict the attachment style of her infant (Ward, Ramsay, Turnbull, Steele, Steele, & Treasure, 2001). Research has found that a mothers' ability to mentalize about her own early attachment relationships has important implications in her transition to becoming a mother. Motherhood can be challenging for mothers who have good mental health, therefore women with poor mental health may find the transition to motherhood especially stressful. The aim of the current study was to give voice to mothers who have been silenced in many ways, to learn from their struggles and to help services develop more effective ways to reach 'hard to reach' vulnerable mothers. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984) was conducted with eight mothers who were attending a Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT; Bateman & Fonagy, 2004) group designed for mothers who had caused harm to their children and had subsequently had them removed from their care. Thematic Analysis was used to analyse the AAI transcripts and five main themes emerged: 'Love and loss', 'Change and confusion', 'Families and normality', 'Safety and boundaries' and 'Strength and vulnerability'. The findings contribute to the field of maternal mental health research and clinical implications are discussed at an individual, organisational and societal level.

Progressing into the 21st century young pregnancy and parenthood in the United Kingdom is a focus of political, media and public attention. The country is described as experiencing an epidemic, with the highest rates of young pregnancy and parenthood recorded in Western Europe. Statistics demonstrate that in 2000 38,690 under 18 year-olds in England became pregnant, of which 44.8% ended in legal termination. In light of this data, and within their remit to address the issue of Social Exclusion, New Labour commissioned a report into young pregnancy resulting in the development and implementation of the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy. The Strategy has two main aims; namely reducing the rates of young conceptions and providing better support and education for young parents. This thesis argues from a conceptual framework that questions the contested assumption that young pregnancy and parenthood is a problem. A literature review demonstrates a lack of representation of the voices and experiences of young mothers. This directs the research question to ask what is the experience of young mothers in their own words and placed within context? Critical Discourse Analysis is used to examine three examples of context shaping data that includes government policy, a newspaper article and a radio talk show programme. The analysis reveals discourses that suggest there is a right time and framework for motherhood. These discourses form a dialectical relationship with voices and experiences of young mothers that are analysed using Discourse Analysis. This analysis elicits two key central discourses permeating the experiences of young mothers that are the Good- Bad mother binary that informs and exacerbates experiences of maternal ambivalence. Moreover, these discourses inform the practice of discrimination against young mothers. The thesis concludes with a call to listen to the experiences of young mothers in order that their needs might be more fully understood. It suggests that discrimination against young mothers be incorporated into Equal Opportunity and Anti- Discrimination policy.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:29:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-12-04Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:58:28Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 verissimo_dmm_me_assis.pdf: 445435 bytes, checksum: 93b36ce929159ed46a80e679738d150a (MD5) / A maternidade é conhecida como um momento sublime na vida da mulher, mesmo em meio às transformações ocorridas no mundo contemporâneo, essa visão idealizada da maternidade é composta de fatores: sociais, culturais e históricos. A psicanálise também contribuiu na construção desta visão, tanto para uma responsabilização das mães pela estruturação psíquica das crianças, quanto para a naturalização da maternidade caracterizado-a como própria da feminilidade. Porém, inúmeros autores apontam para as dificuldades e pressões vivenciadas pelas mães da gestação ao pós-parto na relação com seu bebê, pois a vivência da maternidade sempre vem acompanhada de sentimentos conflitantes, ou seja, ambivalências. A literatura aponta também que a ambivalência se torna mais intensa quando o encontro com o bebê real é marcado por uma doença. No caso do presente trabalho, estudamos os efeitos da alergia à proteína do leite de vaca (APLV), na relação mãe-bebê, uma vez que essa doença, que vem ganhando importância no contexto pediátrico, apresenta uma particularidade: ao atingir o bebê em aleitamento, quem realiza uma dieta livre de qualquer produto lácteo é a mãe; devido à essa particularidade acreditamos que essa doença ao atingir bebês cria uma condição especial ao desenvolvimento da relação mãe-bebê. Com o objetivo de compreender as manifestações do sentimento de ambivalência em mães de bebês com a referida alergia realizamos uma investigação qualitativa psicanalítica, tendo como ponto de partida um estudo sobre os cuidados maternos ao longo da história, seguido de revisão... / Motherhood is known as a sublime moment in the life of a woman, even with the changes in the contemporary world, this idealized vision of motherhood is composed by some factors: social, cultural and historical. Psychoanalysis has also contributed in building this vision, not only the responsibility of these mothers for the psychic structure of these children, but also for the naturalization of motherhood characterized it as their own femininity. However, many authors pointed out the difficulties and pressures experienced by the these mothers from pregnancy to post partum relate to their babies, because the experience of motherhood always comes along with a conflicted feelings, and this is called ambivalence. The literature also indicates that ambivalence becomes more intense when the encounter with the real baby is marked by a disease. In the present work, we studied the effects of allergy to the protein in cow's milk (APLV) in mother-infant relationship, once that this disease which has become importance in the pediatric context ,it shows an particularity: when it get to the baby who is breastfeeding, who carries on a free diet of any dairy product is the mother because of this particularity we believe that whenever this disease reaches the baby it creates a special condition between the development of mother-infant relationship. In order to understand the manifestations of ambivalence feelings in mothers who have allergic babies , we carried out a qualitative investigation of psychoanalysis, and as a starting... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Orientador: Jorge Luís Ferreira Abrão / Banca: Inês Amosso Dolci / Banca: Diana Pancini de Sá Antunes Ribeiro / Resumo: A maternidade é conhecida como um momento sublime na vida da mulher, mesmo em meio às transformações ocorridas no mundo contemporâneo, essa visão idealizada da maternidade é composta de fatores: sociais, culturais e históricos. A psicanálise também contribuiu na construção desta visão, tanto para uma responsabilização das mães pela estruturação psíquica das crianças, quanto para a naturalização da maternidade caracterizado-a como própria da feminilidade. Porém, inúmeros autores apontam para as dificuldades e pressões vivenciadas pelas mães da gestação ao pós-parto na relação com seu bebê, pois a vivência da maternidade sempre vem acompanhada de sentimentos conflitantes, ou seja, ambivalências. A literatura aponta também que a ambivalência se torna mais intensa quando o encontro com o bebê real é marcado por uma doença. No caso do presente trabalho, estudamos os efeitos da alergia à proteína do leite de vaca (APLV), na relação mãe-bebê, uma vez que essa doença, que vem ganhando importância no contexto pediátrico, apresenta uma particularidade: ao atingir o bebê em aleitamento, quem realiza uma dieta livre de qualquer produto lácteo é a mãe; devido à essa particularidade acreditamos que essa doença ao atingir bebês cria uma condição especial ao desenvolvimento da relação mãe-bebê. Com o objetivo de compreender as manifestações do sentimento de ambivalência em mães de bebês com a referida alergia realizamos uma investigação qualitativa psicanalítica, tendo como ponto de partida um estudo sobre os cuidados maternos ao longo da história, seguido de revisão... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Motherhood is known as a sublime moment in the life of a woman, even with the changes in the contemporary world, this idealized vision of motherhood is composed by some factors: social, cultural and historical. Psychoanalysis has also contributed in building this vision, not only the responsibility of these mothers for the psychic structure of these children, but also for the naturalization of motherhood characterized it as their own femininity. However, many authors pointed out the difficulties and pressures experienced by the these mothers from pregnancy to post partum relate to their babies, because the experience of motherhood always comes along with a conflicted feelings, and this is called ambivalence. The literature also indicates that ambivalence becomes more intense when the encounter with the real baby is marked by a disease. In the present work, we studied the effects of allergy to the protein in cow's milk (APLV) in mother-infant relationship, once that this disease which has become importance in the pediatric context ,it shows an particularity: when it get to the baby who is breastfeeding, who carries on a free diet of any dairy product is the mother because of this particularity we believe that whenever this disease reaches the baby it creates a special condition between the development of mother-infant relationship. In order to understand the manifestations of ambivalence feelings in mothers who have allergic babies , we carried out a qualitative investigation of psychoanalysis, and as a starting... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre