I luoghi della nascita: una ricerca-intervento sui fattori di rischio nelle madri migranti

Pregnancy involves physical changes but also relational and affective ones. During the nine months’ period and in the months following the birth, women develop a series of expectations and fantasies about themselves and their child. The way women live their motherhood expresses, in addition, the cultural values, the myths, the rules society has transmitted to them. Then, birth can be considered as a cultural event with distinctive features. Moving from these considerations, we wondered how immigrant women live their experience of motherhood in a foreign country. We examined the way women reconstruct the history of their pregnancy in relation to their own maternal identity, the identity of their child and their culture of origin, to evaluate the risk of post-partum depression. In this study, we met 11 immigrant women, who belong to different cultures and live in Palermo. The participants were administered a semi-structured interview about maternal representations (IRMAG and IRMAN respectively), a symbolic drawing of family life space (DSSVF) and then the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) during pregnancy and puerperium.