Maternidade e Identidade em Mulheres que Perderam Filhos: Aspectos Psicossociais

This investigation aims at understanding the process of construction and reconstruction of identity in those elements related to motherhood, of women who lost their children. Seven 39-to-56-year-old women who have lost their children due to violent or accidental causes were interviewed. Two analysis procedures were used: Content Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The perception of the motherhood connected to traditional attributes and the perception of the children’s death as meaningless were identified in the reports. In the search of coherence for memory and identity, those women have found in remembrance and missing a strategy for not forgetting the children in a context in which it is expected that the pain of that loss is experienced in silence.