Marginal maternity: pregnancy and childbirth in an institution for the protection of infancy

Abstract

The ethnographic data analyzed in this article comes from a research carried out during two years at a family housing service on d’Yeu island (France) for families called “monoparental under difficulties”. From the inquiry about what pregnancy and delivery under social precariousness yield in terms of symbolic building of motherhood, of the social outlook about oneself, and of the social relations that these moments propitiate. The analysis reports two situations found during the occasion: women (all mothers already) who arrived pregnant at the institution and the pregnancies started during the time of housing service.