Mothering experiences and public health institutions. An attempt of application of institutional ethnography in Mendoza, Argentina

This paper seeks to share some of the findings and challenges of an attempt to use institutional ethnography to explore the relationship between the mothering experiences of low-income women and the institutional regulations and practices of the public health system during the processes of pregnancy, birth and puerperium, in Mendoza (Argentina), from 2001 to 2011.

This research project draws on Adrienne Rich’s distinction between motherhood as experience and motherhood as institution. Despite the progresses regarding sexual and reproductive rights and technologies that Argentina has achieved, I believe there remains a persistent gap between the social meanings attributed to motherhood and the experiences of concrete women. My inquiry focuses on the forms of institutionalization of motherhood that are crystallized in the public health system, for it is during the processes of pregnancy-delivery-puerperium (that is, when motherhood passes through women’s bodies and puts them in contact with “experts” regarding their condition) that social meanings attributed to motherhood become noticeably evident and intense.  

Some of the preliminary findings regarding mothering experiences reveal that pregnant, laboring and puerperal women perform a corporeal work that goes mostly unacknowledged by health institutions. As for the  institution of motherhood, it is produced and reproduced by discourses and practices that naturalize or medicalize the processes of pregnancy, birth and puerperium according to the needs of health institutions -which are determined by economic restructuring and social policy trends- and/or to the personal beliefs of health professionals.

The paper also seeks to raise some of the unresolved questions that emerge when trying to apply institutional ethnography in a context where public institutions are not as coherent as they seem to be in other parts of the world -with factors such as religious fundamentalism shaping institutional practices- but are all the same subject to translocal ruling relations.