TO BE A WOMAN AND A MOTHER DESIGNATED “MENTALLY HANDICAPPED PERSON”: PRIVACY BETWEEN INVISIBILITY AND STIGMATIZATION

Abstract

The experience of maternity of women designated <>, the preliminary situation, is practiced often under institutional pressure; it is thought, framed, socialized for guardian institutions of normality. The object of the article will be to show that under the domination of a normative model of: <>, these women are held for accepting the responsibility of their maternity by themselves: model where the father is hardly included. To be a <> it is a reward in a context where the situation of disability remained a cause of social exclusion. Their social experiences put them constantly in struggle with risk of reinforcing stereotypes. If we talk about doubts about their maternal skills, they live in a constant condition of stress and the fear that the custody of children be withdrawn of them. This experience institutes that they call<< enlèvement d'enfant>>. The negociation is for almost impossible for them. The exposure of a different event of « enlèvement d’enfant » for a designated mother << mentally handicapped person>>, it will show us how much the media and the judicial actors overexpose their privacy, to risk of reinforcing the stereotypes associated of <>, but also her own responsibility depending on the norms of<< good child for producing>> (Cresson and Gadrey 2004: 33). It will be about of reporting strategies of internal avoidances and secondary adaptations, which are developed to the consideration of holders of judgments less encouraging, indeed unfavorable.