A shantytown called the Alto do Cruzeiro (Crucifix Hill), is one of the three shantytowns bordering the big marketplace area in the town of Bom Jesus in the sugar plantation district of Northeast Brazil, a solitary part of the countless regions of disregard that have materialized in the darkness of the now stained economic wonder of Brazil. The Alto women practice an unusual method of caring for their offspring especially when handling the death of their infants. The high rate of infant death can be credited to poverty and malnutrition. Illness and infant deaths are taken nonchalantly not by just the social institutions in the Alto but also by the child's own mother and this has
Infant mortality is a major issue the world struggles with. Today, with advances in medicine and technology, the infant mortality rate decreases every year. However, in the past and in other developing countries, access to resources necessary to having and raising a healthy child are not available. In the article “Death Without Weeping”, the author, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, discusses about her time spent at Alto do Cruzeiro, Brazil. Hughes goes on to explain why the infant mortality rate was high in Alto do Cruzeiro. She also discusses how the women and children are treated in the community.
The article, “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping” by Nancy Scheper-Hughes is about mothers in the Alto do Cruzeiro and how the mothers take the death of an infant. The mothers have been thought not to morn for their babies and to not become attached. They do this because the high rate of mortality because the infants are left at home while the mother is at work. No one is there to tend for the babies and the mother cannot take the babies to work with them. No funerals are done with the death of these babies some of the babies never even got a name because the mothers are thought not to get attached to the child until they know the child will survive. This is all due to the malnourishment in the children because the mothers are in poverty
Among violence against women and gender inequality, death is a constant factor that runs through the whole story this culture is surrounded by it every day and even when there is drought death is expected, but infant mortality is a constant battle. There are multiple occasions where infants die, mainly because of what they are being fed and how they are treated. It is understood that Monique’s baby’s health is declining throughout the story. The main cause of children
Motherhood was an expected part of the wife’s life. Woman would have a large number of babies right after each other although some babies would not survive. “High mortality rates must have overshadowed the experience of motherhood in ways difficult to
The theme of parental mourning has been a universal one throughout the centuries. In the literature on bereavement, writers repeat certain themes, thoughts, and reflections; they talk of the powerful and often conflicting emotions involved in "the pain of grief and the
Kinship is when a child is cared for by either close family friends or relatives. This is usually short-term; however it can become long term. Kinship is preferred for children who have been separated from parents because it sustains the Childs connections with their families.
Kinship care is the full-time care and nurturing of a child by a relative or someone who has a significant emotional relationship with the child. If children must be separate from their parents, either voluntarily or by court order, kinship care should be the first placement option explored by the child welfare agency. The Federal Government endorsed this practice most recently in the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008. Placing children in Kinship care helps States’ compliance with Federal requirements to provide children with safety, stability, and permanency. It also meets provisions of the Fostering Connection Act that requires agencies to notify relatives when
In Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”, the author expresses a lot of her thoughts and feelings in order to share her experience. It is written in the first person and the narrator is adopted by the author herself, Gwendolyn Brooks, who embodies a weaken mother. In this poem, Gwendolyn Brooks tries to portray what abortion is for a woman and to describe the harsh truth about how women feel afterwards. Thus, this poem is mostly targeted to aim females and their feelings. First of all, abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. First, the narrator uses many imageries, description, and a precise choice of words to explain this emotional topic of abortion. Second, her use
Kinship is how cultures define relationships with people who they think of as family. All
Nancy Scheper-Hughes studies and observes the connections between the loss of infants and the mother’s ability to express maternal love in the shantytowns of Brazil in her article “Mother’s Love: Death without Weeping.” Studying documents, interviewing, and observing the everyday lives of mothers, were the fieldwork procedures she used to conduct her research. The results of her research provided evidence of two theoretical perspectives observed in the article, structuralism and materialism.
In each person's life much of the joy and sorrow revolves around attachments or affectionate relationships -- making them, breaking them, preparing for them, and adjusting to their loss by death. Among all of these bonds as a special bond -- the type a mother or father forms with his or her newborn infant. Bonding does not refer to mutual affection between a baby and an adult, but to the phenomenon whereby adults become committed by a one-way flow of concern and affection to children for whom they have cared during the first months and years of life. According to J. Robertson in his book, A Baby in the Family Loving and being Loved, individuals may have from three hundred to four hundred acquaintances in there lifetimes, but at any one
Infants are a special cohort of a population in the society. Children between the ages of five months to two years are at a stage where they start familiarizing with their surroundings and have different reactions to situations. The surrounding where an infant grows greatly determines his or her development. The primary determinant of the development of infants is the parent-infant interaction (Crain, 2015). The first bond or relation of a child is with its biological parents or guardians in the case of orphaned children.
Being a mother is one of the best gifts from a life. A mother gives her children unconditional love without expecting anything in return. Being a mother means more than having given birth to a child. It is an invisible connection between mother and child; it is a blessing, a relationship that never ends and the love that never dies. However, for some women, motherhood might be challenging in ways they did not expect, forcing them to choose between having an abortion and keeping the child. The debate over abortion is an ardent and polarizing issue as there are those who believe that all humans including those unborn should have a right to life, and on the other side of the spectrum are those who believe it should a woman's right to choose whether she wants an abortion or not. This topic relates to Gwendolyn Brooks's poem, "The Mother", where the author describes the painful thoughts, heartbreak, and awful feelings that a woman experiences after having an abortion. Brooks lays out a helpful framework for understanding the difficult situation of facing unplanned pregnancy. In "The Mother", a woman recollects her inner conflicts as she laments over the guilt of having had an abortion and the future she never gave her would be child. Brooks's poem provides insight into the research which reveals how abortion affects women morally, psychologically, and religiously.