Daniela Jofré Godoy

Background. Motherhood in Chile is complex and challenging -marked as it is by a growing number of women raising children on their own, against a backdrop of multiple social, cultural and economic factors- as well as a significant decline in birth rates. Perezhivanie is a Russian word, originating in Russian scholarship.  This concept integrates the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of individual experience.  This study adopts a cultural-historical approach grounded in Vygotskian theory, proposing perezhivanie as the unit of analysis.

Objective. To study the perezhivanie of Chilean women in relation to the psychological, social, and cultural factors underlying the complexities of motherhood.

Design. This study uses a qualitative epistemology and adopts a constructive-interpretative paradigm proposed by González-Rey. As a research strategy, it uses a case study design and applies a purposive sampling method which allows to recruit 10 Chilean mothers to whom the episodic interview technique proposed by Flick is applied. Data analysis was conducted following González-Rey’s method to interpreting subjective productions.

Results. The main findings indicate that participants construct a perezhivanie marked by guilt and frustration within a social framework characterised by family difficulties, of monoparenting, and lack of economic resources, all associated with cultural patterns that reinforce the unequal distribution of parenting responsibilities and gender stereotypes in society.

Conclusion. The study concludes on the importance of studying and providing comprehensive responses to the complex reality of motherhood in Chile.