Searching mothers: from suspicion to legitimacy

Abstract:

This article describes and analyzes the emergence of the activism of a group of women who denounce the theft of their children at birth in Argentina and are searching for them. Based on observations and interviews with these searching mothers, we analyze, on the one hand, the notions to which they appeal to give legitimacy to their claims and to oppose the suspicion that they are taken as bad mothers who gave up and/or abandoned their children. And, on the other hand, the conditions of possibility for the emergence of this activism and the particularities that the local configuration of human rights and women's rights imprints on it. It is postulated as a hypothesis that the practices of child stealing denounced by these women constitute specific forms of violence inscribed in the social fabric of gender, class, and age inequality.

Keywords:
Motherhood; Activism; Child Thef; Violence