[The monitoring of pregnancy in immigrant women with traditional beliefs].
About eight to twelve per cent of immigrant women in France who come mainly from Islamic countries are often reluctant to have their pregnancy medically supervised. This attitude is responsible for the increase of perinatal pathology which is higher in percentage than the national norm. It can be explained by these women's individual and group history and is based on the following three notions: the woman herself: her attachment to traditional practices, geographical and ethnical origin, level of education, prospects in life, and above all, a knowledge of the French language. the couple themselves: the family structure, submission of the wife to the husband, and his open-mindedness. the social group which maintains the couple's interdependent relationship with it. To this horizontal dimension, pregnancy adds a vertical measure, which is the relationship with the "suprahuman" world where the child comes from. This relation is expressed by a number of protection and purification rituals, and various prescribed practices such as keeping the pregnancy secret, special food, cravings, etc. Thus pregnancy becomes a real "Work" (for the future mother in the most noble meaning of the word) because she knows her formative influence over the child she bears: her thoughts, her feelings, her way of life, breathing, eating, communicating with her child and his environment; she consciously participates in the psychic and physical qualities of the child to be born.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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D000349:Africa / Q000208:ethnology; D001290:Attitude; D003469:Culture; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007514:Islam; D007743:Labor, Obstetric; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011247:Pregnancy; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D012380:Role; D012944:Social Support