Prêter attention à la dimension culturelle en période périnatale pour mieux accompagner les parents et leurs bébés

Abstract

L’impact de la culture est utile à prendre en compte pour optimiser l’accompagnement des soignants en période périnatale. En effet, les femmes enceintes migrantes primo-arrivantes sont sujettes à une vulnérabilité psychique liée à leur isolement et à la confrontation à d’autres manières de s’occuper des bébés. L’objectif de cet article est de transmettre des compétences transculturelles utiles pour tout soignant accompagnant une famille en période périnatale, en mettant en lumière les aspects culturels auxquels prêter attention dans la représentation d’une grossesse, les besoins d’un enfant, les complications obstétricales ou les problématiques postnatales.

Transcultural skills for early childhood professionals

“…These levers come from our diversified clinical practice applying transcultural methods, adapted and personalized to the situations for which this expertise is required. These include liaison work in the hospital, discussion and support groups with pregnant women or recent parturients (47,48), transcultural consultations with a group of co-therapists from various cultures (3,4,49), mediation at the hospital with an interpreter-mediator, and institutional work (team 1 Insults or attitudes, "intentional or not" that "communicate hostile or contemptuous messages targeting people solely on the basis of their membership in a marginalized group." supervision, university instruction or professional training programs, and reflexive interventions in multidisciplinary staff meetings).…”

“…She felt that the baby could still wait to come out "naturally" and thus refused the "surgery." When we asked her to describe what she thought the surgery is, a second point of understanding emerged: she considered it similar to a "long laceration," with a statement that reactivated the experience of her infibulation 4 but also the fear of disinfibulation associated with a cesarean.…”

“…Several sociological, anthropological, and psychological works confirm this universality without uniformity (1,2). Among the differences that may affect our clinical evaluation, we should take into account the distal interactions in the mother-baby relationship and the more proximal interactions in some cultural groups (3)(4)(5). In many cultural groups, for example, tactile and motor interactions count more than visual and verbal interactions: mothers carry babies frequently; massages shape babies, drain their impurities, and stimulate them.…”

“…What will their parents be able to transmit to them of their cultural values, of their identity? Migration, especially if recent and if the couple or the mother is isolated, induces a sudden break from previous reference points (3,4,20,21). The absence of a word, a practice, of support at the start of their baby's life/at the start of their life as parents-a moment when the group is primordial-can make isolated parents still more insecure (20).…”