Abstract

REZENDE, Claudia Barcellos. Imagining the expected baby: kinship, beauty and race in Rio de Janeiro. Etnográfica [online]. 2016, vol.20, n.2, pp.231-249. ISSN 0873-6561.

In this article, I examine pregnancy as a moment of revalidation and actualization of kinship ties. Analyzing narratives of middle-class pregnant women in Rio de Janeiro, I discuss how they imagine the physical appearance of their expected babies resorting to family features. In thinking about the baby, they engage with the continued identities originated in their past, as they face the future projecting his/her characteristics, identities and social ties. In this process, the association between physical similarity and kinship is debated, since the physical continuity between generations may or may not be desired. In these narratives, notions of beauty, race and social class present in Brazilian society affect the way the expected baby is imagined. The desired continuity between generations figures less as a reproduction and more as perfected connections, in which the undesired traits disappear.

Keywords : kinship; pregnancy; beauty; race; middle class; Rio de Janeiro.

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