Work and the couple: the theatre of identity changes in becoming a mother

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Throughout the article, the authors offer an analysis of the challenges within the couple in terms of their professional identity faced by women as they give birth to a child. The focus is on the changes in terms of investment when the first child arrives, and the difficulty of reconciling professional life, marriage and parenthood for primiparous men and women. Contemporary society is moving away from the old models, generating changes for women, and consequently for men too. What identity changes are taking place? Do women’s individual problems find an echo in the couple? The choice of the identity-based approach was adopted in an attempt to answer these questions. The authors draw on their experience as psychologists, and offer a clinical vignette to illustrate their arguments. Based on the theory of Johann Jung (2015), a grid for reading identity issues is proposed, focusing on four major approaches: the negative, reflexivity, continuity/discontinuity and paradoxality.