Idealized Bodies and Idealized Authority: U.S. birth centers, de-medicalization, and the reframing of pregnancy risk

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 1. (De)Medicalization Processes

Abstract

The evolution of childbirth in the United States is linked to the overall medicalization of U.S. society and the rise of technologic interventions for everyday life circumstances. In particular, scholars have investigated changing cultural narratives related to risk, pain, and the body that have worked to re-frame childbirth from a physiological process to a medical event (Simonds, Rothman, and Norman 2007). Similarly, a body of literature arising from feminist perspectives and the natural birth movement have cataloged attempts to re-situate birth as normal, natural, and within the realm of women’s knowledge and autonomy (Simonds et al. 2007). Drawing on content analysis of websites of 48 freestanding birth centers, ethnographic field work in a midwife-led birth center setting, and in-depth interviews with midwives, birth center clients, and related birth professionals I argue that the online rhetoric of birth center websites and the co-created narratives of birth centers staff and clients legitimate the model, and bolster declining trust in traditional medical frameworks in ways that are deeply consequential to societal understandings of risk, authority, and bodily autonomy.

Author

• Courtney Thornton, Washington University in St. Louis