Constructions of risk and the maternal body: implications for midwifery practice
- Austin, Kate
ORIGINAL
Introduction
Risk, as a concept, is prevalent in discussions surrounding childbirth and maternity care (). Risk and its construction also feature as key concerns in sociological theory and research, emerging in) and) theories of reflexive late modern ‘risk societies’ which mark periods of hazardous social uncertainty (). More recent theoretical approaches focus on the everyday lived experience of risk (); yet both treat risk as socially constructed and thus socially meaningful ().
This paper will examine sociological concepts of risk as applied to the maternal body to reveal the consequential implications for midwifery in everyday practice. The authoritative medical discourse model will be used to briefly examine the ways in which the maternal body has been constructed as ‘risky’. Following Chadwick & Foster, attention will also be drawn to the ‘lived experience’ in the maternity episode (2014), exploring risk as an embodied subjectivity (). Potential solutions will be suggested to overcome the implications of these issues in an attempt to move away from the ‘cataclysmic pessimism’ of risk management in maternity care (,), bringing the holistic focus back to the individual woman as an agent of her own embodied birth experience.
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