Nursing Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Nursing, including details on health care, hospital staff, professional care.

Homebirth as systems-challenging praxis: knowledge, power, and intimacy in the birthplace.

Cheyney MJ

Department of Anthropology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA. melissa.cheyney@oregonstate.edu

In this article, I examine the processes and motivations involved when women in the United States choose to circumvent the dominant obstetric care paradigm by delivering at home with a group of care providers called direct-entry midwives. Using grounded theory, participant observation, and open-ended, semistructured interviewing, I collected and analyzed homebirth narratives from a theoretical sample of women (n = 50) in two research locales. Findings interpreted from the perspective of critical medical anthropology suggest that women who choose to birth at home negotiate fears associated with the "just in case something bad happens" argument that forms the foundation for hospital birth rationales through complex individual and social processes. These involve challenging established forms of authoritative knowledge, valuing alternative and more embodied or intuitive ways of knowing, and knowledge sharing through the informed consent process. Adherence to subjugated discourses combined with lived experiences of personal power and the cultivation of intimacy in the birthplace fuel homebirth not only as a minority social movement, but also as a form of systems-challenging praxis.

Published 24 January 2008 in Qual Health Res, 18(2): 254-67.
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