Technology as a Last Resort in Home Birth

The Work of Lay Midwives

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2484367
AutoresKaren J Peterson, Karen Peterson (Drake University, autor de correspondencia)
Año1983
Volumen30
Número3
Páginas272-283
Fecha de publicación1983-02-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial Problems (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0037-7791 • E-ISSN: 1533-8533
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/800353
OpenAlexW2009322044
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas17
Referencias citadas15

This paper considers an example of demedicalization in U.S. society by examining how 10 lay midwives described their work in attending home births. Committed to childbirth as a family event as opposed to a medical one, they tried to accomplish this by reallocating knowledge and responsibility among participants and by working to keep birth at home “natural,” relegating childbirth technology to a position of last resort before transporting women to the hospital. The midwives determined limits to their use of such technology according to their respective interpretations of collectively held norms. This work suggests that definitions of demedicalization rest upon two related bases: (1) participants abandoning their reliance upon the “technological fix;” and (2) experts becoming educators in a context of shared knowledge and responsibility

Business · Childbirth · Context (archaeology) · Event (particle physics) · Home birth · Political science · Position (finance) · Pregnancy · Public relations · Sociology · Work (physics) · Engineering · Gender Studies · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · History · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Medicine · Nursing · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies