Enabling and controlling parenthood in publicly provided maternity healthcare
Becoming a parent in Finland
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2249193 |
|---|---|
| Authors | R Homanen (0000-0003-4630-9532, Gender Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 443-457 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9566.12491 |
| PMID | 27770450 |
| OpenAlex | W2532104354 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 26 |
This article discusses practices of parental support in the maternity healthcare provided by the welfare state. Drawing on ethnographic material from clinics in Finland, I discuss maternity healthcare practices and processes as the specific contexts of subjectification to parenthood in the Nordic welfare state. The analysis shows that in both nurses' (work) experience-based knowledge and population-statistical knowledge, parental competence is achieved largely through the 'natural' process of experiencing pregnant life. Care practices can be seen as enabling parenthood through respect for this process. Clinics encourage parents-to-be to self-reflect and be self-reliant. Emphasis on self-reflection and self-reliance has previously been interpreted as the state adoption of therapy culture, and as a response to market demands for the welfare state to offer to and require of its citizens more autonomy and choice. I argue, however, that the parental subject emerging from the practices of this welfare service cannot be reduced to a neoliberal reflexive individual for whom parenthood is an individual project and who is to blame for individual shortcomings. Equally, they are no mere disciplined product of governmentality being pushed to conform to an idealised parent figure derived from collective ideas of good parenthood
Autonomy · Blame · Competence (human resources) · Economic growth · Economics · Governmentality · Health care · Political science · Population · Public relations · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Subjectification · Welfare · Welfare state · Children's Rights and Participation · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Research in Social Sciences · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice
The cultural contradictions of motherhood
Saving the Modern Soul
The Logic of Care
The woman in the body
The Captured Womb
States, Markets, Families
Institutional Ethnography as Practice
The Saturated Society
Sorting Things Out
Ethnography
The pitfalls of positive parenting
Support services for vulnerable families with young children
Cooking Nation
Ethnography then and now
Collaboration Today and the Re-Imagination of the Classic Scene of Fieldwork Encounter
Security, Territory, Population
Framing the fetus in medical work
Governing the Soul - a Quarter of a Century On
The Body Multiple
Men's Choices and Masculine Duties
How Involved Is Involved Fathering
Food Matters
The swan effect in midwifery talk and practice
Understanding the social organisation of maternity care systems
Men, maternity and moral residue
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2023 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |