The Production of Inequality in High-Risk Pregnancy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24211351 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anna C Church (0000-0003-3039-6096, Cornell University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00031224261480143 |
| OpenAlex | W7215042252 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 85 |
How do socioeconomically advantaged individuals maintain their health advantage? Prior work shows how high socioeconomic status (SES) individuals secure advantages in areas such as housing or the labor market and provides longstanding evidence of health inequalities across SES. However, we have a more limited understanding of the mechanisms behind how high-SES individuals leverage structural advantage to improve their own health. This article draws on in-depth interviews with people diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a high-risk pregnancy condition that requires an intensive treatment regimen over a short timeframe, to reveal how socioeconomic advantage translates into health advantage. Socioeconomic advantage creates inequalities in health through multiple pathways, including excess financial resources that can be used to acquire health-relevant resources and access to flexible time to dedicate toward strict GDM management. Socioeconomically advantaged participants can thus respond to a diagnosis with GDM more quickly and efficiently than can disadvantaged participants. The divergent approaches to managing GDM that I uncover support advantaged individuals’ hyper-compliance with treatment guidelines, what I call going “above and beyond,” that translate into qualitatively different interactions with healthcare professionals than those of low-SES individuals, compounding structural (dis)advantage. Explicating the mechanisms through which high-SES individuals maintain health advantage identifies new directions for studying the production of inequality.
financial resources · gestational diabetes mellitus · health disparities · healthcare professional-patient interaction · high-risk pregnancy · Medication adherence · Socioeconomic status · structural advantages · temporal flexibility · Gender, Health, and Social Inequality · Health disparities and outcomes · Public Health and Social Inequalities
Zero Trimester
The Logic of Care
Social Determinants of Health and Diabetes
Socioeconomic Disparities In Health
Socioeconomic Status in Health Research
The Relationship Between Education and Health
Structural racism and health inequities in the USA
Negotiating risky bodies
The Maternal Imprint
Listening to People
Reproducing Race
Conceiving Risk, Bearing Responsibility
Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory
Understanding associations among race, socioeconomic status, and health
Time Deficits with Children
Power, Revisited
The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism
Precious cargo’
Structural racism and adverse maternal health outcomes
The Relational Generation of Workplace Inequalities
Late, But Not Too Late? Postponement of First Birth Among Highly Educated US Women
Childbearing Biographies as a Method to Examine Diversity and Clustering of Childbearing Experiences
Fertility and Infertility
Private school entry to Oxbridge
Investment Feminism and Women’s Health
Structural Heteropatriarchy and Birth Outcomes in the United States
Racial, ethnic and nativity inequalities in gestational diabetes mellitus
Biomedicalization
Don't push!” experiences of obstetric violence in U.S. hospital settings
Social Structure, Stress, and Mental Health
Challenging categorical thinking
Collaborating in Class
Sociology from a Distance
Power, structure, and health
Gestational Diabetes
I don't have a crystal ball
Coached for the Classroom
Structural Sexism and Health in the United States
Avoiding Us versus Them
Hiring as Cultural Matching
Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing
Invisible wounds
Social Conditions As Fundamental Causes of Disease
How many cases do I need
More Work for Mother
The Politics of Life Itself
Flexible Coding of In-depth Interviews
Socioeconomic-Status-Based Disrespect, Discrimination, Exclusion, and Shaming
Structural Racism and Health Stratification
A Matter of Time
The Biomedical Subjectification of Women of Advanced Maternal Age
Diversions
Health Power Resources Theory
I Want You to Save My Kid
Cultural Health Capital
Socioeconomic Disparities in Health Behaviors
Reproduction
Gaining Access to Economically Marginalized Rural Populations
Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research
A transformed pregnancy
The Changing Discourse of Healthism
Cultivating the Maternal Future
Toward Some Fundamentals of Fundamental Causality
Obstetric Racism
| Highly cited | No |
|---|