Midwives, Marginality, and Public Identity Work

Bibliographic Data

ID2481576
AuthorsLara Foley (0000-0003-3028-7340, University of Tulsa, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume28
Issue2
Pages183-203
Publication date2005-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSymbolic Interaction (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0195-6086 • E-ISSN: 1533-8665
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/si.2005.28.2.183
OpenAlexW2048764917
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited23

Because midwifery in the United States is an occupation at the margins of medicine, midwives must frequently negotiate competing identity claims. This article examines the public identity work of a group of midwives by focusing on two important tools they use to accomplish this work: boundary negotiation and impression management. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with twenty-six licensed, nurse, and empirical midwives in the state of Florida, this article illustrates the ways in which midwives frame their identities in relation to history and media representations and manage public identities through boundary negotiation and impression management. I argue that the marginality of this occupation lends itself to competing categories of identity that midwives must negotiate. These categories become salient when midwives confront historical and media representations of childbirth and midwifery as well as the perceptions of the general public, consumers, lawmakers, and medical professionals

Aesthetics · Boundary-work · Childbirth · Identity negotiation · Negotiation · Perception · Political science · Public relations · Salient · Social science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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