The storying of birth
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4884077 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer Maclellan (0000-0002-6872-5011, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 181-199 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1363-4593 • E-ISSN: 1461-7196 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1363459320925866 |
| PMID | 32486867 |
| OpenAlex | W3031517501 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 42 |
Birth narratives have been found to provide women with the most accessible and often utilised means for giving voice to their exploration of meaning in their births. The stories women tell of their birth come out of their pre- and post-experience bodies, reproducing society through the sharing of cultural meanings. I recruited a selection of 20 birth stories from a popular 'mums' Internet forum in the United Kingdom. Using structural and thematic analyses, I set out to explore how women tell the story of their body in childbirth. This project has contributed evidence to the discussion of women's experiences of subjectivity in the discursive landscape of birth, while uncovering previously unacknowledged sites of resistance. The linguistic restrictions, sustained by the neoliberal control mechanisms on society and the self, act to shape the reality, feelings, and expressions of birthing women. Naming these silencing strategies, as I have done through the findings of this project, and celebrating women's discourse on birth, as the explosion of birth stories across the Internet are doing, offer bold moves to challenge the muting status quo of women in birth. Reclaiming women's language for birth and working to create a new vocabulary encapsulating the experiences of birthing women will also present opportunities for the issue of birth and women's experiences of it to occupy greater political space with a confident and decisive voice
Childbirth · Feeling · Linguistics · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Status quo · Subjectivity · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Maternal and Perinatal Health Interventions · Psychology · Social Psychology
Considering counter narratives
The Ethics of Using the Internet to Collect Qualitative Research Data
Violence against women in health-care institutions
Precarious Life, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Cohabitation
Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts
The Wounded Storyteller
Social identity and intergroup relations
Embodiment in Qualitative Research
Doing Narrative Research
Netnography
Technologies of gender and childbirth choices
Knowing feminism
Women's Madness
Introduction
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Candidate gender quotas
Whose body is it anyway? Verbalization, embodiment, and the creation of narratives
Lifelong Significance of Disempowering Experiences in Prenatal and Maternity Care
The need to belong
Language and woman's place
Claims and Disclaimers
Epiphanies of embodiment
A narrative analysis of the birth stories of early-age mothers
The Narrative Construction of Reality
| Citations per year | 1.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |