IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/socinc/v3y2015i2p06-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

More Than Four Walls: The Meaning of Home in Home Birth Experiences

Author

Listed:
  • Emily Burns

    (School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Australia)

Abstract

The “home versus hospital” as places of birth debate has had a long and at times vicious history. From academic literature to media coverage, the two have often been pitted against each other not only as opposing physical spaces, but also as opposing ideologies of birth. The hospital has been heavily critiqued as a site of childbirth since the 1960s, with particular focus on childbirth and medicalisation. The focus of much of the hospital and home birthing research exists on a continuum of medicalisation, safety, risk, agency, and maternal and neonatal health and wellbeing. While the hospital birthing space has been interrogated, a critique of home birthing space has remained largely absent from the social sciences. The research presented in this article unpacks the complex relationship between home birthing women and the spaces in which they birth. Using qualitative data collected with 59 home birthing women in Australia in 2010, between childbearing and the home should not be considered as merely an alternative to hospital births, but rather as an experience that completely renegotiates the home space. Home, for the participants in this study, is a dynamic, changing, and even spiritual element in the childbirth experience, and not simply the building in which it occurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Burns, 2015. "More Than Four Walls: The Meaning of Home in Home Birth Experiences," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 3(2), pages 06-16.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:3:y:2015:i:2:p:06-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/article/view/203
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abel, Sally & Kearns, Robin A., 1991. "Birth places: A geographical perspective on planned home birth in New Zealand," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 33(7), pages 825-834, January.
    2. Mansfield, Becky, 2008. "The social nature of natural childbirth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(5), pages 1084-1094, March.
    3. Davis-Floyd, Robbie E., 1994. "The technocratic body: American childbirth as cultural expression," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1125-1140, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mário J. D. S. Santos & Dulce Morgado Neves, 2021. "A Manifest against the Homogenisation of Childbirth Experiences: Preserving Subjectiveness in a Large Dataset of the «Babies Born Better» Survey," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-12, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kierans, Ciara, 2011. "Anthropology, organ transplantation and the immune system: Resituating commodity and gift exchange," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(10), pages 1469-1476.
    2. Brubacher, Laura Jane & Dewey, Cate E. & Cunsolo, Ashlee & Humphries, Sally & Healey Akearok, Gwen K. & Gong, Crystal & Harper, Sherilee L., 2020. "Mapping the maternal health research landscape in Nunavut: A systematic search & critical review of methodology," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 262(C).
    3. Malik, Tariq H., 2019. "Society-nature-technology (SNT) nexus: Institutional causes and cures of national morbidities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 491-503.
    4. Shaw, Rebecca & Kitzinger, Celia, 2005. "Calls to a home birth helpline: Empowerment in childbirth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(11), pages 2374-2383, December.
    5. Lopez, Patricia J. & Neely, Abigail H., 2021. "Fundamentally uncaring: The differential multi-scalar impacts of COVID-19 in the U.S," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    6. Palmquist, Aunchalee E.L. & Holdren, Sarah M. & Fair, Cynthia D., 2020. "“It was all taken away”: Lactation, embodiment, and resistance among mothers caring for their very-low-birth-weight infants in the neonatal intensive care unit," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    7. Mansfield, Becky, 2008. "The social nature of natural childbirth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(5), pages 1084-1094, March.
    8. Tully, Kristin P. & Ball, Helen L., 2013. "Misrecognition of need: Women's experiences of and explanations for undergoing cesarean delivery," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 103-111.
    9. Kroll, Camille & Murphy, Julia & Poston, Lindsay & You, Whitney & Premkumar, Ashish, 2022. "Cultivating the ideal obstetrical patient: How physicians-in-training describe pain associated with childbirth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 312(C).
    10. English, Jennifer & Wilson, Kathi & Keller-Olaman, Sue, 2008. "Health, healing and recovery: Therapeutic landscapes and the everyday lives of breast cancer survivors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 68-78, July.
    11. Neiterman, Elena & Fox, Bonnie, 2017. "Controlling the unruly maternal body: Losing and gaining control over the body during pregnancy and the postpartum period," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 142-148.
    12. El-Nemer, Amina & Downe, Soo & Small, Neil, 2006. "'She would help me from the heart': An ethnography of Egyptian women in labour," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 81-92, January.
    13. Namey, Emily E. & Lyerly, Anne Drapkin, 2010. "The meaning of "control" for childbearing women in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 769-776, August.
    14. Martin, Graham P. & Nancarrow, Susan A. & Parker, Hilda & Phelps, Kay & Regen, Emma L., 2005. "Place, policy and practitioners: On rehabilitation, independence and the therapeutic landscape in the changing geography of care provision to older people in the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(9), pages 1893-1904, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:socinc:v:3:y:2015:i:2:p:06-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.