Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Maternity Care and Midwifery in North America and Europe

Raymond de Vries; Cecilia Benoit; Edwin van Teijlingen; Sirpa Wrede

Language: English

Publisher: Routledge

Published: Jan 2, 2001

Description:

Review

Through their comparative and multi-leveled analyses, the editors and contributors remind readers that while birth is a natural physiological phenomenon, our understandings of birth, the birthing process, and how and from whom mothers should receive maternity care are culturally based and are continually constructed and reconstructed. By re-focusing our attention on birth outcomes as women's experiences and the reproduction of societies and culture, the editors and contributors of Birth by Design do problematize all contexts of maternity care, and by doing so, challenge birthing mothers, caregivers, and policy makers in our thinking about the birthing process..
–Canadian Journal of Sociology Online (CJS Online), March - April 2002

Product Description

This collection brings together the leading research in maternity care from the United States, Canada and Europe to discuss systems of care for pregnancy and childbirth. The essays focus on the practical side of "good" social science and "feminist-friendly" research. The text not only looks at maternity, but also the act of childbirth, with the goal of providing not just comparative perspectives of care, but also to integrate the differences in care within each essay for a truly international understanding of maternity care.