This book examines the way risk is defined and employed in the delivery of maternity care across the world, inviting readers to reflect critically on how the management of risk shapes the organization and experience of maternity services. Drawing from investigations of the way risk operates in contemporary society, the authors challenge taken-for-granted understandings of risk in maternity care and early parenting, showing how risk is not simply a value-free assessment of potential harms but is, in fact, a complex social and political way of seeing, knowing about, and performing pregnancy and birth. The information presented here invites the reader to rethink the social and economic risks in maternity care, challenge the assumption that responses to risk are uniform, see the political uses of risk in maternity care, and reconsider the value of risk management. Finally, the book offers a substantial and up-to-date summary of new and important theoretical understandings of risk and uncertainty in maternity care. In these pages, students and practitioners in the fields of health, medicine, midwifery, and the social sciences will find both practical information about, and deeper insights into, the social aspects of the delivery of health care.

Explores how the critical studies in risk can improve understanding of maternity care Offers diverse perspectives cultural, clinical, and theoretical on the role of risk in maternity care Connects maternity care provision, lived experiences of that care and critical theories of risk

Autorentext

Mandie Scamell is Senior Lecturer in Midwifery at City and St Geoge's University of London, and specializes in risk and the maternity services in the UK. Her main area of work has been on midwifery care in the UK, with particular interests in clinical governance and institutionalized risk management technologies and in the culture and organization of maternity care. She has published in a number of peer-reviewed journals including Women and Birth, Birth and Midwifery.

Kirstie Coxon is Reader in Maternity Care at University of Lancashire, UK. A midwife by background, she researches risk in maternity care, risk and decision-making, and sociocultural theories of risk. She is an author of Risk, Pregnancy and Childbirth (Routledge) and has written a range of articles and book chapters on risk, as well as being a guest editor for Special Issues of Midwifery and Health, Risk and Society journals on critical understandings of risk in maternity care.

Raymond De Vries is Professor emeritus in the Department of Learning Health Sciences and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan. He is also Visiting Professor emeritus at CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, University of Maastricht, the Netherlands. His interests include the social, ethical and policy issues associated with the medicalization of pregnancy and birth. He is author of A Pleasing Birth: Midwifery and Maternity Care in the Netherlands (Temple University Press).

Inhalt

Chapter 1. Introducing risk and uncertainty in maternity care.- Chapter 2. The risk problem from 2006 to now.- Chapter 3. A historical perspective of the risk problem in maternity care in UK and India.- Chapter 4. The Racialisation of risk.- Chapter 5. From broken bodies to broken systems.- Chapter 6. Covid-19, pregnancy and precautionary principle.- Chapter 7. Globalisation and the risk problem in maternity care.- Chapter 8. Feminisms, power and models of care.- Chapter 9. Undocumented women facing risk in England and the US.- Chapter 10. The over-application of risk related to weight in pregnancy.- Chapter 11. Risk and choosing to birth at home.- Chapter 12. The problem of risk and uncertainty in maternity care for those in prison.- Chapter 13. Pregnant women with breech presentation facing the risk problem an international perspective.- Chapter 14. Communicating risk through pregnancy apps.- Chapter 15. Communicating maternity risks using social media in the UK and Australia.- Chapter 16. Communicating maternity risks using mass media in the UK and US.- Chapter 17. Communicating risk and supporting informed choice of mode of birth.- Chapter 18. Organisational management of risk and uncertainty through clinical governance.- Chapter 19. Facing the uncertainty of time risk and pregnancy length .- Chapter 20. Midwives facing the problem of risk and uncertainty in England and the US .- Chapter 21. CTG monitoring: obstetricians and the risk problem.- Chapter 22. Risk and uncertainty in maternity care: a matter of gender.- Chapter 23. Conclusion: putting risk in its place.