Dream birth or birth trauma? On the new discomfort of birth

Graz cooperation partner: Prof. Dr. Stephan Moebius, Institute of Sociology
Junior Fellow: Franziska Marek

Incoming Senior Fellow: Dr. Sabine Flick, Institute of Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main
Incoming Junior Fellows: Friederike Hesse

Period: September 2020 to August 2021
Symposium: November 2020

Content:

For a few years now, activists of the so-called "Roses Revolution" have been campaigning against obstetric violence in Europe. They refer to experiences of disrespectful treatment and unjustified treatment, including physical abuse, that women experience during childbirth. While the WHO has already published a statement on this, the discussions about 'Black Birthing Justice' in the USA point to racist structures in obstetrics and in some Latin American countries obstetric violence is already being negotiated as a legal issue, the debate in Europe has only just begun.

Interestingly, the European, particularly German-speaking discussion focuses strongly on the psychological aspects of experiences of obstetric violence. Mothers, doulas and midwives describe traumatic experiences during childbirth and derive subsequent problems with breastfeeding, depression and bonding problems with the infant from these traumas. Against the backdrop of emerging criticism of current conditions during childbirth, the joint project examines which social and cultural processes of change in childbirth are effective from a gender-theoretical perspective. Notions of normality with regard to birth experiences appear to be shifting towards a charging of birth with claims to self-fulfilment and thus a shift towards birth as a project. The birth experience is charged as a quasi-transcendent experience and thus becomes a biographical event. This enormous charging of the birth event could possibly contribute to the idealized process being contrasted and possibly disappointed by the real clinical experience, which is then experienced as traumatic and/or violent. This development includes a paradoxical simultaneity of the increase in the autonomy of pregnant women and women giving birth in terms of freedom of choice and birth options, while at the same time making them more responsive. This change in experience, articulation and the concrete conditions for birth will be investigated in the project.