Birth Visionaries

Abstract

Birth Visionaries: An Examination of Unassisted Childbirth By Lauren Ashley Brown Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, Thesis Chair This exploratory study inquires into unassisted childbirth, the act of giving birth without the presence of any birth professional (doctor, midwife or doula). Unassisted birth is on the radical fringe of alternatives to the dominant techno-medical birth common in American hospitals today. My research questions are what are women's motivations for choosing unassisted childbirth and what is the lived experience of unassisted childbirth? I will answer these questions through nine in-depth interviews and a grounded theory data analysis. My approach comes from a focus on the everyday lived experience of women as problematic as well as insights from anthropology of birth and feminist postmodern sociology of knowledge. This study is relevant to public health policy on pregnancy and birth, to those working on questions of technology and culture, and to those concerned with how biosocial rituals shape embodied experience. My findings also contribute to research about power in contemporary society, specifically how the body can be a cite for social control and resistance.