Countering technocracy: “natural” birth in<i>The Business of Being Born</i>and<i>Call the Midwife</i>

Takeshita, Chikako

doi:10.1080/14680777.2017.1283341

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…There is a disciplinary split in the methods used to study birth on television reflecting different traditions as well as, to some extent, different concerns. Studies located in cultural studies, media studies and television studies predominantly draw on close readings or textual analyses of televisual texts (Sears et al 2011;Feasey 2012;Verena Siebert 2012;O'Brien Hill 2014;Bull 2016;Horeck 2016;Takeshita 2017). The exceptions are Russell (2012) and De Benedictis (2016) who include fieldwork with female audiences alongside textual analyses.…”

Section: Production Representation or Receptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth on television: a scoping review and recommendations for further research

Roberts

Benedictis

2019

Feminist Media Studies

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Factual and reality television shows that depict childbirth are both commercially successful and controversial. Social debate focuses on the potential implications for women's experiences of birth and their health. This scoping review critically analyses published literature to assess the state of knowledge about the influence of factual and reality television on the expectations and experiences of childbearing women, and to make recommendations for future research. Recognising the complexity of researching the relationship between the media and lived health experiences, we critically engage with the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the published literature and its substantive findings. We argue that the field is limited by a disconnect between media studies and health studies. Feminist approaches have both criticised the medicalised view of childbirth seen to dominate mainstream media, and the valorisation of "natural childbirth" as a standard which also disciplines women. Very little research has engaged with pregnant women's views and experiences. Future research should engage more rigorously with diverse women who are pregnant or have recently become mothers. Recommendations for future research also include transdisciplinary collaboration for methodological innovation, research about television production processes and research that takes social media and the changing nature of television into account.

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Section: Production Representation or Receptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth on television: a scoping review and recommendations for further research

Roberts

Benedictis

2019

Feminist Media Studies

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“…There have been some U.K. studies that consider scripted television shows (Clement, 1997; Kitzinger & Kitzinger, 2001), with more recent studies comparing Call the Midwife (B.B.C. One, 2012–) alongside RTV (Hamad, 2016) or documentary (Takeshita, 2017). Yet, RTV is a distinct genre and has received the majority of scholarly attention (e.g., Bull, 2016; Horeck, 2016; Jackson, Land, & Holmes, 2017; Siebert, 2012; Tyler & Baraitser, 2013) as televised birth has flourished.…”

Section: Exploring Birth Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative insights into televised birth: a content analysis ofOne Born Every Minute

Benedictis

Johnson

Roberts

et al. 2018

Critical Studies in Media Communication

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This article explores birth representations through a content analysis of two seasons of the U.K. program, One Born Every Minute ( OBEM ) (Channel 4, 2010–). Reality television (RTV) has been a fertile ground for the mediation of birth, but has also stoked controversy among feminist critics and the birth community about how birth is represented and the impacts this might have for women and society. International research has explored problematic over-representation of white, heterosexual couples, as well as noting a predominance of medicalized birth experiences. However, this research is formed largely of qualitative studies that are necessarily based on small samples of episodes. To contribute to this literature, we apply a quantitative and interdisciplinary lens through a content analysis of two seasons of the U.K. version of OBEM . Paying attention to the geographical and temporal context of OBEM , this article confirms over-representation of white, heterosexual couples and medicalized birth on RTV birth shows while also providing novel insights into the ambiguous representation of birthplace and lead caregivers, the medicalization of birth through the routinization of supposedly minor birth interventions, and the absence of the representation of women’s choice over such interventions.

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“…It's mutual dependency all the way down, and birth is the exchanging of one symbiotic system for another -Scott Gilbert (2014, p. 5) This last section discusses how symbiotic relations extend to the postnatal period. As I have argued elsewhere, obstetrics is rooted in a masculinist and dualist Western philosophical tradition; the mind/body dualism allows physicians to concentrate on the physiological aspects of pregnancy while ignoring its psychological and social dimensions (Takeshita, 2017). When it comes to childbirth, the focus is on the extraction of the Fetus from the parent, after which the separation of two independent organisms is deemed complete.…”

Section: Reconstituting Birth: a Holobiont-in-becomingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 By "natural" birth, I mean a vaginal birth achieved through physiological processes without biomedical interventions (see Takeshita, 2017 including evolution, ecology, immunology, development, physiology, and the cognitive sciences (Pradue 2016). 7 Until recently, the often-quoted ratio between microbial cells to human cells in a human body was ten to one.…”

Section: The Motherfetus-holobiont As a Queer Feminist Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

From Mother/Fetus to Holobiont(s): A Material Feminist Ontology of the Pregnant Body

Takeshita

2017

Catalyst

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In Karen Barad's agential realism, the "fetus" does not preexist as an object with a distinct agency that interacts with the "mother." Meanwhile, recent scientific studies reveal the vital roles symbiotic bacteria play in human reproduction. Drawing on material feminist theory, this article offers an alternative ontology of the pregnant body represented by the motherfetus, which collapses the material distinction between the "maternal" and the "fetal" embedded in the Cartesian mother/fetus dualism regularly reiterated by scientific, popular, and feminist discourses. The article deconstructs pregnancy, which is typically known as a bidirectional exchange of substances between the parent and offspring, and reconstitutes it into a symbiotic process sustained by networks of commensal microbacterial activities. The idea of holobiont reproduction challenges some of the basic concepts associated with pregnancy and childbirth such as the difference between a fetus and an infant and the gender of the gestational parent. This article offers the motherfetus-holobiont as a boundary-breaching cyborg figure that opens up new possibilities for scientific and feminist studies of the pregnant body. Takeshita

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Countering technocracy: “natural” birth inThe Business of Being BornandCall the Midwife

Cited by 12 publications

References 18 publications

Childbirth on television: a scoping review and recommendations for further research

Childbirth on television: a scoping review and recommendations for further research

Quantitative insights into televised birth: a content analysis ofOne Born Every Minute

From Mother/Fetus to Holobiont(s): A Material Feminist Ontology of the Pregnant Body

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