Domesticating Birth in the Hospital: “Family‐Centered” Birth and the Emergence of “Homelike” Birthing Rooms

Abstract

Childbirth is both an embodied and symbolic process, and the home and the hospital have been the shifting and contested sites of childbirth in contemporary discourses of birth in the United States. I argue that the economic and cultural imperatives of deregulation and downsizing of US health-care produce new spaces of domesticity and birthing bodies. Through an examination of the relatively recent transformations of hospital space into "homelike" birthing rooms, I propose a more nuanced understanding of how discursive and material shifts in the practices and sites of birth create new spatialities and subjectivities. The emergence of the "homelike" hospital room situates the production of birth spaces at the nexus of debates around domesticity, the body, the politics of reproduction, and the economics of health care in the United States.

‘I am closer to this place’—Space, place and notions of home in lived experiences of hospice day care

“…According to Williams, "therapeutic landscapes are those changing places, settings, situation, locales, and milieus that encompass the physical, psychological and social environments associated with treatment or healing" (1999, p, 2). The therapeutic landscape concept has so far been used to explore a variety of healthcare settings including the hospital (Gesler, et al, 2004, Kearns and Barnett, 2000, Kearns, et al, 2003, birthing room (Fannin, 2003) and family planning clinic (Gillespie, 2002). However, Williams notes a shift in health service delivery in the transfer of care towards more informal settings such as the home, suggesting the notion of therapeutic landscapes provides a more holistic, socio-ecological perspective through which to view this shift in geographies of care (Williams 2002).…”

Place of Birth and Concepts of Wellbeing

“…This writing also echoed the critical literature on residential care, where those in need of care attempt to live 'private lives in public places' (Willcocks et al 1986). However, while Gilmour (2006) claimed that making hospital spaces more home-like challenges the dominance of biomedical values, Fannin (2003) argued that it is presumptive to assume that making a hospital space more like a home will in itself fend off the controlling influence of biomedicine. Our analysis illuminates the tension between these two positions, suggesting that transforming spaces can achieve substantial change, but that changes may also be constrained by the challenges of working within an institutional environment that still treats the medical model of care as the norm.…”

More Than Four Walls: The Meaning of Home in Home Birth Experiences

“…In the birth literature, it is often regarded as the "backdrop" in which birth takes place, though there are some notable exceptions to this (Fannin, 2003;Michie, 1998). Indeed for Putnam (1999), when a new mode of living is mapped onto a house or a new house mapped onto an existing mode of living, the meaning of domestic space is redefined.…”

“…Hospitals and birth have been critiqued in relation to geographical (Abel & Kearns, 1991), spatial (Fannin, 2003;Michie, 1998;Seibold, Licqurish, Rolls, & Hopkins, 2010), and design (Foureur et al, 2010) frameworks as well. The focus for much of the research on homebirth is focused on the importance of issue such as gaining autonomy by birthing outside of the medical system (Dahlen, Barclay, & Homer, 2008;Edwards, 2005;Jackson, Dahlen, & Schmied, 2012;Nolan, 2011).…”

“…While research on the experience, impact, and importance of space when it comes to childbirth is growing, the focus remains primarily on hospital space (Fannin, 2003;Foureur et al, 2010;Hammond, Foureur, Homer, & Davis, 2013;Smyth, Payne, Wilson, & Wynyard, 2013).…”