Pregnancy

Abstract

This entry describes women's experiences of pregnancy across cultures. In every sociocultural—and political—setting, women's pregnancies are managed and regulated in accordance with local, regional, and national knowledge systems and beliefs about women's and men's roles in creating health and illness throughout gestation, childbirth, and the nurturance of future members of society. The entry details the development of the field of the anthropology of reproduction, and the subfields of the anthropology of pregnancy, childbirth, and the new reproductive technologies. It encompasses ethnotheories of conception, kinship, and sexuality, as well as the medicalization of pregnancy/prenatal care and birth, and describes the major discontinuities between earlier traditions and modern practice, pointing to a need for more up‐to‐date ethnographic research focused on pregnancy. The authors sketch the main theoretical concerns and empirical patterns that arise in past and present ethnographic research on pregnancy, and review earlier ethnographic accounts of pregnancy and current studies of technological reproduction through a unified theoretical lens. Our perspective analyzes both current scientific theories of conception and gestation and ethnotheories of procreation in premodern non‐Euro‐American societies as culturally bound systems of discourse and practice.