Pregnancy, birth and risk: an introduction

Rothman, Barbara Katz

doi:10.1080/13698575.2013.876191

Cited by 59 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Medical practitioners are preoccupied with the language of risk, and risk now defines childbirth (Chadwick & Foster, 2014;Coxon, Scamell, & Alaszewski, 2012). Although childbirth has become a much safer endeavour in highincome countries, the medicalisation of childbirth has made pregnancy an area for risk management (Katz Rothman, 2014;. Childbirth 'valorises "prudent risk aversion"' (Coxon et al, 2012, p. 504), and as with many contexts in risk societies, discourses of blame and responsibility permeate the context of pregnancy and birth (Coxon, Sandall, & Fulop, 2014).…”

Section: Risk In the Practice Of Medicine And Childbirthmentioning

confidence: 98%

When it’s good to be a bad nurse: expanding risk orders theory to explore nurses’ experiences of moral, social and identity risks in obstetrics units

Striley

Field‐Springer

2016

Health, Risk & Society

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Discourses about health risks can have major implications for individuals and cultures. In this article, we use risk orders theory to examine nurses' perceptions of patient safety risk in Obstetrics departments of US hospitals. According to risk orders theory, risk discourses can create social worlds that have the capacity to threaten individuals' social bonds, identity and moral character, and the imaginative potential of entire cultures. Risk orders theory proposes three orders of risk. First-order risks are constructed from claims about tangible dangers that individuals believe result from their actions or inactions. Second-order risks are threats experienced by individuals because of communication about first-order risk, including threats to social relationships or social risks, and threats to the sense of moral character or moral risk. Third-order risks are threats to collective agency and imagination underpinning shared culture. In this article, we draw on data from a survey of obstetric nurses who attended the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses conference in 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We use a qualitative thematic analysis of 131 obstetrics nurses' narrative responses on a critical incident survey to refine theoretical constructs of risk orders theory. We identified a third type of second-order risk, identity risks, or threats to the sense of self. We also identified three types of third-order risks: agencyconstraining risks threaten members of a culture's ability to act freely; agentconstraining risks threaten cultural members' ability to define themselves freely; double-binding risks threaten their ability to make choices freely. We found that second-order and third-order risks did threaten some obstetrics nurses' social bonds, identity as a nurse, moral character and imaginative potential.

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Section: Risk In the Practice Of Medicine And Childbirthmentioning

confidence: 98%

When it’s good to be a bad nurse: expanding risk orders theory to explore nurses’ experiences of moral, social and identity risks in obstetrics units

Striley

Field‐Springer

2016

Health, Risk & Society

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“…It seems certain that women have internalised the medicalization of pregnancy to some extent (Rothman, 2014) and yet it is also clear that ultrasound has become a social landmark for women during pregnancy and is often anticipated with pleasure (Molander et al, 2010, Garcia et al, 2002. Scholars have pointed to the potential for tension between the social significance of ultrasound and its clinical aims, with each threatening to disrupt the other (Taylor, 1998) not least because ultrasound has the potential to raise questions about the health of the pregnancy and the foetus, requiring women to make complex decisions based on probabilities and risk calculations (Williams et al, 2003, Mitchell, 2004.…”

Section: Routine and Commercial Ultrasoundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It might also have been a way of displaying their consumption of ultrasound technology. It has been argued that consuming all available technologies during pregnancy is a sign of responsible mothering (Rothman, 2014) and that ultrasound use specifically may be a sign of 'good' and even 'modern' parenting (Mitchell and Georges, 1997).…”

Section: Sharing Sonogramsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing the Baby, Doing Family: Commercial Ultrasound as Family Practice?

2015

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A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP URL' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk 1 Seeing the baby, doing family: commercial ultrasound as family practice?ABSTRACT Medical sociologists and anthropologists have studied the social significance of obstetric ultrasound for families but little is known about how women and families make use of commercially available ultrasound scans. This article draws on interviews with women who booked a scan with a commercial company in the UK. For some women, commercial ultrasound can be understood as a family practice. We investigate this theme by examining who accompanies women to commercial scan appointments, how scan images are shared and how sonograms are used as prompts to resemblance talk. We argue that commercial scans are more than an additional opportunity to acquire 'baby's first picture' and offer a flexible resource to do family, creating and affirming family relationships and rehearsing roles as parents, siblings and grandparents. Our findings confirm the importance of imagination in doing family and raise questions about the role of technology and commercial interests in shaping family practices.

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“…Scamell (2014) suggests that this is based on a fear of possible risk rather than the probability of it or from any substantial experience. For risk to have a benefit it must be intelligently balanced, weighed and contextualised (Rothman, 2014). It is contended that the mass media contribute to the intensification of risk by reporting on it emotionally as opposed to intellectually, resulting in the severity of outcomes outweighing the probability of them in women's perceptions (Pilley Edwards and Murphy-lawless, 2006).…”

Section: Sociocultural Perceptions Of Risk That Impact Maternity Carementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They will be stratified by risk status at their first antenatal visit, with their best hope being a low-risk categorisation (Rothman, 2014). Although risk assessment has improved outcomes in certain situations, when applied to all pregnant women this can result in unintended but harmful consequences (Jordan and Murphy, 2009).…”

Section: Structural Factors Of Maternity Care Affecting Riskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can maternity care move beyond risk? Implications for midwifery as a profession

Healy

Humphreys

Kennedy

2016

British Journal of Midwifery

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Maternal and infant mortality rates are reassuringly low in developed countries. Despite this, birth is increasingly seen as risky by women, health professionals and society in general. In wider society, women are subjected to a litany of risks regarding birth, including sensationalising negative incidents by the media. Within maternity care, both structural and operational factors contribute to heightened risk perceptions. Women are processed through a system where risk-management strategies can take precedence over individualised care as health professionals attempt to protect themselves from implication in adverse outcomes and litigation. This results in increasingly interventionist care, depriving women of psychosocial safety in the birth process. Midwifery, as a profession promoting trust in normal birth, is threatened by this dominant medical model of maternity care and interventionist birth practices. Midwives need to act to reclaim their role in promoting normal birth, while balancing considerations of risk with the principle of woman-centred care.

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Pregnancy, birth and risk: an introduction

Cited by 59 publications

References 7 publications

When it’s good to be a bad nurse: expanding risk orders theory to explore nurses’ experiences of moral, social and identity risks in obstetrics units

When it’s good to be a bad nurse: expanding risk orders theory to explore nurses’ experiences of moral, social and identity risks in obstetrics units

Seeing the Baby, Doing Family: Commercial Ultrasound as Family Practice?

Can maternity care move beyond risk? Implications for midwifery as a profession

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