Selling the ideal birth: Rationalization and re-enchantment in the marketing of maternity care

Rutherford, Markella B.; Gallo-Cruz, Selina

doi:10.1016/s1057-6290(08)10005-5

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Second, in this context women's pragmatism regarding birth goes hand in hand with neoliberal uses of medicine under the logic of choice or purchase, rather than a logic of care (Mol 2008), highlighting the multiple subjectivities—the patient–consumer, attendant–provider—at stake (Rutherford and Gallo‐Cruz 2008:93). Women escaping (resisting) mistreatment by the public health system privilege the aesthetics of a nice place for birth and the upwardly mobile trespassing of class boundaries that achieving that “nice place” entails, trusting the rest to the experts.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness

Murray

2012

Med Anthropol Q

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On the basis of ethnographic work with women from different economic and educational backgrounds in Santiago, I describe the experiences of labor and birth from the point of view of women's priorities, socioeconomic constraints, and relationships with the medical system. I specifically focus on their desires expressed during the late prenatal period and their narratives of the actual birth. Class and the differences in opportunities resulting from educational and class inequalities melt down into near invisibility as vulnerability rises and women become increasingly subjected to medical decision making. The long-standing Chilean focus on child centeredness, while shown to benefit bonding, can work to obliterate women's own desires and choices by encouraging them to "sacrifice their all" for the sake of the baby. This kind of sacrifice defines the meaning of the maternal body in Chile. I suggest further analysis of these factors is essential for an understanding of the hypermedicalized Chilean context.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness

Murray

2012

Med Anthropol Q

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“…Market logic has infiltrated domains once considered “neutral territory” for new mothers, including the medical context (Davies, Dobscha, et al, 2010). In this scenario, one can observe phenomena like the natural birth movement shaping the contemporary advertising of mainstream maternity services in the USA, which aims to “sell the ideal birth” (Rutherford & Gallo‐Cruz, 2008), or the humanized childbirth movement in Brazil, organized by mothers and pregnant women, challenging the C‐sections market (Abdalla, 2019).…”

Section: Agenda For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motherhood and consumption: A systematic review and directions for future research

Freitas,

Leite,

de Rezende Pinto

2024

Int J Consumer Studies

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This article presents a hybrid literature review on the relationship between motherhood and consumption, encompassing academic research in Business, Management, and Cultural Studies that investigates mothers as consumers and the reciprocal influence between mothers and other actors in family consumption dynamics. Bibliometric research was conducted on 175 articles indexed on the Web of Science using the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol. It included performance analysis, intellectual and conceptual structure of the field, an evolutionary overview of publications, and a map of trends. Moreover, from the systematic review, a new framework, PTCCM, is proposed to identify the publications' widely used perspectives, theories, constructs, characteristics, and methods. The findings reveal nine major perspectives on motherhood and consumption: consumer socialization and intergenerational influence, consumption and identity, vulnerabilities and public policies, consumption and liminality, influences of children on family consumption, maternal practices, decision‐making and consumption process, gender studies, and advertising. Based on the identified gaps, thematic, theoretical, contextual, and methodological suggestions for future work are presented. This systematic review provides a map for academics and professionals interested in consumption in the context of motherhood, offering a comprehensive overview of the state‐of‐the‐art and research agenda.

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“…Feminist critics relate this occlusion to the Judeo-Christian construction of birth as a private, morally uncomfortable event that is repulsive to civilized men, and deservedly painful to women (Tyler, 2011; Tyler and Baraitser, 2013). Until taken over by doctors (Michaels, 2018; Rutherford and Gallo-Cruz, 2008), labor, birth, and postpartum moments were invisible to men – and culture – as they were handled by midwives behind the scenes. Yet the medicalization of birth from the 18th century onward – namely, the introduction of men into the delivery process – did not render birth visible either.…”

Section: Birth Imagerymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These pioneering, sporadic initiatives are joined in recent years by a host of popular representations of birth, both in women’s blogs, social media, and YouTube accounts (Longhurst, 2009; Tiidenberg and Baym, 2017; Tyler and Baraitser, 2013) and in birthing advertising and reality programs (Morris and McInerney, 2010; Rutherford and Gallo-Cruz, 2008; VandeVusse and VandeVusse, 2008). Analyses of these images suggest that despite their unprecedented proliferation, they do not challenge the hegemony of the medical perspective on birth (De Benedictis et al, 2019).…”

Section: Birth Imagerymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A powerful, spiritual, win-win situation’: commercial authenticity in professional birth photography

Ribak

Leshnick

2022

Media, Culture & Society

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Against a background of occlusion and medicalized portrayals, the emergent practice of birth photography allows women to see and to depict birth from their own perspective. Thus the delivery room, the digital camera, and the direct encounter between the artisan and her client enable exploring the possibility of alternative depictions in a neoliberal economy, and the significance of professionalism in a field dominated by expert amateurs. Drawing upon interviews with photographers and clients, our analysis highlights three tensions underlying birth photography as a documentary and entrepreneurial pursuit: the formulaic depiction of an extraordinary event; the exposure of an intimate experience; and the commercialization of the sacred. We find that in terms of content, birth photographs present restrained, conventional depictions, suitable for both the family album and the photographers’ social media portfolios. In terms of practice, although desired by their clients, birth photographers’ work is unstable and they must constantly invest in relational labor that balances intimacy and publicness, friending and advertising. We propose the notion of commercial authenticity to capture this contradictory amalgam of disciplined realism, edited documentation, and professional closeness that both clients and photographers expect, produce, and regard as appropriate in the context of artisanal photography.

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Selling the ideal birth: Rationalization and re-enchantment in the marketing of maternity care

Cited by 10 publications

References 6 publications

Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness

Childbirth in Santiago de Chile: Stratification, Intervention, and Child Centeredness

Motherhood and consumption: A systematic review and directions for future research

‘A powerful, spiritual, win-win situation’: commercial authenticity in professional birth photography

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