Indonesian educated middle-class fathers’ preferences in pregnancy services at a private hospital

ABSTRACT

Using in-depth interviews with six educated fathers whose wives were pregnant at the time of the study, the present research aims to interrogate how their preferences in pregnancy services have been developed and avidly exercised using their sets of cultural capital. Following the presented research analysis, the theorizing of education as cultural capital by Pierre Bourdieu allows the author to further explore the complexity of the relationship between medical service preferences and facilities with the respondents’ social status as educated middle class actors. Moreover, access to and enjoyment in using the medical facilities and services of this private hospital is a social symbol desired by the respondents in order to reinforce and reinvigorate their social status. In addition, hospitals as providers of medical facilities and services play a role in accommodating the process of cultural capital activities of these highly educated expectant fathers. The inclusion of private hospitals in this study should also be considered as a symbol of social inequality in the provision of health services in Indonesia. The respondents place themselves within everyday social interactions, that relate naturally to the world, and represent the preoccupied active presence through which the world imposes its presence.

KEYWORDS:

• Educated fathers
• pregnancy
• Indonesia
• cultural capital

Acknowledgements

I thank two anonymous reviewers who had devoted their times and energy to provide constructive criticisms to this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Dr. Meredian Alam is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He was formerly involved in Australian Research Council Discovery Project “Fostering pro-environment consciousness and practice: environmentalism, environ mentality and environmental education in Indonesia” from 2014 to 2019. He attained M. Phil in Culture, Environment, and Sustainability from the University of Oslo, Norway and took up research fellowship at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS) at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark to undertake research in comparative biogas development in Nepal, China, India, and Pakistan during his study from 2010-2012. His research profile can be viewed at https://expert.ubd.edu.bn/meredian.alam