How do social discourses of risk impact on women’s choices for vaginal breech birth? A qualitative study of women’s experiences

Abstract

In this article, we aim to explore the impact of social discourses of risk around childbirth on the decisions made for birth by women who planned to have a breech baby late in pregnancy. This article uses data from a qualitative descriptive study in New South Wales, Australia in 2013. In the study, we talked to 22 women about their decision-making process for planned a vaginal breech birth and the impact of social discourses of risk on this decision. In total, 12 of these women had a vaginal birth and the other 10 had a Caesarean section. In this article, we note that the mothers talked about their option for birth in a social setting in which the dominant discourse focused on the riskiness of breech birth and the vulnerability of female bodies that required medical surveillance, supervision and intervention to ensure a safe birth. Thus, for these mothers their pregnancy was seen through the societal lens of risk and medicalisation, with surgical intervention through a Caesarean section seen by society as the optimum choice. Women could resist this dominant discourse but such resistance required both justification and action, for example, the women who wanted a vaginal birth often had to resist the pressure from their families to have a Caesarean section. We identified four related strands in women’s talk about resisting the dominate discourse: acknowledgment that they would be considered irrational for wanting a vaginal birth; having confidence in and believing that their body could give birth vaginally; convincing significant others that a vaginal birth was possible and desirable and looking for sources of support, for example, from new online social networks.

Keywords:

• risk
• social discourse
• risk discourse
• childbirth
• vaginal breech birth
• decision-making

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the women who participated in this study for their time and generosity in sharing their experience with us. We would like to thank the New South Wales branch of the Australian College of Midwives who supported the research on which this article is based with a scholarship grant.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian College of Midwives.