Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the enactment of temporality in childbirth. The structuring of time by maternal health institutions and professionals, associated phenomenological outcomes for women, and the moral and social implications of the acceleration of labour and delivery are explicated.

Paper long abstract:

From their first engagement with health services, pregnant women and their bodies become embedded within socially imposed categorizations of time. What are the experiential outcomes and wider implications of this process? Drawing on ethnographic research in England and Portugal, this paper explores the forms of temporality articulated within ante-natal care services and hospital maternity units, which can often be seen to be founded on a logic of efficiency and risk avoidance, as much as care provision. Pregnant and birthing women's symbiotic relationship and negotiations with - and in some cases rejection of - such external, structured forms of temporality, are explored and the intersections between various enactments of time and corporeality and outcomes in relation to women's embodiment or being-in-the world, are examined. Ironically, to ensure "continuity of care", a concept suggestive of linear temporal and professional support, procedures in some settings in Portugal result in the extreme acceleration of labour and birth, through interventions such as the induction of labour or early elective caesarean, to ensure personalized care with a known obstetrician at the moment of birth. The moral and wider social implications of such enactments of time in relation to the female reproductive body are explored. It is demonstrated how the natural or normal birth movement may represent a significant yet scarcely recognised means of challenging the institutionalised acceleration of time in contemporary society.