Paper short abstract:

Haredi Jews are a growing minority group and maternity care is one of the few areas in which they interact with the state. This paper explores how Haredi reproductive carers mediate NHS maternity services and challenge biomedical protocols to oversee the group’s physical and social perpetuation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents a historical and ethnographic study of reproductive cultures in the UK's Haredi (or 'ultra-Orthodox') Jewish minority, who are viewed as 'hard to reach' by English health authority. The Haredi population are estimated to have the highest total fertility rates for any religious group in England, and are projected to form the majority of the Jewish population in the UK, U.S., and Israel by mid-century. Haredi Jewish populations are characterised by self-insulation and self-protection, but maternal and infant care services are a strategic point of study given they remain one of the few areas in which the state and its Haredi minority encounter each other. Today, Jewish midwives, doulas, and breastfeeding supporters form a collective of what I call 'reproductive carers' and gratuitously provide ante-natal, labour, and post-natal support to Haredi women at a time of increasingly cutback NHS services.

A historical and ethnographic approach illustrates how reproductive care has been entangled with pressures to assimilate and integrate over time. Some Haredi doulas challenge biomedical conducts which interfere with the religious cosmology, and perform a fundamental role in reproducing the Jewish social body within the mainstream biomedical culture. The reproductive carers consequently perform an "unorthodox" role within this 'ultra-Orthodox' and 'hard to reach' group.

The study therefore offers an understanding of the strategies used by an ethno-religious minority group to oversee maternal and infant care - as well as the physical and social reproduction - at a time of continued and radical changes to mainstream maternity services.