Paper short abstract:

The paper focus on the predicament in which midwives giving childbirth classes find themselves insofar as they are caught between the task of conveying institutional messages aimed at transforming pregnant women in docile patients and their own conception of childbirth as a physiological and unique event that is different from the standard delivery designed by hospital procedures. Furthermore, it will explore how prospective parents regard childbirth in order to understand why they attend childbirth classes and what they hope to find in them.

Paper long abstract:

In the Spring 2011 I have begun to do participant observation in the childbirth classes sponsored by a medium-size university hospital located in a city of the French part of Switzerland. I have attended several cycles of these courses and interviewed the midwives who are in charge of them. I also had the opportunity to observe the prospective parents attending the classes and explore their attitudes, fears and emotions few weeks before and after the birth of their child. Thus I have been confronted on the one hand with the medical education midwives impart to couples on behalf of the hospital and on the other with the questions, feelings and anxieties of the latter. In this paper I will focus on the predicament in which midwives giving childbirth classes find themselves insofar as they are caught between the task of conveying institutional messages aimed at transforming pregnant women in docile patients and their own conception of childbirth as a physiological and unique event that is different from the standard delivery designed by hospital procedures. Furthermore, I will show how prospective parents regard childbirth in order to understand why they attend childbirth classes and what they hope to find in them.