Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on anxieties related to natural childbirth in the Czech Republic. First, I focus on women who desire natural childbirth but fear they won't be able to have it. Second, I explore what natural childbirth criticism may tell us about the postsocialist political context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on emotions and anxieties related to the so-called "natural" and "normal" childbirth in the Czech Republic. At the first glance it may seem that the "natural" or "normal" childbirth is free of "risks" and anxieties that are usually linked to medical childbirth and its emphasis on pathology. However, within the context of current birth care, in which childbirth is prevalently defined as a medical event, different kind of worries arouses. Many Czech women today fear they won't be successful in enforcing their ideas about birth care and having "natural childbirth" in the context of maternity hospitals. In my paper I first ask what these women do to overcome their fears and what coping strategies they employ. Second, I explore how they understand this term. As Moscucci [2003] pointed out, "natural childbirth" has never been a coherent system of practices but rather it was used as a cover term for a number of various practices. I wonder what particular practices these women link to natural childbirth and why they find them relevant.

On a more general level, claims related to "natural childbirth" often served as a form of cultural and political criticism directed at different crises in modern Western societies [Moscucci 2003]. They may be perceived as a window in which we can study wider societal, political and intelectual contexts in which these claims appear. In the Czech post-socialist context, the natural childbirth ideas became more visible at the end of the 1990s. Third, I explore what these claims may tell us about the postsocialist changes and realities.